Chapter Twenty-Eight
I woke up when Cyrus came into the bedroom with breakfast. “Everything all right?” he asked, probably because I’d jerked awake and abruptly sat up.
For a moment, images of dank underground tunnels, illuminated only by a dim flashlight beam and then nothing at all, were superimposed over the morning sun streaming through the curtains.
I stared around, unsure where I was for a second, until the bedroom brightened and swallowed the other scene.
And I lay back against my pillow, feeling dizzy and unwell.
“Lia?”
“Fine,” I croaked, and cleared my throat. “I’m fine.”
Cyrus shot me a look and put the tray on the bedside table. I wasn’t remotely hungry, as I hadn’t done a damned thing but eat, sleep, have weird dreams, and be helped to the bathroom by my long-suffering fiancé in days. But the apple juice looked good, and I was thirsty.
I started to sit up, only for my body to protest. Get over it already, I thought impatiently, and completed the motion. And drank half of the juice before looking up to see Cyrus smiling slightly.
Weres like it when the clan eats well.
“How’s Noah?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him since HQ, because he couldn’t walk, and neither could I. Cyrus had brought over his new RV and had the boys staying in it for the moment, as the clan liked being together in difficulty. So I assumed he was out there.
“Pissed as all hell. His leg is healing slower than he’d like—”
“It was all but crushed four days ago. What did he expect?”
“I could ask the same of you. Your wolf tried to get up and run last night.”
“Run?” I could barely sit up.
“She decided against it after a few minutes,” Cyrus said dryly.
“Yeah, I bet.”
“But that’s not the real problem,” he added.
“Then what is?”
“He won’t talk about it, but Noah blames himself for what happened. If you’d died... well, shattered leg or no, he’d probably be off hunting your attacker right now. But you already took care of that, so he has nothing to do but stew in it, nothing to savage, no way to regain his honor—”
“What honor? He didn’t do anything wrong. That thing was twice his size—”
“Something I have pointed out to no effect. When you feel better—”
“I feel better now,” I grabbed some jeans from the low chest serving as a nightstand and tried to pull them on.
And failed.
Goddamn it, I hated being this weak!
“Not a chance.” Cyrus put a hand on my shoulder, and it may as well have been made out of solid lead. “You’re going to rest.”
“I’m going to lose my shit, is what I’m going to do. I can’t stay in this room anymore!”
“You almost died less than a week ago. You damned well can.”
I snarled at him. “I’m a Were—or something—I don’t even know anymore. But I’m not that fragile!
“But you are that stubborn.”
I glared at him.
He looked calmly back.
“Did she run you a merry chase?” I asked, after a moment.
“Who?”
“My wolf. Last night.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. I don’t always when she’s in charge; you know that.” That wasn’t normal for an adult Were, but most of them had known their alter egos for decades by now; I hadn’t. And until we were properly integrated, spotty memory was normal.
“Really?” Cyrus asked. “Just as well.”
“What does that mean?”
He crossed his arms. “It means I’ll make you a deal. You can sit out back and soak up some sun for an hour or two, if you promise to do nothing else—except eat.”
“Who died and left you boss?”
A dark eyebrow raised. “No one, thankfully. And I intend to keep it that way.”
I started to argue, but he was already lifting me up, and it hurt so badly that it took my breath away.
But I bit back a yelp, because then I’d have been tucked right back into bed, and I didn’t want to be in bed.
I also didn’t want the indignity of being carried through the house like a damned invalid, but I put up with it.
“Lia!” The clan gathered around as soon as they saw me, touching me—my hair, my face, my shoulder—as if to reassure themselves that I was really there.
Cyrus had mostly kept them out of the bedroom, wanting me to sleep. I’d woken up a few times to faces peering in at me and whispers in the hall, and some of the guys had tried to tag along when he brought my meals. But for the most part, they’d obeyed their Alpha.
But it had clearly taken a toll. Now he stopped in the hallway to the kitchen, letting them have a moment to get it out of their systems, and I immediately felt better. And so did they, I guessed, because everyone was suddenly talking at once.
“You went to HQ without us?” That, of course, was Sophie, the wavy red hair in a high, bouncy ponytail today, which didn’t match her expression. It looked like the outburst had been building for days.
“You look like shit,” that was Lee, his dreads also in a ponytail, if a more restrained one, and his sharp, dark eyes looking me over. I had a flash from my latest dream, seeing him slumped against a wall in the darkness with his face agonized, but then it broke and left me dizzy again.
“What do you expect? She took on three Relics at once!” That was Jason, the tall, skinny guy with the Adam’s apple and the Carrot Top snarl perched precariously on his head.
Like all Weres, his hair grew faster than he could easily manage, which had resulted in a man bun of epic proportions today.
He was one of those who’d had the Relic potion and had been with us on that awful night.
Only he wasn’t looking like he thought it had been awful.
“It was epic. You were epic!” he informed me, his eyes shining. “There must have been, like, fifty of them—”
“There were not fifty,” Cyrus said dryly.
“Fifty!” Jason repeated. “And we carved them up!”
Nothing unites a pack like fighting together, I thought.
Or maybe not.
“She was stupid,” that was from a little way down the corridor, where I saw a tousle-headed blond with a three-day beard and crutches parked in the doorway to the kitchen. Noah. I teared up seeing him upright and fine, just fine, except for needing a little help.
“You look good,” I croaked.
“You don’t!” he hobbled this way, pushing through the crowd to get me in a hug that threatened to break something.
His face was buried in my chest, but Cyrus didn’t say a word. Noah had the look of a small child running to his mother, scared and wanting reassurance, even though he was in his late teens. And when he lifted his face, it was wet.
“You were stupid!” he yelled at me, astonishingly loudly. “You could have died! You were stupid, and you should have left me!”
“I’ll never leave you,” I said before I thought, an immediate knee-jerk reaction. And wasn’t sure if that had been the right call or not when he sobbed and abruptly turned and limped back the other way, shoving the door to the backyard open so hard that it slammed against the house.
“He never had anybody do that for him,” Lee said quietly, as I frowned after him. “He never thought—none of us thought—anybody ever would.”
I transferred my stare to him, not knowing what to say.
“Oh, that’s great. And what am I?” Cyrus asked, breaking the tension.
“’Cept for you,” Lee said, ducking his head. “But we already knew you were crazy.”
“I wondered what you were doing with him,” Luis told me. “Now we know. You’re both loco.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a catch,” Cyrus said.
“Sure you are, bro.”
“None of which changes the fact that nobody would have almost died if you guys hadn’t left us here!” Sophie said, looking harassed. “We could have helped!”
“Nobody said you couldn’t go,” Andy reminded her, his brown hair sticking up as if he’d also just rolled out of bed.
“Nobody told us about it, either! I was in the shower! And you just barreled out of here without a word, then the next thing I know, you’re coming back all covered in blood, Noah has to be carried in, and Lia looks like… well, like that—”
She flapped an accusing hand at me and kept on talking. Based on experience, that could go on for some time, but Cyrus handled it the way he usually did. He just started walking, which didn’t stop the flow of conversation but left it behind pretty fast.
We passed through the kitchen, where Aki and Dimas were eating breakfast at the table, because those two never got full, then out the back door into the “yard,” only it looked a little more yard-like than usual today.
“Where did that come from?” I asked because I suddenly had a pool.
It was one of those big, aboveground things, the kind that kills a large circle of grass, only I didn’t have any grass.
Jen, Kimmie, and Jace were taking advantage, with Jen in a yellow bikini, relaxing on a float, while the others splashed each other in the water.
“Had to get the kiddoes something to play with,” Cyrus said, as Jason and Lee used Were springiness to leap over the tall side of the structure and cannonball into the water, not needing the ladder.
Luis rolled his eyes at them and went to get a soft drink out of a cooler with Andy and Chayton in tow, while Cyrus settled me onto a chaise by the back wall of the house.
There were two more there, along with a new table and four chairs, and a cheerful red umbrella with a fringe on top.
“You’ve been shopping,” I said.
“They’ve been shopping,” he corrected. “Had to do something to keep ‘em busy or they would have been bugging the hell out of you.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, and he rolled his eyes.
“You would have when you didn’t get any sleep.
By the way, hope you don’t mind that, either,” he added, nodding at the sleek new RV parked beside the house, which was bigger than I’d expected, with its butt protruding a good way into my back yard.
“Don’t worry; I checked with the HOA, and it’s fine, as long as we keep it on the side of the house. ”
That’s life, I thought cynically. Fighting to the death with prehistoric monsters one day, and wrangling with the HOA the next. And I wasn’t sure which was scarier. Mrs. González had recently been elected president, and she did not play.