Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Annahi
Waking up in a strange room, I’m more than a little freaked. I didn’t know where I was or how I got here.
I looked down at my wrists, breathing heavily as I realized what I’d done to myself.
Fear threatens to swamp me. Actually, it doesn’t threaten, it actually does swamp me.
I struggle with my breathing.
I tried to kill myself to get the voices of others to stop. It’s not something I’d done lightly.
Scooting upright, I glance around the room and wonder yet again how I got here.
My throat feels like it’s going to seize up at any moment with the fear consuming me. The only saving grace for the moment is I don’t have voices swarming in my head, suffocating me.
The door to the room swings open, and I jerk at the sight of the man coming into the room. His eyes are dark. So dark they were nearly black, but I also saw a gold speck in them.
Justice.
“Wh . . . wh . . . what are you doing here?” I stammer.
“It’s my room,” he answers, closing the door behind him.
“What? How?” I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why am I in your room? Where exactly am I? What do you want with me? How . . . how did I get here? I should be dead.”
My last words are met with a growl from Justice as he glares down at me, stopping me from saying anything further.
“You are not going to take the cowardly way out of this life, mate,” Justice snarls, prowling across the room until he’s at the edge of the bed and leans over me, forcing my body backward. “You aren’t gonna leave this life because you’re weak.”
I flinch at his words because I know just how true they are. I am weak.
“You’re going to learn real quick that you aren’t gonna go that route ever again. You understand me?”
“I don’t get why you care if I’m weak.”
I didn’t know because I don’t know him. I don’t understand why he even cares.
“Because you’re my fuckin’ mate and I’m not gonna let you do it.”
“You keep saying that, and I don’t understand it.” I knew about Zaid and Clara being mates, but they never explained how that works. I never asked either. I didn’t think it was any of my business to ask.
“The fates deemed it so. My beast felt it when I saw you at the clinic. I felt it, and though I might not like it, the fates have sealed us together. There’s no changing it.
Rejecting you ain’t something I can do, and you ain’t either.
We’re not gonna do that. We’re gonna figure this shit out.
Since we’ll be doing that, you aren’t gonna fuckin’ go and kill yourself. ”
“Did you follow me home?” I blurt out.
Why did I go and do that? I should’ve processed what he said, but I couldn’t. It was a lot to take in.
Rejecting him? I wouldn’t even know how.
How do I even process the fact he’s calling me his mate?
The fates?
What do they have to do with any of this?
Justice peers down at me, eyes locked with mine, and his face so close, my breath catches in my chest to keep from breathing.
“I followed you.” He nods. “Followed you and watched the house. Wasn’t gonna approach you.
Was just gonna let things be, but then I smelled your blood.
” He gives a sharp shake of his head, the side of his lip curling upward.
“Couldn’t hold back from you. Not after that shit.
Wasn’t gonna let my mate fuckin’ kill herself. ”
My head spins at what he says. I don’t even know this man . . . this shifter, and yet, I feel the pull toward him like I had when he’d been in his coyote form and hurt. I didn’t know what that meant or if I should think on it too much.
“Now we’ll get to the rest of it later. I want to know right now why you slit your wrists.”
I swallow and give him the answer he’s looking for. “Because I can’t stand to hear the voices of others anymore,” I whisper.
Justice blinks but doesn’t move. The rage in his eyes dims slightly, though not completely.
“You can’t control it?”
“No.” I shake my head slightly. “I’ve never been able to stop the voices of others. Not until you were at the clinic, then it dimmed them a bit when I was close to you.”
“What about now?”
“I can’t hear anything right now.”
It’s strange. I want to put it down to blood loss, but I’m not sure if I can. Not with him so close to me.
“Right.”
Justice jerks back, gently grabs my upper arm, and pulls me up right off the bed. He then pulls around it to the door.
“Wh . . . wha . . . what are you doing?”
“We’re gonna test a theory I’ve got,” he answers with a grunt.
I glance down at what I was wearing, feeling the air on my legs. I was only in a T-shirt. Not one of mine.
“Did you change my clothes?” I ask without thinking.
“Couldn’t leave you in your blood-soaked ones.” Justice shrugs and walks to the door, opens it, and tugs me behind him to the hallway, his fingers still gentle as he keeps a hold of me.
Justice lets go when we grow closer to the voices of others, and I stop, not wanting to get any closer. The peace was already abating me. I could hear them starting to seep into my mind. The thoughts filter in nothing like the raging ones before, but they are becoming too much.
“Come on,” Justice grumbles, his arm going around my shoulders. I tilt my head back, way back, to be able to look up at his face. There’s a big difference in our height.
“I . . . I . . . I can’t.” I try to dig my heels in, but it’s pointless when he forces me forward.
With his arm around my shoulder, we step into the main room, and all eyes come to us. Women, some of whom look at me with death glares. Men, a few with curious glances, others with anger in their eyes, the rest with concern.
It takes me a moment to realize I couldn’t hear the thoughts of those around me.
“Anna,” Clara cries out and comes forward.
Justice lets me go as Clara gets close, and I immediately find my mind filled with voices. Anger-filled voices. Concerned voices. Rage voices. Jealous voices. So many thoughts of those around, I take a step backward, my hands going to my head as I start to shake.
“Don’t,” Justice says, but I don’t know who he’s talking to.
His arm comes back around my shoulders, and he tugs me gently into his side, and the voices ease away to nothing.
I sigh in relief and sag into Justice’s side.
“Hmmm,” he murmurs under his breath and tightens his arm around me. “Interesting.”
“Are you okay?” Clara asks, eyes on me and filled with worry.
“I’m taking her back to my room,” Justice tells her, not letting me answer for myself.
Not that I could. I don’t think I could even speak if I wanted to. It’s so much in my mind right now. The voices were gone, but they haunted my mind.
“But—”
“She needs to rest,” Justice interrupts Clara from finishing what she was going to say. “You’ve seen her. That’s it for now. You’ll have to wait until she’s up for more.”
Turning me, Justice guides me back the way we came down the long hallway until he’s at his door.
When we’re back in his room, locked away from the rest, he lets me go and I stumble over to his bed, climb in, and curl into myself on my side.
“When I’m touching you, the voices, they’re gone, aren’t they?” Justice asks, coming around the bed to kneel so he could look me in the eye.
I nod rather than use my voice. The thought of speaking has my head hurting.
“The voices came strong when I wasn’t and had stepped away from you?”
I nod again.
“You’re gonna need to work on controlling the way you let them in,” he remarks and gets to his feet. “The tea you bought at the shop, what was it for?”
“To help keep my mind quiet,” I whisper.
“I’ll send someone to the house to get the tea you bought. You need to eat. Is there anything you don’t eat?”
His question swirls in my mind. It was sweet of him to ask.
“I . . . um . . . I typically eat anything, mostly sandwiches are what I eat. That and salads.”
Justice looks at me and nods. “Right. I’ll be back.”
He straightens and leaves the room, leaving me by myself. I let out a shuddered breath and wonder yet again what all of this means.
I don’t know what it means to be someone’s mate.
Why is it important to him that I not take my life?
As he said, I’m weak, so what difference does it make that I end it all?