Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound of gentle rapping on wood drifted through the darkness of sleep, drawing me up toward the light of consciousness. Even though the sensation was soft, I found myself fighting against it.
I didn’t want to wake up. I was happy where I was—perfectly warm and cozy, wrapped in a cloak of comfort I’d never felt before.
So this was what it was like to feel rested and content. It wasn’t a sensation I was used to.
My nights usually ended with me being violently yanked out of the darkest corners of sleep. Even on the rare nights that I was able to drift off again, it was always into a shallow, choppy kind of rest, where the slightest sound or movement would instantly pull me back into the waking world.
But this? This kind of sleep felt like heaven, and I wanted to stay as long as possible.
“Go away,” I mumbled, refusing to open my eyes or move anything other than my lips.
Whoever was at the door either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because a second later came another round of taps—these ones a little louder.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I said, go away,” I snapped, still unwilling to open my eyes. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any!”
“Hannah?” A voice carried through from the other side of the door. A vaguely familiar feminine voice. “Tauren? Are you awake in there?”
My pillow rumbled beneath my head. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it even chuckled.
Well, that was weird.
Not as strange as when, a second later, it spoke.
“Yes, Calindra,” it said, its echo rolling and reverberating underneath my ear. “You can come in.”
What the hell?
My eyes snapped open at the same time as the door. Early morning light poured in, letting me see that I hadn’t been sleeping on a pillow after all. Sometime before dawn, I had rolled myself clear across the mattress and tucked myself against Tauren, using his bicep as a pillow.
And I hadn’t stopped there. My arm was draped across his chest, my bent knee propped up on his thigh. Hell, my whole body was molded flush against his side, clinging to his body like a life raft in a storm.
“Well, good morning, you two,” I heard Calindra’s voice say from just inside the doorway before I could come to my senses and pull myself back. “It looks like you both had a restful night.”
After another couple of long blinks, I was finally able to bounce up and out of bed, leaving Tauren still lounging there like some kind of drowsy Casanova.
All it took was one look at Calindra, and my cheeks caught fire. Even though both Tauren and I were adults and fully clothed, it still felt like we were teenagers caught messing around in bed.
I was mortified.
“It-it’s not what it looks like,” I sputtered.
Tauren and Calindra shared a confused look. “It looked like you were sleeping,” she said.
“Well…yeah.” Okay, so maybe it was exactly how it looked. But I still didn’t want anyone getting any ideas that I’d curled up against him like a cat on purpose. “But I must have been really, really tired.”
After another baffled expression from the healer, Tauren shrugged. “Apparently, kirre have strange views about sex.”
“We do not!” I insisted while pressing my back against the wall and trying to put as much distance between myself and Tauren as possible after being the one who practically begged him to sleep next to me. “And we did not have sex. I just want to make that perfectly clear.”
Tauren slowly sat up. “See?”
“It’s all right, Hannah,” Calindra assured me. “I don’t care about that. I’m just here to see how your injuries are healing.”
“Oh.” I forced my shoulders to drop a few inches. “Of course.”
The healer pulled another jar of herbs from the bag on her shoulder and placed it on the table. “Though I can already tell that your range of motion has significantly improved since yesterday. How is your pain?”
Pain?
Strangely, I’d forgotten all about it.
I quickly did a mental sweep through my body, searching for the throbs and aches I knew had to be hiding in all my bruised and broken places.
But there was nothing.
No stabs, or twinges, or stings.
Maybe it was the sleep or the herbs, but I actually felt good. Better than I had in a long time.
“I’m fine,” I told her.
The same expression of unease I’d spotted yesterday flashed over Calindra’s face again. “No soreness at all?”
I shook my head.
After a second, the healer instructed me to sit on the edge of the bed. I pulled off my shirt, and she unwrapped the bandage, and then we all stared in amazement at what we saw.
Or rather, what we didn’t see.
Twenty-four hours ago, my torso had been a patchwork of cuts and bruises, some of them so dark I’d feared they would never heal.
But now, it was hard to believe they were ever there.
The only proof that I’d been hit by a car, thrown into a wall, and manhandled by a trained soldier was a few swatches of pale yellow and pink dotting the edges of my ribcage.
All the cuts were healed. All the abrasions covered with perfect smooth skin. No scabs. No scars. No lingering swelling of any kind.
It was nothing short of amazing.
I looked over at Tauren. “I thought you said these herbs didn’t work well on kirre.”
“They don’t,” Calindra answered for him. “At least, they never have before. Here, lie back.”
She eased me down so she could drum her fingers against my ribs again, this time pressing her ear right against my chest to listen.
“Does this hurt?” she asked, tapping harder.
“No,” I answered honestly.
Calindra tested every rib from my shoulders down. Then she helped me back up and listened as I took in one deep breath after another—so many times that I started to feel lightheaded and asked to stop.
“Of course,” she said, her expression pensive as I pulled the T-shirt from Deke’s back over my head.
“How is she?” Tauren asked.
“Good,” Calindra answered. “Extraordinarily so. She’s almost completely healed.”
It should have been good news—great, even—but just as with Calindra, the rapid healing left me uneasy.
“Maybe I’m just unusual for a kirre and really sensitive to your medicine.”
“I don’t know,” Calindra said. Her gaze had turned thoughtful and far away, as if she was running through a thousand other, more likely explanations in her mind. “This rate of recovery is too fast even for a ferus. It’s unheard of.”
“What do you think is happening?” Tauren asked, pushing himself up from the other side of the bed.
“I honestly have no idea,” the healer answered. “If we want answers, I’ll need to look inside the ancient texts. But that means asking the Lore Keeper for access. And the moment I do that Drogan will realize that Hannah has finally arrived.”
“Drogan?” I asked.
“My father,” Tauren explained.
A heavy kind of silence floated down over the room, covering us all like a death shroud, and causing my stomach to twist into dreadful knots.
“What do you think he’ll do once he knows?” I finally dared to ask.
“It’s hard to say,” Calindra hedged.
But Tauren wasn’t the kind to dodge difficult questions.
“No, it’s not,” he contradicted the healer before locking eyes with me. “My father will bring his most loyal alphas, demanding that I denounce you and cast you out of the Wilds or face the consequences. I will refuse, and the inevitable battle will begin.”
My stomach twisted even tighter. Suddenly, it wasn’t just Tauren’s father I had to worry about; it was his father’s loyal alphas. “I’m sorry, exactly how many alphas are we talking about?”
“Ten,” Tauren answered. “Maybe twelve.”
Oh, fuck that.
“A dozen versus one?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “That’s not a battle, Tauren. That’s a bloodbath.”
“You’ve never seen a ferus alpha fight for his mate,” Tauren shook his head, dismissing my concern. “Even if my father brought twice that amount, they still wouldn’t win.”
“Oh my God!” I shouted, more frightened than exasperated.
I’d already seen the carnage one alpha could cause.
There was no way I was going to stick around to watch it magnified twelvefold.
“Enough with the chest pounding! This is ridiculous. No one has to get hurt. If you take me back to the Wall today, I can be gone before anyone knows I’m here. ”
“That’s not going to happen, Hannah,” Tauren snapped. “You belong with me.”
No, I belonged alive and breathing in a cramped apartment I could barely afford in the heart of an unfeeling city. But Tauren could never understand that.
And, though the chances were good Calindra couldn’t either, she was the only other person in the room I could appeal to. I shot her my most pitiful look.
“Help me out here,” I said. “Explain that if any of us are going to survive this, then I need to leave.”
At least the healer respected me enough to consider the idea—or at the very least, give the appearance of thinking about it—before shaking her head.
“I agree with Tauren,” she said. “At least until we know what’s happening with you, you should stay in the Wilds. Tauren is perfectly capable of keeping you safe while you hide from the pack.”
“No hiding,” Tauren declared bitterly, shaking his head. “I refuse to live even a second cowering in fear, and I won’t subject my mate to the anxiety of waiting for the fight to come to our door. So today, while you visit the Lore Keeper, Calindra, I will take my Hannah to my father’s house.”
“Okay, am I the only one who thinks that sounds like a terrible plan?” It seemed pretty damned obvious to me.
“It does sound a little bold,” Calindra admitted. “Perhaps we should try something more restrained. More calculated.”
But Tauren just shook his head, waving off our concerns.
“We knew that one day the pack was going to have to come to terms with my mate, Calindra. This is that day.”
“I’m not suggesting surrender or even retreat,” Calindra said. “I’m only advocating for a more cautious approach.”
“No. We need to lead the charge,” Tauren insisted.
“If the confrontation happens out here on the fringes of our land, where no one can see, my father will be able to twist the story however he likes when he returns to the pack. But if I go to him, he’ll be forced to defend his ridiculous position to keep the majority of his people in solitude while a kirre mate is standing right in front of them. ”
“Stop talking about me like a prop,” I broke in. “I am not anybody’s mate.”
Tauren shot me a searing look. “Your body knows the truth. Why do you think you think it draped itself over me the second you were unconscious?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I threw my hands up in frustration. “My head once rolled onto a stranger’s shoulder when I fell asleep on an airplane. Does that mean I’m bound to him for eternity as well?”
“That depends.” He sneered. “Did you wake up crying out his name like you do with mine every night?”
Well, that was low.
I crossed my arms and shot him my angriest glare. He didn’t even blink. Across the room, Calindra stifled a laugh.
Well, at least someone was enjoying the shitshow.
“You already sound like an old mated couple to me,” she gently joked, her light voice easing some of the tension in the room.
“Don’t you have an appointment with the Lore Keeper to get to?” Tauren grumbled.
“Later,” she said. “For your idea to work, we’ll need to be both strategic and patient.
The new moon bonfire is tonight. The whole pack will be there.
It’s the perfect opportunity for you to introduce Hannah to your father in front of the largest audience.
And the distraction will allow me to corner the Lore Keeper without interruption. ”
I watched as the muscles under Tauren’s beard bunched and tightened. His lips pursed. His brow wrinkled. It was clear that patience wasn’t a quality he was used to practicing.
But there was no denying the wisdom of Calindra’s plan.
Not even I could find too many faults with it.
After all, in my dream, I died during a full moon. Not a new one. So even though the idea of marching straight into a whole pack of ferus made my knees weak and my stomach swirl, I figured I had a pretty good chance of making it back alive.
“Agreed.” Tauren nodded, even though he didn’t exactly look happy about it.
“Good,” Calindra said. “Then we’ll meet at the gathering after sundown. That will also give Kyre a chance to spread the word among our allies.”
“Kyre?” I asked.
“My son,” Calindra answered.
“And a close friend,” Tauren added.
So Tauren had friends and allies? At least that made things sound a little less hopeless.
“Fine. Count me in,” I relented. “But on one condition. If one drop of blood is spilled over this bullshit tonight, I am out of here. I’ll find a way to drag myself over the Wall if I have to, but I am not sticking around to watch anyone else die.”
Tauren grunted in disbelief, but Calindra’s eyes widened. Her expression brightened as if she suddenly saw me in a new light.
“And here I’d always thought the kirre didn’t have claws.”