Chapter Ten
If only the moment you give up, your body does too.
But it doesn't. My body may have gone limp but the nerves keep intact.
The pain hasn't stopped. I thought accepting death would make this go quicker but it's not.
I'm still lying here in the middle of the night, on the damp ground, too injured to even raise a finger.
Even if I find the power to pick my body up, I have nowhere to go.
Even if I heal, what's next? Any future I thought I could have seems to be getting further away. I wonder who will find my body.
“Fuck me,” a strained voice chokes out. I can barely open my eyes but I manage to.
I don't know if I'm hallucinating from loss of blood but I see alpha Axel standing a few feet away.
The story of the alpha is a crazy one. Everyone steers clear of him.
But then again, no one ever sees him. To actually see him in person is stupefying.
He's never out. For years, the beta has basically run this pack.
Alpha Axel is still the alpha but he's practically just a story now since he went into hiding.
I stare into his eyes, begging him silently to please just put me out of this misery. He kneels down in a hurry and I close my eyes, expecting him to snap my neck. But his hands carefully grab my body to turn me over. Strangled noises come out of my mouth from being moved.
“You're going to be okay,” he says, making me think I'm hearing things. He's helping me? I don't understand. I'm the crossbred. But I guess it is the alpha's code to protect his pack. Maybe he doesn’t know I’m the crossbred. “I need to see if you're concussed. What's your name?”
“E...Elora.” It takes me a painful minute to just get my name out.
“What day is it?” His eyes bore into mine. Why can't he just put an end to this? “I need you to answer me.”
“T-The day my life end-ed,” I mutter.
The alpha's eyes widen. He honestly looks panicked. But why? The way everyone talks about him, I expected a black-hearted beast.
“I'm going to lift you up. Is anything broken?” he asks.
I barely nod. His hands slide under my body and he cradles me to his chest, me screaming out in anguish from the way my body folds in his arms. I let myself fade out as he carries me somewhere.
Time passes by, the darkness gripping onto me.
But then lightness shines down on me. I squint as I see I'm under the bright lights of a bathroom.
Alpha Axel lays me on a bench then moves around the bathroom.
I squint my eyes, needing the brightness and pain to end. My ribs feel like I'm being torn apart.
“I'm going to clean you up.”
I feel a wet cloth get softly pressed against my face. As much as I feel like my head is going to explode, I barely even grimace as he cleans my face. All I can think of is my ribs.
“I'm going to take off your clothes. A cold bath will help your body not to swell up,” he informs me. I feel him reach for my shirt but I find the energy to grab his hand.
“No,” I murmur. He's going to see the bruises. I've never taken my clothes off in front of anyone.
“Elora, I'm helping you,” he insists.
When he reaches for my shirt again, I don't fight him. He manoeuvres my body as softly as he can to take my shirt off.
“Oh my God.” He frowns deeply looking down at my body. He undoes my bra carefully then pulls my pants down each leg. “I'll leave your underwear on.”
At least I'm not exposed in front of him, not my most private body part anyway.
I'm thankful for that. Alpha Axel picks me back up and pushes a button on the wall, which makes the bench I was lying on mechanically move into the wall revealing a bathtub.
I don't know if I'm too dizzy or that fancy shit just happened.
He holds me up while he turns on the cold tap.
When the water is covering the bottom of the tub, he lowers me into it.
“Ahh,” I wince at the cold water. The water fills up until my body is submerged. I keep my eyes closed, trying to relax and let the water ease me.
“I need to know what happened but I know you're in too much pain to talk now.” Alpha Axel watches me, his eyes tense and worried.
After some time he lifts me out of the tub and actually gets a soft bathrobe on me.
He drops my underwear to the floor without looking or touching me too much, saying I shouldn't sleep in wet underwear.
He carries me to a bedroom and places me on a cushioned bed.
The bed cushions around me in a supportive way.
He pulls the blankets up to my abdomen then excuses himself for a quick moment.
He comes back with multiple ice packs. He places them on both sides of my torso and one on the front, as well as giving me one for my face.
“You need to take these pills.” He lifts my head up slightly and puts four pills in my mouth, then presses a glass to my lips and pours in some water. “I'm going to put the tv on for you and I'll stay in the recliner to make sure you're okay.”
Alpha Axel turns on the tv that's hanging on the wall and puts it on a low volume before turning off the light and sitting on the recliner in the corner of the room. I try to listen to the tv to take my mind off the pain.
“Alpha,” I croak out.
“Yes?”
“It hurts to breathe.”
“Oh.” Alpha Axel stands and comes to the bed. He looks worried. “Can you breathe?”
“Yeah... but it hurts.”
“I'm going to put a pillow under your legs to keep your body levelled. I want you to close your eyes and take slow deep breaths. Push through the pain and just count each breath,” he advises, putting a pillow under my legs.
I do what he says, along with pressing the ice pack to my face. Each breath is sharp and painful, but I stay calm and count.