Chapter 6 The Problem with Surviving
The Problem with Surviving
Cassie
Pain had a schedule.
I learned that sometime after midnight, though midnight was a guess based on the number of times I woke, wished I had not, and found the same cold room waiting for me.
The first wave lived in my shoulder. That one was obvious. Teeth had gone into me. A giant wolf had put his mouth on my body and torn through skin, muscle, and whatever reasonable ideas I had left about the world. The bite burned with a heat so bright and vicious it felt intelligent.
The second wave moved under my skin. That one was worse.
It crawled from the wound in thin black lines, branching across my chest and down my arm, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that seemed increasingly offended to still be working.
Every time the lines spread, my body seized against the table and a sound came out of me I would have been embarrassed by if I had enough room left in my head for pride.
The third wave was Ian.
He sat beside the bed because every time he moved too far away, the first two waves got ambitious. I hated knowing that. I hated him being necessary. I hated the way my body calmed under his hand before my mind could remember to be afraid of it.
At some point, I woke with his palm pressed against my uninjured shoulder, warm and heavy through the thin hospital blanket someone had tucked around me. His fingers were still. He didn’t stroke me. He didn’t murmur comfort. He barely seemed to breathe.
He looked carved there. Bare torso, dark hair, blood washed from his mouth but not from the memory of it. Someone had given him loose black pants, which didn’t do a thing to make him look less dangerous. If anything, it made the rest of the room seem badly prepared.
His gaze was on the monitor beside me. The monitor beeped with a stubborn little rhythm that felt personal.
I swallowed badly, my throat was raw.
“Are you waiting for it to stop?”
His eyes cut to mine. Gold flashed there and vanished so quickly I almost convinced myself it was fever.
Almost.
“No.”
His voice was low enough that I almost felt it before I fully heard it.
Liar, I thought, because I was not dead yet and therefore still myself.
I tried to lift my hand to my shoulder. Pain cut through me so fast the ceiling went white.
Ian’s hand shifted, pressing me down without force. “Do not touch the bite.”
I laughed and it came out as something scraped and ugly. “That feels optimistic.”
His jaw tightened.
Good.
I wanted him uncomfortable. I wanted everyone uncomfortable. I wanted discomfort passed around the room with hors d’oeuvres and signature cocktails, since my family had been so fond of making me hold it alone.
“Where’s Henry?” I asked.
“Sleeping.”
“Dead?”
He paused. “No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was deciding whether to tell you he bit a doctor.”
My eyes closed for half a second. “Good boy.”
A faint sound came from the corner. Henry was there, curled inside a ridiculous luxury towel that had probably never expected this kind of assignment.
His pink leash lay coiled beside him. His floral collar was crooked.
He looked exhausted and offended, which meant at least one of us was handling the night with consistency.
The relief made me dizzy. Or maybe everything made me dizzy?
I opened my eyes again. Ian was watching me now.
That was worse than the monitor. Worse than the pain, almost. There was too much focus in him.
Too much control wrapped around something that wanted out.
Men had looked at me with want before. Men had looked at me with anger.
Grant had looked at me with both often enough that I knew the difference.
Ian looked at me as if moving one inch closer required a moral argument with his own bones.
I remembered the wolf above me. His breath at my throat. The hesitation before the bite and the pain after. My body knew it too. The memory ran through me and the black lines under my skin pulsed.
Ian’s hand tightened once on the blanket.
I stared at him. “What did you do to me?”
“A mate mark.”
I blinked at him. I had expected many insane answers. Hallucinogen. Animal attack. Cult sacrifice gone wrong. Wealthy people with bad boundaries. Even rabies had made a brief, fevered appearance somewhere in my list.
Mate mark didn’t help.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “A what?”
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “A bite carrying wolf magic.”
“Wolf…magic.”
“Yes.”
I stared at the ceiling because looking at him while he said those words made them worse. “Right. Of course. Naturally. Why would it be a normal bite from a normal giant wolf? That would be tacky.”
He said nothing.
I looked back at him. “You understand how you sound.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re sticking with wolf magic.”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
A tremor moved through my body. My teeth clicked together before I could stop them. Ian’s hand shifted again, and the heat of him settled deeper into my nerves. The tremor eased.
I hated that too.
“You’re doing that,” I said.
“The mark reacts to me.”
“The mark can go to hell.”
His mouth tightened. “I agree.”
That startled me enough to focus. I searched his face for something that made sense. Cruelty would have helped. Satisfaction. Possessiveness. A smirk. Some sign that the monster had a familiar shape.
There was none. He looked like a man sitting beside a house he had burned down with people still inside.
“Am I dying?” I asked.
For the first time, Ian looked away.
That was answer enough.
A door opened across the room. The doctor came in first. Small, gray-haired, brisk in a dark sweater and surgical gloves. The kind of woman who had long ago stopped performing bedside warmth and replaced it with competence. Behind her came Ian’s brother.
I knew he was Ian’s brother before anyone said it.
Same dark hair. Same size in the shoulders.
Same air of being better armed than he looked.
But where Ian felt almost animal in his stillness, this man felt structured.
Measured. A threat that had read the room, taken notes, and purchased the building.
His eyes moved over me as if I were a crisis with a pulse.
“Cassie Morgan,” he said.
“That depends who’s asking.”
“I am Ronan Holloway.”
“Are you the cult leader, the resort owner, or the person in charge of whatever lawsuit I’m having?”
“I own the resort.”
“Of course you do.”
“And I lead the pack.”
I closed my eyes. “I miss ten minutes ago, when I only had wolf magic.”
The doctor came to my side and checked the monitor. “Her fever is climbing.”
Ian’s hand remained on my shoulder. “She was awake.”
“I’m in the room,” I said.
“Yes,” the doctor said without looking at me. “That is the current problem.”
I would have liked her under other circumstances.
Ronan stood at the foot of the bed. “Dr. Sava believes you understand enough to answer questions.”
“I understand that your brother bit me, your resort is apparently a kennel with marble floors, and nobody has called an ambulance.”
“An ambulance cannot help you.”
“Very convenient for the resort owner.”
His eyes remained steady. “Very dangerous for you.”
Ian’s hand flexed.
Ronan noticed, but his gaze stayed on me. “You entered a restricted private area during a ceremony.”
“I chased a dog through a gate that was not locked.”
“The gate was not your problem. The hedge was.”
“I’ll add that to my apology notes if I survive the night.”
“Most of my people do not expect you to.”
There it was. Plain. Cold. Dropped between us with no cushion.
The monitor kept beeping.
I stared at him. “Most of your people.”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
Ronan’s expression didn’t change. “I have never seen a human survive a true mark.”
My mouth had gone dry. “That was not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one.”
I swallowed and wished I had not. “And the people outside?”
Ian spoke before he could. “They will not touch you.”
I looked at Ian. “That was also not an answer.”
No one said anything. The fever moved again, crawling up the side of my throat. Black sparks appeared at the edges of my vision. I tried to sit up, and Ian’s hand held me down.
This time, I shoved weakly at his wrist. “Don’t.”
He removed his hand at once and pain slammed into me. My spine arched. The room tilted. Something tore through my chest in hot, branching lines, and I heard myself make a sound that belonged to an animal in a trap. Ian’s hand came back and the pain dropped from unbearable to merely vicious.
I lay there gasping, humiliated by the relief.
“Do not,” I said through my teeth, “make me need the man who did this.”
Ian went still. The words hit him. I saw it. Good. I wanted them to.
“The mark has tied your body to his,” Ronan said. “For now, proximity may be the only reason you are conscious.”
“I am thrilled for proximity.”
“You should be unconscious again soon.”
“You give terrible pep talks.”
Dr. Sava injected something into the IV taped to my arm. I had no memory of her putting it there, which was just one more piece of my body everyone else had apparently voted on.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Something for the seizures.”
“I’m having seizures?!”
“You were.”
“Was anyone going to mention that?”
“If you are alive tomorrow, I will make you a list.”
I looked at Ronan. “What happens if I’m not alive tomorrow?”
His gaze didn’t soften. “Then we handle the human side with the cleanest possible story.”
The room went very quiet. For one second, I could not even feel the pain.
“The cleanest possible story,” I repeated.
“Accident near the restricted grounds. Internal injuries. A fall. Liability. Grief. Compensation.”
Ian made a sound low in his chest and the doctor’s eyes flicked to him.
Ronan’s didn’t.
I stared at the man at the foot of my bed and understood him better than I wanted to. He didn’t hate me. He didn’t pity me either. I was not a woman to him. I was exposure. Risk. A body that had fallen into the gears of whatever impossible machine kept his world hidden.
Ian was the one sitting beside me with horror under his skin. Ronan was the one deciding where the blood would be easiest to mop.
“You’ve thought this through,” I said.