Chapter 12 A Very Convenient Accident
A Very Convenient Accident
Cassie
By late afternoon, Sava decided I needed to stand.
I disagreed. My body disagreed more eloquently by making every muscle feel borrowed, every bone feel personally offended, and every inch of skin around the bite pulse with a dark little warning that movement had been invented by sadists.
Sava remained unmoved.
“You have been in bed too long,” she said, adjusting the cuff on my arm.
“I was bitten by a werewolf.”
“Yes.”
“I feel that should earn me at least some sympathy.”
“You have a concussion risk, venom response, blood loss, and an unstable mark trying to make decisions your body cannot support. I need to know whether you can stand before your muscles start bonding with the bed.”
“I hate how competent you sound.”
“That means you understand me.”
Ian stood near the window with his arms crossed, watching the exchange without entering it.
Ronan had left an hour earlier after issuing enough instructions to make the room feel crowded even in his absence.
Two guards waited outside the door. Lucien had come and gone twice with updates from the west side, all delivered in the bland language of luxury hospitality and hostage management.
My father was still in the lobby. Aunt Linda had insulted three members of Grant’s family.
Tessa was “resting,” which I understood to mean crying in a beautiful room while everyone brought her tea.
Grant had asked whether the rescheduled ceremony could be held in forty-eight hours if my condition stabilized.
Sava removed the blood pressure cuff. “Ian will help you.”
“No.”
Ian’s gaze came to mine. He didn’t look offended. He looked as if he had expected the refusal and agreed with it, which made refusing him less satisfying.
Sava said, “The mark responds to him.”
“The mark and I have different standards.”
“I am not asking whether you want him to carry you into a sunset. I am telling you that if you stand and your heart rate spikes, he may be the fastest way to keep you conscious.”
I looked back at Sava. “You could help me.”
“I will be here with the medicine. He will be here with the magic.”
“Love a divided care team.”
Sava’s eyes moved to Ian. “Ask her.”
Ian came away from the window, stopping beside the bed, far enough that I could say no without him already being in my space.
“May I help you stand?” he asked.
His voice was rough. Not from sleep, he hadn’t slept, I knew that without asking.
That was another thing I didn’t want to know.
I had become aware of his exhaustion. It sat behind my ribs, faint but present, like a bruise that belonged to someone else.
He didn’t yawn or complain. Ian looked carved out of the same hard restraint as before, but the bond or mark or whatever unwelcome thing lived in my shoulder had started translating him into sensations my body understood without my consent.
Tired. Guilty. Hungry, though not for food.
I ignored that last one with the maturity of a woman throwing a blanket over a fire and hoping it respected boundaries.
“You can help me stand,” I said.
His eyes held mine. “If you fall, I will catch you.”
“Please don’t say that in a voice.”
“In a voice?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” he said, and for once there was something almost dry beneath it. “I rarely do.”
I hated the tiny warmth that moved through me. It was not the mark. I refused to blame the mark for everything. Some mistakes were mine, and apparently one of them was finding restraint attractive when it came wrapped around a man who looked capable of tearing doors off hinges.
Sava moved the IV stand to the side. “Slowly.”
Ian offered his arm, not his hand. That mattered too. His hand felt intimate now because my body had turned it into medicine. His arm gave me something to use without pretending the touch was anything gentler than support.
I put my fingers around his forearm and heat moved through me immediately.
Not fever.
The difference startled me.
His skin was warm under the black sleeve.
Hard muscle. A steady pulse. Beneath that, a low vibration I would not have noticed yesterday.
Maybe not a vibration exactly. A hum. A presence?
The wolf under his skin, aware of my fingers, aware of my weakness, aware of the distance between my throat and his mouth.
I went still and Ian did too.
Sava looked from his face to mine. “Pain?”
“No,” I said.
The answer came too fast and her eyes narrowed.
“Cassie.”
“It isn’t pain.”
That was all I was willing to give her with Ian standing close enough to hear my pulse do something stupid.
His gaze dropped to my fingers on his arm. He knew. Of course he knew.
Wonderful. My body had become a public announcement system with medical monitoring.
“Can you stand?” Sava asked.
“Apparently we’re about to find out.”
The first attempt was embarrassing. I pushed up from the bed with my good arm, my feet finding the carpet, Ian steady beneath my hand. The room tipped sideways before I made it halfway upright. My vision grayed at the edges, pain rushing out from the bite, hot enough to hollow my lungs.
Ian’s other hand hovered near my waist but he didn’t touch. That restraint, right then, cost him so much I felt it. He wanted to grab me and pull me against him, brace my whole body with his, end the shaking by surrounding it. The wolf wanted that in simpler terms. Hold. Warm. Protect.
“Breathe,” Sava said.
“I am breathing.”
“You are arguing. Try breathing.”
I drew in air through my nose and the room steadied by degrees. Ian’s arm flexed under my grip, but he still didn’t touch me with his other hand.
“You can put a hand on my back,” I said.
His eyes came to mine.
“Upper back,” I added. “Uninjured side. Don’t make it weird.”
“I won’t.”
His palm settled between my shoulder blade and spine, careful, broad, warm.
The mark quieted at once. So did something else. For one thin second, the room was only that hand and the place where pain loosened enough for me to stand inside my own body again.
I closed my eyes and I heard Ian stop breathing.
“Don’t make that face,” I said.
“I don’t know what face I am making?”
“Religious crisis.”
His mouth tightened.
Sava checked the monitor. “Heart rate is high but tolerable. Mark is stable.”
“How romantic.”
Sava ignored me. “Three steps.”
“Toward what?”
“The chair.”
I looked at the chair five feet away. “Ambitious.”
Ian’s hand stayed steady at my back. “I have you.”
The words were too soft, and I looked up at him. He seemed to realize it the same second I did.
“I mean physically,” he said.
“I know what you meant.”
The problem was that my body believed both meanings.
I took one step, my legs trembling. Ian adjusted with me, not guiding or pushing, simply making himself a structure I could use, which was something sadly unfamiliar to me.
Grant had always helped in ways that made help into debt.
A jacket over my shoulders when he wanted people to see his care. Advice sharpened into correction.
Ian didn’t perform support. He became it and waited to see whether I would accept the next inch.
I took the second step. Then the third. By the time I reached the chair, sweat had gathered at the back of my neck and my breath had gone thin. Ian’s palm lifted from my back the moment I was seated, before I had to ask.
Another point for the werewolf.
Very irritating.
Sava looked almost satisfied. “Good.”
“I strongly disagree.”
“You didn’t faint.” She pointed out.
“Again, low standards.”
“You are alive after a lethal mark, so yes.”
Ian lowered himself to a crouch in front of the chair and I stiffened.
He saw it immediately and stopped moving. “Your foot.”
I glanced down. There was a line of dried blood along the arch from where I had cut myself running after Henry. I had forgotten about it under the more dramatic injuries, which seemed unfair. My foot had suffered too and it deserved acknowledgment.
Sava followed my gaze. “I missed that.”
“Forgiven. You were distracted by the giant bite.”
“I still dislike missing things.”
Ian looked up at me. “May I?”
The question should have felt excessive, but from him it didn’t. I leaned back in the chair, exhausted and too warm, while my heart tried to decide whether to be furious, frightened, or something even less useful.
“My foot?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You want permission to look at my foot?”
His eyes didn’t leave mine as he knelt before me. “I want permission to touch it.”
That went through me in a way no medical crisis justified.
For half a second, the room shifted. Not physically. Sensory. The air held salt from the sea beyond the sealed windows, antiseptic from Sava’s bag, Ian’s skin, something darker under it, forest and smoke and heat. His thumb, if he touched me, would be careful. I knew that before it happened.
I knew it.
The certainty scared me.
“Fine,” I said, too carelessly. “It’s a foot, not state secrets.”
Sava’s eyes flicked up. She knew exactly what I was doing.
Ian didn’t smile. He turned his attention to my ankle and lifted my foot with both hands as if it mattered, one hand on my ankle, the other gently holding the back of my calf. His palms were rough. Warm. Large enough that my foot looked smaller than I appreciated.
He examined the cut with a focus that should have been absurd for a scrape. My body didn’t find it absurd though. My body found it quieting, which was much worse.
“The gravel did this,” he said.
“Technically Henry did this. The gravel was an accomplice.”
His thumb moved lightly along the uninjured skin near my heel, steadying me while he looked at the cut.
Heat moved up my leg and I looked at the ceiling.
Sava cleared her throat in a way that didn’t sound medical and Ian’s hands stopped.
He knew.
Excellent. Wonderful. If the room would like to form a committee about my circulation, we could invite Ronan and make it legally binding.
“It needs cleaning,” Ian said.