Would it take me weeks again?
As though someone were carving out my vertebrae, blinding pain vaulted up my spine. I arched backward and gritted my teeth. Pointy canines dug into my lower lip and split the soft tissue. Blood dribbled down my chin. As my shoulder blades popped out of their joints, I bit back a scream and fell forward, landing hard on my palms and knees
The seam on my wrist burst open and blood gushed out. A crimson river trickled in the grout between the stones.
“It’s going to be okay, Ness. I’m right here. It’s going to be okay…” Everest’s voice sounded like it was coming from another room. He crouched beside me, his palm cool against my scorching neck.
The blood from my lip slopped onto the slate flooring and mixed with the blood from my wrist. I sagged and blinked. Had it been this painful six years ago, or was the pain augmented because of the years I’d deprived my body of its transformation?
Tears dripped off my cheeks and tangled with the blood. “I can’t. It hurts…” My voice was more howl than words.
My mind turned hazy with ache, and my elbows gave in. I yelped and flailed forward, smacking my cheek against the cold stone floor. The blow felt as though it had shattered the cartilage in my face, but perhaps it was the wolf within that was shattering my face, just as it was altering my bone structure, dislocating my joints, and hardening my sinews. I closed my eyes and willed it to stop.
Begged for it to stop.
And it did.
THERE WAS an incessant jangling inside my skull. Ugh. I pressed a pillow over my face and squashed my lids tight, my lips tighter. Searing pain radiated over my mouth. I pitched the pillow off my head and sat up so fast my bedroom swam before my eyes. I touched my throbbing lower lip. My fingers came away red, wet with blood.
It hadn’t been a dream.
The night poured back through me. I shivered, even though I was still fully clothed. Everest-I assumed it had been him-had put me to bed, but he hadn’t stripped my clothes off. The seams of my jeans dug into my skin, and the wire frame of my bra felt engraved into my ribs.
I peeled myself from the warm bed and padded to my bathroom. I flicked on the lights, smelling blood before spotting it. Balled pink tissues littered my wastebasket. I moved to the sink and peered at my hellish reflection. My bottom lip was split and swollen, my right cheek was bruised, and my wrist, although no longer torn, sported a purple hematoma.
I turned the shower on and stripped. Red lines streaked my skin, but the imprint of clothing would vanish quickly, unlike my tattered flesh. That would take a couple more hours to heal-if I was lucky. The worst part was that, even if I managed to camouflage the bruise on my cheek, there was nothing I could do about my lip. Everyone would see it. If they learned I’d bit my own self, they’d realize I had no control over my wolf form, which could disqualify me from the Alpha contest.
I returned to my bedroom, grabbed my cell phone that was snoozing, turned off the alarm, and typed a message to Everest. I passed out because I was sick, and my lip split from the fall. Come see me in the kitchen when you wake up. I sent that off, then added: Thank you for staying with me. And for putting me to bed.
And then I got ready for the long day ahead, feeling like my body had been rubbed against the metal ridges of the washboard nailed to the wall of the laundry room, a memento of early life in Colorado.
The second I entered the kitchen, Evelyn gasped. “Dios mio!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth and set down her whisk. The runny milk and eggs dripped onto the scratched but gleaming stainless-steel island.
“Who did that to you?” Even though we were alone in the kitchen and probably the only ones awake in the entire inn, her voice was quiet.
I didn’t move my gaze off the trickling whisk. “I fell.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, irises darkened by skepticism. “Against whose fist did you fall?”
“No one. I promise. I was sick, and you know how I get when I’m sick…I pass out.” Which was true. I always passed out when I threw up.
She walked around the island and caught my chin between her fingers, turning my face left and right, inspecting my cheek. I bit down on my lip before remembering the tiny stab wound. I released my lip instantly, then removed my face from her hands.
Her thin, penciled-in eyebrows drew together when her gaze moved over the rest of my body and spotted bruises on my elbows and wrist. “The truth, querida.”
The truth… Could I tell her the truth, or would she run back to L. A. screaming? Or worse, would she stop loving me for who I was? Why hadn’t these things occurred to me before I made her leave everything behind for me? Did I think I could hide my dual nature from her forever?
“It is why you left Boulder in the first place?” she asked. “Someone was hurting you?”
“No one was hurting me.” Had Mom told her about Heath? “But it’s the reason we left Boulder.”
Her eyes glittered furiously as she took in my skin that carried the same camo pattern as the tank underneath my gray uniform. I should probably have gone with long sleeves.
I sighed. “Can you promise not to hate me once I tell you the whole truth?”
She pressed a hand against her chest, over her heart. “Hate you? It is too late for me to hate you.”
I sank onto the stepladder Evelyn used as a chair when her knees ached and hung my head in my hands. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“I would never think such a thing.”
“Yes, you will. And you’ll leave.” I’d told Liam nothing could hurt me anymore, but that wasn’t true. Evelyn shunning me, leaving me, that would cause me tremendous pain.
“I will never leave you.”
“You swear?” I tipped my head back to stare into her gentle eyes.
“On the Lord above, I swear it. Now tell me.”
“I’m a”-I gulped-“a…werewolf.” My voice was quieter than the fan whirring over the stove.
Evelyn’s rouged mouth gaped. Closed. Gaped again. She reminded me of the trouts Dad and I used to catch fly fishing in the mountain streams. “Un lobo?”
She’d taught me enough Spanish for me to understand lobo: wolf. Even to me, who’d grown up with the knowledge that such fantastical creatures existed, it sounded outrageous.
With shaky fingers, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Yes.”
She didn’t back away from me, didn’t run screaming, but confusion rippled over her features.
“How hard did you bump your head?”
“I’ll show you.” Concentrating hard, I lifted my unsteady hands and willed my nails to turn into claws. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. I tucked both my hands underneath my thighs. “I used to be able to change at will, but being away-”
“Oh, sweetheart…”
“Evelyn, please. I’m telling you the truth.”
She shot me a look filled with such pain and sympathy that I grabbed the phone from my tunic pocket and dialed Everest.
After a couple rings, his sleepy voice came on. “Hello?”
“Come to the kitchen now,” I said.
“Ness, it’s not even six.”
“Please.”