Page 39 of Happily Undead in Dark River

“Will you attack?” Kelly asked although Ghost was right beside me. I didn’t take it personally; it was smart.

“No. Help him!”

Kelly rushed over, and I could hear her whispering to herself, or maybe to Ghost. “He seems to have a bang on his head, like Tex, and a broken shoulder. But I think you protected him from the majority of the blast. Raine, your back is all cut up, your arm is broken. You’re bleeding a lot. I can see the bone sticking out the side. How do we help you?”

I reached over and ran my hand up my forearm, feeling the bone jutting from the skin. Actually, now someone had pointed it out, that did kind of hurt. “Judge,” I whispered. Then I passed out.

When I awoke,it was dark. I couldn’t see anything, and I sat up, reaching for my eyes. I felt the bandages, and I sighed with momentary relief. I inhaled deeply and a familiar scent wrapped around me.

“Judge,” I said, my voice broken.

Judge was there, his arms wrapping around me. “Ah, Rainey Day, what have you gotten yourself into now?”

I cried. Then I cried a bit more until I’d soaked the bandages around my eyes. “Brody? Tex?”

He squeezed me tighter to his chest. “They’re fine, Sugar. The Pup was out talking to Ghost, though the big white guy isn’t much of a conversationalist if your blind, so I imagine it was a one-sided conversation,” he joked, and my lips tried to curl into a smile. “Anyway, he got the awning of Brody’s porch in the back of his head. You’d cleaned that up before you passed out. He’s here, one bed over, under observation. He refused to leave the room.” I could hear the exasperation in his voice, but also the fear. Love.

“Brody?”

Judge sighed. “He was a little more banged up. Broken shoulder where a beam fell on it, and a broken ankle. But other than that, he got a rough bang to the head as well, they think where your head hit his under the impact. He’s awake, and he is a bear right now. And I don’t mean he’s angry. I mean he is literally a bear. He’s lying on the floor and roars at any of his Pack members who enter your room unless it’s Kelly or Ghost.” He let out a shuddering breath “You had it the worst, Rainey Day. Your back was completely shredded from the debris of the roof. You were out, and the back of your head was basically split open like an egg. Your arm was smashed, and I’ve had to put it in an old fashioned cast like you are human, because that’s how long it will take to heal properly, even with vampire healing.”

He gripped me so tight I was glad I didn’t have to breathe. Obviously, my back had healed completely, because his arms banded around my ribs didn’t hurt at all. “Where are we?” I asked, looking around the room that looked more like a house than a hospital.

“The Matriarch’s house. She insisted you all be brought here when concerns were raised about how you would react when you woke in a hospital filled with ‘vulnerable Pack members’.” He said the last part a tad scathingly.

The was a grumble, which wasn’t even remotely human. In fact, it was very bear-like. “Lucky I like my men big and hairy, right?”

As I spoke, the tickle of magic ran across my chest and from what I could feel, a very naked Brody was draped across my body

“Rainey,” he whispered, kissing my face with a million little kisses, whispering things I couldn’t understand. “God. I’m so sorry.”

I double-checked my body. In the movies, that’s what people said when you’d been horribly disfigured for life. But both legs were there, and my fingers still wiggled inside the cast.

“Is my face scarred or something?” I touched my face, rubbing them over my forehead to my scalp. I pulled my fingers away like they were scorched. I felt the rough stubble of my head. “You shaved my head?” I gasped.

Judge let out a sad sound “I was a little worried your brains were going to leak out the open fracture on the back of your head. The beam that broke Brody’s shoulder had bounced off your skull first. You’re lucky you didn’t die instantly, vampire or not. I wired your skull closed, stitched up the contusion on your scalp. We don’t have to worry about infection, thankfully.”

I ran my fingers over the back of my head, feeling the rough, puckered flesh of an old scar. We healed quickly, so the fact there was a scar was a testament to the fact I’d almost had my head squashed like a grape. “The scar will fade in a couple of weeks,” Judge consoled. I wasn’t worried. My hair wouldn’t grow back for a decade. That was more of a problem, but still not as bad as being dead. As Brody or Tex being dead.

“It’s okay. I’m okay, and you are okay, and Tex…”

There was a shuffling sound from the other side of the room, then everyone was shifting around as Tex climbed into the bed beside me.

“What did we say about the almost dying thing, Mika?” he whispered.

I kissed his face, not sure where though, and kept kissing until I was convinced he was okay. “I seem to just piss people off. I don’t mean to keep almost dying.”

Brody’s low growl echoed off the walls, and it was so menacing it sent a cold chill down my spine. “Someone from within my Pack did this. My. Pack. They almost killed us both. They will pay.”

I didn’t know what to say to appease his torment, because I wanted them to pay too. I wanted whoever did this to hurt in the worst possible way. They’d almost killed my Mates, and for that, they wouldn’t be breathing much longer. I couldn’t work out what part of my weird, fractured psyche wanted this bloody revenge, but it didn’t matter, because every part of me was in agreement.

I wrapped my entire body around Tex, my nose pressed against his sternum, just breathing in his scent, feeling his heartbeat against my nose. Then I remembered something. Gah, I was so annoyed at the blindfold covering my eyes. I pulled at it, and when no one moved to stop me, I figured it had to be okay. And there was nothing more beautiful than seeing the faces of my Mates, no matter how haggard they looked in their concern. Brody especially looked like shit, deep bags under his eyes, his hair mussed. He looked like a dead man.

Shit. “Ghost! Ghost pulled me from the building. Is he okay? He was bleeding.”

As if I’d summoned the man himself, he appeared from the darkness. Honestly, the guy was like a beacon of whiteness, so how he managed to hide in plain sight was nothing short of magic. He stood under the light, and I swear he looked a little like a Fallen Angel at that moment. But he seemed completely fine. Whole.

“Thank you.”

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