Page 20 of To Keep A Wolf

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Unless, of course, the venom takes me first.

* * *

Sleep is a cloying, suffocating thing. I toss and turn, unaware of the passing of time. Someone enters my room at some point, but my fever makes it impossible to recognize who or what has joined me. Hands press against my cheeks. I can’t fight back, nor can I summon the energy to respond. A voice murmurs words that are garbled in my clogged ears. My wolf is nothing more than a ghost inside me, hiding from the poison.

My senses fail me, and then I’m sucked away from consciousness, lost to the storm.

When I wake again, my brain is foggy, and my eyes are swollen nearly shut.

I can’t remember how I got here. Or where here is.

All I register are screams.

The sounds are muffled through my closed door. The light through the window is gray—making it impossible to decipher time of day. Or which day I’ve woken to.

It could be dawn. Or it could be storm clouds.

All I know is someone is hurting.

I hope it’s Jadick.

Or one of his men.

Or all of them.

Another scream sounds, echoing in muted horror through the alpha house.

I try to sit up, but the pain drives me back again.

Gasping, I realize my eyes have flown wider as I sense movement beside me. Hands. Pressing against my shoulders. Cupping my cheeks. Lips. Trailing over my burning skin.

I try to scream, but the hand closes over my mouth.

Through heavy-lidded eyes, a face swims into view.

Recognition slams through me, but even this feels like a lie. A product of the poison.

It’s not him.

It can’t be.

He left me. No, I drove him away.

“It’s all right.” Levi’s words nearly break me. Not the fact that he says them when they’re so obviously a lie but the softness in his tone. The way he seems happy to see me. The fact that he came for me at all.

I break down, sobbing and nearly choking with the effort.

Levi makes it worse by reaching for me and pulling me into his arms.

He’s holding me.

After I rejected him.

This is the worst kind of dream, really.

I’d rather die than hallucinate this.

“She’s a fucking mess,” someone else says.

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