Page 9 of Fanged Secrets
I grasped at a jar of ointment, something that would hopefully nullify the poison, but it slipped from my hand and I swore. Before I could reach for it again, Amara had picked it up, kneeling beside me and inspecting the label with a furrowed brow.
“I need that.” I tried to swipe it from her but she smacked my hand away, gesturing for me to lie back. I closed my fingers into a fist, slamming it down on a cushion instead. “I can do it myself!”
Amara rolled her eyes and cracked open the lid of the jar, setting it aside and leaning over my lap to inspect the wound. I froze when her hand rested on my knee, the other gently wiping blood from the gash with what I suspected was one of my tank tops. I watched as she pulled a set of scissors from the bag and snipped away the torn section of my jeans.
I wanted to fight it, but I was exhausted and her touch was gentle. I sat still, grappling with myself – wanting to protest, push her away, and take her in my arms all at once. But the truth was, I didn’t have the strength for any of it.
When Amara was satisfied with her handiwork, she dipped her fingers into the ointment and slowly spread it over the wound. I tensed up at the burning sensation, dropping my head back with a resigned groan. She didn’t stop there, a few moments later I felt the prick and tug of needle and thread and glanced down to see her sewing up the wound.
Amara paused when I winced, glancing up with a glint of concern in her eyes. I struggled to keep my eyes open, fixing them on her face and blinking slowly. Maybe it was the brew, or maybe the remnants of the poison-induced fever, but she looked lovelier than ever and I wanted to kiss her.
It took another stitch of the needle in my thigh to jolt me out of my stupor and remind me why that was a stupid idea. A reckless idea.
Amara finished the final stitch and sat back, watching me with apprehension. I dropped my eyes to the wound. The ointment was already working its magic and the visceral swelling was subsiding. She had been methodical, focused. Every stitch was tight and secure. She was good at this.
“Where did you learn to do that?” My words felt heavy on my tongue, each syllable a stone I couldn’t wrap my mouth around.
Amara cocked her head to the side like she was trying to decipher my words. I gestured to the stitches and her eyesdarkened when she understood. After a beat, she shrugged nonchalantly. I supposed growing up with a mob boss for a father had her seeing plenty of bad injuries over the years.
“Well… thank you.” It was difficult to say, and even more difficult to look at her when I said it. Amara’s face brightened like a 100-watt bulb and I wrenched my eyes away, staring at the ceiling instead.
I’m not sure when my eyelids slid closed but when I opened them again the sun was out and I’d been covered in a blanket where I lay slumped over in the loveseat.
Amara lay across from me on the sofa, fast asleep and snoring lightly. Looking at her, something twinged in my chest and my heart beat to a frantic, reckless tempo.
Chapter 6
Amara
As it turned out, It only took a vicious injury and a near-death experience for my solitary wife to acknowledge my presence from time to time. Three days had passed since Dylan burst into the apartment and bled all over the carpet, and in those three days she had been near-friendly at best and cordial at worst. The uneasy truce between us seemed to be holding. It felt like a breakthrough.
While her eyes were still guarded and she kept up her disquieting disappearing act, she took the time to respond to my pitiful attempts at pleasantry with small talk of her own. She had been particularly interested in my nursing skills and I’d often catch her running her fingers over the stitching in her leg, inspecting it with a furrowed brow like she was trying to decipher a code.
I suspected I had discovered a chink in her armor, a way to earn her trust.
A flaw to be exploited.I tried not to feel guilty about it.
One morning, after waking up to an empty apartment, I decided to try breaking onto the rooftop once again. I scaled the rickety staircase and tentatively tested the trapdoor above my head. It was unlocked, which was surprising, and I entered the garden holding my breath. After the last time she’d caught me up there, Dylan had told me to do what I wanted. While I assumed it was penance for her outburst, I didn’t expect her to leave the secret garden accessible to me.
The rooftop oasis was just as enchanting, even more so in broad daylight. I had half-expected to find it mundane, stripped of its mystery and allure now the sun was out. But the lush foliage was vibrant in the sunshine, and the ivy overhead cast mottled shadows over the serene scene.
I settled down on an ornate bench, half-hidden behind a cluster of fig trees, and pulled out my sketchbook and pencils. Drawing was a way to lose myself in the moment, to forget the complexities of my situation, if only for a little while. But as I sketched, the gears in my head turned, and my mind tugged toward my enigmatic housemate despite my best efforts. When I inspected the contents of my heart, I was surprised to find a growing fondness there, an infatuation I hadn’t expected.
I blew a curl out of my eyes and hunched over my sketchbook, roughly dancing the graphite pencil over the paper.
Dylan was, above all else, a stubborn, prickly asshole. But I’d slowly come to suspect that was a front, her best defense against whatever it was she thought was going to hurt her. And she was right to be wary. I was there on a mission and I couldn’t afford to lose sight of it, not when freedom was so close.
I twisted the ring on my finger, the cold silver a constant reminder of what I had to do, what I wanted more than anything. A life untainted by my father’s presence. Aliyah and I had shared that dream once. Just thinking about it made my chest ache with a desperate longing that had not dulled with time.
And yet, just as I was wearing down her defenses, Dylan was testing mine. I found her captivating, even when she was scowling at me in a drunken stupor. Whatever it was she had drunk the night she’d been injured had muddled her mind – at least enough to make her relent and let me help her. And thank god she did. She’d been half-dead and bleeding out, all the while defying my concern with an unflinching, ferocious glare.
My hands had been steady when she finally let me near the wound, but my mind was far from quiet. My eyes had traveled to her face between stitches, mapping out the pale curve of her throat while she stared at the ceiling. She had tensed up when I tugged the thread a little too hard, jutting her jaw out in a way that made my cheeks flush with heat…
My pencil stuttered in my hand and I looked down in surprise to find that I’d broken the tip off, digging it into the paper hard enough to pierce a hole. I tsked, irritably flipping the page and starting again, steering my mind to more pressing matters.
The wound on her leg. A deep, jagged gash, the edges uneven and torn. It looked less like damage caused by a weapon and more like she’d been attacked by some kind of animal. Her blood had been tinged with a faint, greenish fluid.
When I pointed that out, Dylan brushed my concerns aside with a half-baked explanation. A broken bottle, she’d said, a drunken adversary from a deal gone wrong. I found that hard to believe. Her so-called “first-aid” stock was just as mystifying. Simple herbal medicine, according to Dylan, but the labels on the bottle said otherwise. What kind of herbal medicine counteracted ‘lycanthropy’?
