Page 50 of His Runaway Mate

I had such strange dreams under the moon. I felt like I was returning to my old self. I felt a part of me I had not felt in a very, very long time. As I open my eyes, I feel as though I am somewhere new inside myself. That doesn’t really make sense, but I know it’s true.

Then I try to move, get a little more awake, and I am filled with an ache that seems to come from every ligament, muscle, and bone at once. I feel like I’ve been brutally assaulted. Every part of my body feels like it has been taken apart and put back together. When I swallow, I taste blood in my mouth. Weirdly, my hand, which has been stuck in bandages since I broke it, is not only no longer bandaged, but completely healed. I flex it and feel no grinding or pain at all.

Something about that trips the recognition in me. I instantly know what happened. I was asleep and…

“No!” I bolt upright.

“Easy, baby,” Rex says, resting his hand on my chest and pressing me back down against the bed. “Relax. You’ve been through a lot.”

“What did I do? Was it bad? How many were there?”

“How many were there what, sweetheart?” He brushes my hair out of my face gently, keeping his hand on my chest to keep me down because he can feel that I am about to pop right back up as soon as he lets me.

“Bodies,” I cry.

“There weren’t any bodies, baby,” he frowns. “You must have been having bad dreams.”

“I turned into a wolf. Right? I took my wolf form?”

“Yes. You did. And you were…”

“How did you stop me?”

“How did I stop you from doing what?” He looks genuinely confused.

“From attacking everyone and killing them?”

“You didn’t attack anyone. You certainly didn’t kill anyone,” he says. “You were asleep curled up with me. I brought you up to bed. You’ve been out of it. It’s very normal to be after the first shift. It mangles the body and it addles the mind. Don’t worry. You did nothing wrong.”

I don’t understand how what he’s saying can be true. My father told me over and over that when you shift, you have to kill. It’s inescapable. I wonder if maybe I just didn’t get a good chance at it. Maybe the fact I didn’t wake up saved this whole reserve from turning into a bloody massacre.

I try to calm down, but I am anything other than calm. I’ve started shifting, and it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad. I stop trying to get up because moving makes it worse.

I relax, and he takes his hand off my chest. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on inside that mind of yours,” he says. “Sometimes I can hear the weight of your thoughts, but not the thoughts themselves.”

“Just as well,” I say.

It’s his fault. He did this to me. He fucked me and he turned me into a fucking monster. And now I have to hide even harder because if he ever sees what I’m capable of when I am awake…

He frowns slightly at me. “I will get you some orange juice,” he says. “You need some sugar and some protein. Does bacon sound good?”

“Bacon sounds great,” I say with a smile that is almost entirely forced.

The moment he leaves, I get out of bed. Every step hurts like absolute hell, but I can’t stay in bed. I can’t stay at all. He’s going to make me shift in daylight. He’s going to make me turn into a ravenous beast who can’t control herself, who destroys everything that is good, and who is eventually hunted to her death. I have to assume that is what happened to my father.

I put my tracksuit on from yesterday, sneak out the outside door, and try to find my pack. It takes a while, mostly because I can’t move more than a few steps at a time before I have to pause. My joints feel like someone stretched them out on a rack. I can’t believe people actually do this willingly more than once. I don’t know what being a wolf really feels like, but I know this doesn’t feel good at all.

The pain does start to settle into an ache the more I move, but it’s still not good.

I eventually find my pack outside the large dining hall. They are sitting around, also in their tracksuits, chatting with one another about something or other, I can’t really hear because of the roaring in my ears.

I walk up to them, crouch down, and pretty much collapse at their feet.

“What the hell happened to you?” Laura says, looking at me with a frown.

“Bad night’s sleep,” I say. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“How would we do that? We all came with Mr. Regent,” she points out.