Page 124 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Ivy is down here, not in the loft.

And those two facts existing simultaneously makes my hindbrain light up like a fucking alarm system.

I carefully extract myself from Ivy. Inch by inch. Sliding my arm from beneath her head, replacing the warmth of my body with a pillow, easing my weight off the mattress slowly.

She murmurs something in sleep and wiggles. Her hand reaches for the space where I was and finds the pillow instead.

I freeze.

She settles.

I let out a soft breath.

I watch her for a moment before moving to the hall. It's dark. No light anywhere except what bleeds in through the windows.

Still too much.

I enter the kitchen to soak a hand towel in cold tap water, pressing it against my throat. The dried blood has stiffened the skin there, crusted into the edges of the gauze, flaking in some places and cemented in others.

I scrub at it hard enough to burn.

Some of the blood's mine. Split scar tissue, the hit from Wade's stick, the places where he clawed at me when I tore into his neck.

And some of it's Wade's.

I can still taste it, in my mind.

Iron and salt and the frantic hammer of his carotid against my tongue surge up in my memory without warning and my stomach lurches. I brace both hands on the counter, head dropping, breathing through the wave of nausea.

You mauled someone.

On live television.

Like a fucking ANIMAL.

The towel is pink now.

I keep scrubbing.

The blood won't come off.

The blood will never come off.

It's soaked into the gauze, into the scar tissue, into whatever's left of the person I was before I proved the entire fucking world right.

Except Ivy.

And Thane, I think.

My hand flies to my face again.

Checking.

The bandages are still there. I didn't dislodge them.

"You have checked three times since coming in here. The bandages are fine."

I go still, glancing back over my shoulder.