Chapter 105
Chapter 105
TESSA POV
The first time I woke up, the first thing
everything below the knee.
I notice is how my legs are covered with a long, delicate length of black silk. Weighing nothing, yet concealing
Was it possibly daytime? The room is vague too. A lot of baby blue.
Waking up meant fresh pain. Not agony, but a twisting, tightening discomfort that left everything too tender to endure. My focus and attention could only be allocated to a few essential thoughts.
How fucked up my body remains, and Maxim. Those two thoughts alone bounced around my consciousness.
But someone had washed me. Dressed me in a long, soft nightgown that smelt of beautifully fresh air. No doubt sensing the current mattress was not as comfortable as our shared Block E lair, various pillows and cushions now supported me
The vile scent of burning has been mercifully erased from my body. Instead I smell of my dark–haired, tiger–eyed mate. The gorgeously warm scent of his, merged with hot soup, waiting to be served.
Gratitude slammed into me and a scorching heat rises up my chest and cheeks. Not blushing, the heat is from my heart. It’s a burning, overwhelming love for the man who has not left my side. Just as he promised.
How tenderly Maxim has looked after me is enough to shatter me all over again. Looking upwards, blinking fast, the plastered ceiling patterns and
༣ chandeliers slowly come back into focus above me.
“Here, have something to drink,” Maxim whispers. A straw is gently placed against my lips. I obey without question, greedily slurping down the liquid. “Want to try soup with a straw? Sorry I cannot sit you up for some real food just yet. Doctors orders.”
Throat refreshed, talking is a lot easier now. “Why did the doctor want to see you before?”
“When?”
My tricky mate. I’m not going to pretend. “I heard someone asking to stitch
you up before I fell asleep.”
I get a tut of the mouth in return. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing to worry about.”
“Then where are you?” If I have my eyes open I don’t want to be looking at chandeliers any longer. I want my amber–eyed God.
My hand fluttered along the side of the bed, before being swiftly grasped in his bigger hand. “I’m right here. Right here, look,” planting firm kisses upon the top.
Twisting my head as much as I can bear, he has his head face down. All I can see is his thick brown locks. With tiny flecks of rubble and dust still visible.He clearly hasn’t looked after himself for a second. His black shirt is torn and ragged. Scabs and red lines all over his shoulders and upper arms. So much dust and grime.
“Maxim. Please look at me?”
“Don’t make me do that Tess.”
I’m too stunned to do anything else but blurt, “What?”
Maxim doesn’t say anything. “Maxim? What happened?”
“It’s not important.”
“It is. Please. Please look at me.”
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Chapter 105
Instead he stands amy, dropping my hand and immediately facing waray for me. Now in the daylight I can see the damage rescuing we has infipered upon my beautiful mate. His pants are ripped. Cruel cuts and jagged, heating scabs run up and down his arms and legs.
Pare these cuts from rescuing me?”
“There was metal, bed frames and things mixed within the boulders. Sometimes they’d ship,
The time.”
or needed pulling out of the way Some I just didn’t notice at
“Please. Please look at me.
love you Tess,” he murmurs but instead of turning he takes a step closer to the door.
My wolf and I rise in protest. No. “You cannot possibly mean this. Maxim get back here!”
“I’m doing my best.”
A sinking feelings hits me so hard I have to swallow back a sob to get the question out. “Is it me? Is it how messed up I am? You can’t look at me?
“Of course not!”
“Then why are you hiding from me! I will walk on these fucked up legs of mine right now, I’ll run at you.”
“Don’t, don’t hurt yourself-” but now I’m angry. Beyond angry. I push up from my elbows. A pathetic attempt to drag myself up to sitting but it’s enough to send Maxim bolting over.
Quick as a panther he is suddenly all over me. Literally. He’s leapt up, and straddled my hips with his legs angrips my wrists. I cry out in pain even though he’s barely touching me.
A furious, “You need to rest,” erupts from his chest, but he isn’t quick enough to bury his face in my neck. Instead of allowing his caresses I fight against them. Pushing against his cheekbones, nuzzling turned into rough pressing. I feel rough, bumps that weren’t there before. His face isn’t what I know. What had been memorised into every dream for weeks.
“You said we’re a team. Just us? Or is it me? How I look now? I knew you sounded different in the dark…” I’m rambling but that’s what fear does.
“Fucks sake.”
Slowly he tilts his head upwards. Expression set in a severe, unsmiling look of annoyance. Thick black stitches are mishmashed randomly down his face.
But from the edge of his hairline, all the way down, dangerously close to his eye to his jaw is red, angry slash. Ragged, not clean, almost like a serrated blade has been worked against his perfect skin. One beautiful amber eye is almost swollen shut with heavy bruising and swelling.
Tears spring up. I can’t help it.
“That’s why. That’s exactly why, I didn’t want to see your expression change like that.” His jaw unclenched, sadness overtaking him.
His beard and neck are still bloodstained. Exhaustion has stripped all the colour from his skin. That’s worse than any scar. I lift one hand up, and place it against his face as softly as possible. “This doesn’t change a single thing. How did it happen?”
“My own fault. We lifted away the final pieces of stone and you were there. You were only just alive, faintly breathing. I just had to hold you and I rushed. Marshall stopped the metal sliding into my chest when the ceiling dropped some debris, but he couldn’t stop it from catching my face. His grabbing it, added the real damage, rubbing against me,” he growls.
“You’re never going to get on with him are you?”
He wrinkles his nose, “I don’t think so no. Not how I’ve got this to blame him for. I look like a villain.”
“You look like a pirate.”
“That’s not helpful in anyway.”
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“Anre: I thought it was
“Shut up now,” and my lips thin into a tight, happy little smile. Because now, my heart is beating fast for completely different reasons. I can talk. I can save my mate. We are together. I don’t need anything else right now.
“Maxim?”
“Yes?”
“Have you slept since?”
I know the answer but it takes a roll of his eyes and another two requests to get him to admit he hasn’t. “Then come here,” opening my arms as best as t can. He places the uninjured side of his face upon my heart. Resting upon my bite. The point where our souls invisibly bind,
I get to slowly wrap my arms around his huge, dust–covered shoulders. It makes my heart soar to toy with his perfect hair, run my fingertips across his
soft brown beard..
I can’t help sighing as he slowly adjusts his legs, no longer straddling, but lying next to me. His arm lays across my stomach, holding me close. “This isn’t going to help you,” he grumbles but I can feel his hand around my waist, holding me, not letting go either.
“Sleep,” I whisper, kissing the top of his head. “We’ll get better together.”
Over the next week, Maxim somehow turns recovery into bliss. Washed and dressed in all black, his scar is sure to terrify new faces, but it means nothing but bravery to me. I kiss his scar reverentially, just as he sees my marked hip as something I’ve overcome.
My legs are kept completely still but it means we talk. About everything imaginable.
Laid together, he told me about his childhood. The loneliness and selfishness required to survive in the industrial zone. How he knew Ravenbow was his chance to get out. Even if he had to “sort of” scam his way in initially. H
e caught Warden Marshall’s eye straight away for not fitting in, for always looking ahead to the next opportunity and landed his first punishment swiftly. I never tired of his tales. His sumptuously dark voice painting the baby–blue room with vivid descriptions and crazy tales.
Other times, laid next to me he would shut his eyes and receive updates from Remy, feeding me all the news from the outside.
The rest of the pack is getting back to normal. The packhouse foundations have been proven secure. Remy has announced the Cliff and Exile grounds were already closed for good, the explosion merely made it permanent and was not to be dug out any further.
Kai and Silas have been promoted to Wardens too. Princess Hazel demanded it.
Kai was also commended by Marshall, for returning when he had the chance to stay above ground. Apparently some of the behaviour some of the older ones showed on the other side of the tunnel made Remy realise he needed newer, braver blood in his pack.
Finally, when the pain had lessened to simple pins and needles the doctor returned. Warden Marshal requested to be present. It sounded slightly unusual but I agreed. Waiting for the black silk to be removed left me trembling.
Images of Briggs had taunted my dreams, the limp that he allowed to ruin all his ambitions and joy. I don’t want to be that person.
A few faint silvery lines down my shins and ankles suggested how traumatically messy a disaster the Warden and Maxim had rescued me from.
Exactly ten days after the packhouse tumbled down upon me I took my first tentative steps. Except they weren’t that tentative. I was expecting to totter weakly, maybe need crutches or even a stick forever. Instead I stretched my limbs, toes outward and felt…fine. “I…I think…oh Goddess,” and walk wi ease across the carpet. Maxim places his hands over his face, exhaling with a violent shudder of relief,
When I thank Marshall for coming, he waves my words away. “I came because there was always a rumour about the Wilders. Ch. You’re going to resume duties soon Pagano. This isn’t a holiday camp,” giving Maxim narrowed eyes of annoyance.
He hands me a small black leatherbound book. “It’s mainly about Elves but there is a chapter about the Wilder clans.” Tapping a cryptic–looking set of charts he explains. “The closer to nature the human, the stronger their wolf. So…well there was no family line more connected than yours. And by the
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Chapter 105
looks of how you’ve recovered…the idea could be true.”
Stood upright, beaming down at my working feet, I know exactly what I want to do now.
1 beam at Maxim, taking a few steps forward and placing my hand in his. His face remains scarred, but a softer pink, the ridges retreating into gentle bumps. His eyes remain as powerful as ever.
“Let’s go for a walk, see where we end up?” allowing my eyebrow to raise just enough for his own to get the message and glint back with all the hunger of a tiger.
