Pretty Poison (12 page)

Noah’s jubilation burst like a balloon.

Mike wasn’t running from demons. He was running
from Noah
.

The happiness that had exploded inside Noah dimmed. After years of no improvement, one of Noah’s knees had recovered normal range of motion, but the physical therapist’s spooked stare emphasized to Noah that, no matter how his body responded to shifting, he would never, ever be normal. Not according to Mike and some of the other medical staffers who viewed anything that wasn’t human as a source of fear and distrust. They could forget Noah was a shifter after he’d started aconitum injections. They’d clinically discussed Noah’s physiology as a handicap and a hindrance then, but the fundamental prejudice of a few humans against shifters was never far. Not really.

“Don’t let it bother you. They need to learn to think of you as a shifter, not as a human patient,” Trudy said. “You need to learn that, too.”

Snorting, Noah flipped onto his belly on the floor mat. He wriggled to the wheelchair he’d used since his arrival at Vanguard. “They never forgot what I am. None of us did. How could we? Humans would’ve had knee and hip replacements after the accident, but not me. I would’ve lost those appliances the first time I shifted. Couldn’t risk that. With new knees and hips, I might’ve only needed a cane. I definitely would’ve been walking years faster than I did—if I wasn’t a goddamn shifter.”

After checking the handbrakes, he gripped the sides of the chair and hauled himself up. And hated how smooth and practiced the maneuver was for him. “Humans wouldn’t have required drug therapies that nauseated them and zoned them out to halt shifting, either. I shifted back and forth between man and wolf constantly. Hour after hour. I couldn’t stop.” He knocked his fist against his temple. “The brain damage from the fall—”

“You aren’t now.” Trudy stared at him.

Noah frowned. “What?”

“Shifting out of control,” she said. “The poison is working out of your system. You’re recovering at a rapid rate. I don’t have the results of your CAT scan yet, but you’ve only shifted a couple of times since your arrival at the pack house. That frequency is on par with an untrained whelp. Didn’t your father and brothers mentor you in shifter craft?”

Flummoxed, Noah could only stare at her. “In the b-beginning,” he said. “But nothing helped. I couldn’t control it.”

“Then.”

He blinked. “I still can’t control it.”

“Only because you haven’t been trained.” Trudy pointed a finger at him. “You shifted when your wolf was starving and when your wolf felt threatened by losing your mate’s scent, but those are normal responses for a shifter who hasn’t learned to manage his beast. Whatever was interfering with the signals in your brain that triggered your shifts is gone, peaches. I’d bet cash on it.”

The shock of that seeped in, little by little. Noah knew she was right. He’d been off his aconitum injections for days. He should have begun a spiral of shifting. Not just the pair of involuntary shifts he’d been through, but dozens.

“Do you truly think...,” he said, voice trailing off because he didn’t dare to hope. His fingers curled on the cheap plastic grips of the wheelchair. His family hadn’t been rich, the medical treatments and tests they couldn’t afford paid for by humans. He’d spent nine years in a chair like this one. His legs had only been the most visible reminder of what the accident had done to him, though. The devastation of the traumatic brain injury had hobbled him as much, if not more. “But I need my glasses,” he mumbled.

“Oh, really?” Trudy peered over the top of her computer screen. “Where are they?”

Noah automatically reached up, but his fingertips didn’t encounter steel frames resting on the bridge of his nose. Poleaxed, he gawked at the pack healer.

“You haven’t had your glasses since the morning after you mated with Wade. Fletcher reported that you squint sometimes, and that may have exacerbated your migraine yesterday. You need a new prescription for now at least, which your regular optometrist will handle as soon as we’re done here,” she said. “Shifting as an adult wolf sharpened your senses. Your first full moon shift could accelerate that. Your vision
could
improve enough to forego correction altogether.” Sighing, she lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Or not. We’re no different than humans in that respect. There’s a lot we don’t know. Odds are low that your sight will become as sharp as every other shifter. No promises. But it’s possible.”

Noah remembered staring at Wade in the dark, mapping the angles of his face in shadows that should have blinded him. Noah’s night vision was better. The alpha had claimed Noah’s hearing was keener that first night, too. Noah couldn’t quite let himself believe that, but he
was
stronger. After years of simply enduring, of adapting, of learning to get by...he was improving.

Noah collapsed into the wheelchair that had been his childhood prison, his muscles turning to goo. Joy mixed with confused grief clogged his throat. “I’ll always have the limp,” he said when he could trust his voice not to break. “You said that.”

“We aren’t as confident about your migraines.” Her smile wobbled. “Our feverfew tonic
will
help, and after looking at these side effects, I’m convinced some of the drugs humans had you on aggravated your headaches. Too soon to tell. Stress is one of your triggers and you’ve had that in abundance. If I’m right, if the chemical cocktails traded off relief from muscle cramps for more intense migraines, you won’t suffer as badly after your stress levels off, though.”

Noah stared at the paper gown covering his lap. He swallowed.
He could get better.
Not perfect. But he’d be able to walk a little steadier. He already did! He’d see more clearly, hear sharper. He could learn to control his shift. That was possible.

The potential maybes that crowded his mind bewildered him. “You can’t tell my dad. Or my brothers. Not one word,” he said, voice taut. “I need to be the one. I want to tell them myself.”

“Your father, brothers, and sister are good shifters. What happened to you doesn’t change that. After your mother’s heart attack, your family was rudderless. They lost their way. Grief is messy. It can make people do things that seem rational at the time, things they later regret.” Trudy rose from the stool. Noah focused on wrinkles in the paper gown as rustling fabric from her skirts approached him. She crouched on the floor in front of his chair. She didn’t touch him, for which Noah was grateful.

“Your family needs to know. They won’t rejoin the pack until they understand what they let the humans do to you was wrong...even if, at first, trusting your human doctors was very, very right. Wade didn’t enforce the mating pact to rescue only you.”

He realized that. Now. “But we don’t know for sure.”

“We know.” He flinched when she rested her hand on his wrecked knee, crinkling the stupid gown. “And what we don’t know, we can guess. Wolfsbane helped initially by interrupting your involuntary shift cycle, but poisoning your wolf long-term wasn’t the answer.” She blew out a long breath. “Now that you’re older, you’re responding to shifting and our medicines
are
working. The only area of uncertainty is how much you’ll recover.”

“Wait until we have a better idea of what I’ll get back? Please.” Squaring his shoulders, Noah met her gaze. “I don’t want to get their hopes up.”

Trudy curved her lips to a small smile. “You don’t want to get
your
hopes up, you mean.”

That, too.

“It isn’t up to me to decide.” She patted his leg and pushed to her feet. “Discuss this with Wade. He’s a reasonable man. And your mate. He’ll listen to you.”

Noah grimaced. Talking to Wade would require spending time with him that didn’t involve fucking or Noah vomiting. “That the treatments were hurting me instead of healing me,” Noah said, “will gut my family, especially if Wade offered help once he became alpha.” It was gutting
him
.

“Both sides made mistakes.” Trudy shut the lid of her laptop. “Some of their treatments worked. Not well. You’ve suffered needlessly because humans aren’t familiar with our physiology, but they helped get you this far. Taught you to cope. There’s no denying that.” She winked at him. “Human physicians
and
shifter healers need to stop fighting and learn to cooperate.”

Noah swallowed down his despair. “For Mia.”

“For you, too.” Trudy nodded at the door through which Mike had fled. “Go. Soak in the Jacuzzi while I talk with Dr. Phares. The sooner I finish my consult, the faster you’ll meet Mia.”

Heart heavy, Noah released the wheelchair’s handbrake.

“Your life will be better and this,” she said, gesturing to herself and his beta guards, “will all make sense soon, Noah. I promise.”

He might one day walk without crutches. The day could come when he might put away the glasses that had set him apart as different from other shifters. He could already smell sharper and wasn’t shifting completely out of control. As weak and damaged as other wolves judged him, Noah had mated...to a shifter who treated him like a duty.

For Mia. To save her.

Not for him. Not for Noah or his family.

“It already makes sense.” Fingers tightening on the wheels of the chair, he rolled toward the hot tubs.

Chapter Seven

Lost in his thoughts, Noah climbed silently into the Tahoe for the trip back to the pack house, but as soon as they reached it, Fletcher led him to an old blue minivan parked at the end of the driveway. Empty Styrofoam cups littered the vehicle’s floor in front. To make room for Noah’s forearm crutches, Fletcher tossed several cups over his shoulder and into a wasteland of snack wrappers, empty juice bottles, and...toys? Noah twisted around to peer at the mess as he fought with the seatbelt, but no, he wasn’t wrong. The gray plastic tip of a sword blade poked above floor wreckage between the rear seats, the play weapon pointing to a Disney bicycle helmet on the bench in back. Canvas grocery bags and tattered sales flyers helped bury most of the van’s contents, but there were toys. If you looked. A youth-sized baseball glove hid under a seat. A purple stuffed unicorn leaking tufts of fiberfill peeped from a mound of blankets. M&M’s dotted the carpet like confetti where junk mail, empty water bottles, and stray work gloves left gaps in the debris field.

Even small amounts of chocolate could kill wolves so that was removed from children’s treat lists once they began shifting at puberty.

Young kids, then.

Tahoe’s were pack transportation. Shifters needed rugged SUV’s that could handle off-road access points to hunting grounds outside city limits. The vehicles shuttled families to full moon gatherings as well as provided cars for pack use in town, and Noah’s family had learned to identify them in order to avoid city shifters for years. Noah could testify that each of the rigs were pristinely maintained, without a stray crumb spoiling the carpet.

This van was a private car.

Fletcher climbed into the driver’s seat and slid the key in the ignition.

Fletcher’s car.

Curious, Noah stared at the beta as the engine sputtered to life. Noah hadn’t thought of Fletcher as a real person before. Of course, he was real. Noah knew that. The beta doubtlessly had a job he’d missed to chaperone Noah. He must have friends and family. Hobbies. The man had seen Noah at his sick and desperate worst. The beta had also become embarrassingly familiar with the network of scars on skinny legs Noah camouflaged behind blue jeans and bulky sweatpants to everyone except his doctors. They’d argued about Noah’s diet, the clothes Noah would wear, even about Noah’s red hair. The shifter knew more about Noah’s insecurities than two of his brothers. Yet, Noah knew nothing about him. Whether Fletcher was mated. What his regular job was, a curiosity considering Fletcher wasn’t tan from working outdoors like most shifters. Noah wasn’t even sure if the beta had been born in this pack or had transplanted with other shifters when Wade moved to Loganville last year.

Noah vaguely recalled something the shifter had said to Wade while Noah’s head had screamed foul misery last night. He couldn’t remember the exact words, but the gist was Wade ordering Fletcher to keep his distance so Noah would rely solely on Wade. Noah’s memories of those hours revolved around pain, pain, and more pain, but flickering shadows of that bald declaration had emerged from the agony.

Wade’s strategy was mistaken, though. Isolating a reluctant mate from other shifters might forge a dependence that could strengthen a mating bond. Traditionally, shifters mated in seclusion for that reason, but mating a stranger was just the first of many challenges facing them. Cementing their bond wouldn’t integrate Noah with Wade’s pack. As wary as Noah was, he understood their mating would crumble if the pack rejected him. Wade was no ordinary wolf who could slink away to another pack that might accept his mate, either. He was an alpha. If city shifters refused Noah as alpha mate, Wade would fight. And if he lost, Wade would either reject Noah and choose to live mateless to retain leadership of his pack or Wade would leave Loganville with Noah. Wade would suffer as a rogue like Noah’s family had since Noah was four.

Noah didn’t really know his mate, and he wasn’t sure he liked Wade sometimes. But Noah didn’t want the alpha to fight challenges against his leadership because of Noah, either. He didn’t want to lose Wade.

“You have kids,” he said, prodding Fletcher.

Gaze darting to the shifters near the pack house’s front door, the beta grimaced and shoved the van into gear. “Where do you want to eat?”

“Bonding with Wade won’t solve everything,” Noah argued. “Whatever commands he issued to nurture our bonding, he’s wrong. I need to form connections with his people, too, or there’ll be trouble at the first full moon hunt.”

Fletcher schooled his face into an indifferent mask as he speared the van into city traffic. “Drive-through only or we’ll miss the appointment Trudy arranged with your optometrist. You must be hungry.”

He should’ve known Fletcher wouldn’t defy his alpha’s orders to maintain a distance with Noah. He was a good, loyal beta. Tired disappointment weighed Noah down, anyway.