Wolf Moon (31 page)

My skin sizzled as I finally pulled away from
the cage and moved as silently as possible to find something to use on Karl. I
couldn’t let him hurt Nick anymore; the look in his eyes was deadly, and if I
didn’t do something, neither of us would leave this place alive.

Once clear of the cage, I scrambled to my
feet and scanned the room for the first available weapon. While I would have
liked something a little sharper and a lot more deadly, I grabbed the metal pipe
that was propped up in the corner and rushed back into the cage. Karl was
leaning over Nick, holding him up by the front of his shirt as he punched him repeatedly.

Wild with anger, I screamed and brought the
pipe down across Karl’s head. I heard a dull crack, smelled Karl’s blood as it
seeped from his head and slickened his skin. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop
him right away.

He turned on me, abandoning Nick as though he
wasn’t a threat—and to be honest, he probably wasn’t wrong; Nick looked
awful. I doubted he’d be able to stand on his own, let alone save me from
whatever Karl had planned.

I gathered my strength and swung the pipe
again, but Karl was quick—quicker than a werewolf who’d been dosed with
silver nitrate several times a day should have been. It didn’t make any sense.
Karl grabbed the pipe before it could connect with the left side of his head,
yanking it from my hands and throwing it to the side. It clattered to the
cement floor and rolled out of reach as he continued to advance on me.

My back hit the cold wall, and my breath
caught in my throat as Karl stood less than two inches from me. I could feel
the heat from his body. His temperature rose and his irises grew brighter by
the second; he was in the beginning stages of his change. Would he release the
wolf on me? Would he stay human and deal with us this way? Why wasn’t he weak
like the other day…or better yet: why wasn’t he dead?

Karl closed the gap between us, his chest
pressed against mine as he placed his hands flat against the wall on either
side of me, pinning me in place. My heart hammered in my chest, and I tried to
think of a way to get out of this with no room to move. My panic continued to
escalate.

Smirking, Karl leaned in, his nose brushing
against my neck and making me shudder as I clenched my eyes shut. “Your fear
smells just as delicious as it did that night in the woods…maybe more-so thanks
to your mounting sexual tension with Nicky-boy.”

I fought the urge to wretch, unwilling to
give him the satisfaction of getting to me in some other way. I’d once again
given him the power, and I still wasn’t sure how I’d flip the tables on him
this time. His eyes roamed over me, almost like they were devouring me, and
when they locked on mine, he must have seen my confusion.

“You’re wondering
how
, aren’t you?” I didn’t say anything. His sinister smile
broadened as his hands moved to my hips, pulling me against him. I contained a
sob, but let the quiver in my chin slip by as I turned my face away from his.
Slowly, his hands moved up my sides, brushing the swell of my breasts before
gliding up my shoulders and caressing my neck. His thumb pressed hard into my
chin while his hands tightened, and he forced my gaze back to his.

“After the last time you and I had words,” he
began to explain, “I stopped eating the food. Flushed it. Sure, I got hungry,
but my body started to feel stronger regardless of the hunger pains once the effects
of the nitrate started to flush out of my system. I knew the two of you would
have to deal with me sooner rather than later, so all I had to do was lie in
wait for it to happen.” His expression hardened, and his hands tightened
painfully around my neck, cutting off my
air flow
.

My hands flew up and started clawing at his
wrists and forearms before I closed them into fists and tried to punch him. As
my body was deprived of oxygen, my strength waned, and the room started to
darken again.

“Did you really think I would accept a
coward’s
death? Suicide? There’s no
honor there… And being kicked out of a pack is even worse.”

“
Th
-they’ll never
let you stay…” I rasped, trying to swallow beneath his death grip “…
af
-after this.”

Karl leaned in perilously close to my face,
letting his bearded jaw brush against mine before dragging his tongue along my
skin toward my earlobe. “Maybe not,” he whispered roughly. “But I’ll leave on
my own terms, and other
weres
won’t think twice about
fucking with me again. The reputation I have won’t be one of a neutered stray
who
’s been released from his pack. I’ll be able to claim
land and no one will contest it out of fear of what I might do.”

My lungs burned, my limbs tingled until they
went numb, and the world started to slip away
as
 
my
vision darkened. I forced my
thoughts to my parents, wished I could have seen them one last time, and then I
thought of David. If this
was
the end for me, would I
be reunited with him again? Was that how it worked? Was Heaven a real place?

Nick’s face appeared in the darkness just
then, and I wondered if he’d be far behind once Karl had finished with me.

There was a loud
SNAP,
and just as quickly as the lights had started to dim, my
lungs filled with air and my eyes flew open. I coughed and inhaled deeply,
trying to get as much oxygen in my body as I could after having been deprived
it. As my senses retuned, I looked ahead of me to find a wide-eyed Karl, his
mouth agape. I had no idea what had happened at first, but as he slowly sank to
the floor, I understood all too well.

There, in Karl’s place, was Nick. He looked
unsteady on his feet, his right arm folded across his ribcage and his face
bruised and bloodied thanks to Karl. The swelling above his left eye had forced
it to close partially, and blood dripped from the cut in that eyebrow, likely
obscuring his vision. His split lip had stopped bleeding, but based on the amount
of blood on his neck and the front of his shirt, I could only assume that the
cut had been pretty deep before his rapid werewolf healing had kicked in.

I stood there in shock for a second, trying
to find my bearings and catch my breath as I registered what exactly had
happened, and when I looked down, I saw Karl’s head bent at an unnatural angle.

N
either of us said a word. The look on Nick’s face as we stood in
silence was a combination of fear, concern, relief, and oddly, remorse and
shame. When the intense energy in the room started to dissipate, he took a step
toward
me,
stumbling because his legs were still weak
from the beating he had taken only moments before. I rushed forward and wrapped
my arms around his waist, trying to hold him up. Unfortunately, his weight was
too much for me to bear, so I lowered us to the ground as gently as possible.

All the fear I’d been
feeling finally started to expel itself, and I hadn’t even realized I was
crying until Nick brought a hand up and brushed the tears from my cheek with
his thumb. He held me in his arms, kissing the top of my head. “You’re okay,”
he whispered, his voice weak and wavering.

I pressed myself as close
to him as possible without thinking. It wasn’t until he groaned and his body
protested my actions that I realized just how tightly I was holding him and how
severely he’d been injured. “I’m sorry,” I said through the tears, trying to
loosen my hold on him. He didn’t release me, though. He refused to, even when I
tried to pull away out of consideration. Instead, his fingers threaded into my
hair and he inhaled deeply.

I figured he must have
been just as scared as I was about what could have happened to either of us…to
both
of us.

Filled with relief that
we were okay, I lost track of how much time had passed. I could only take comfort
in the fact that we were both alive. It wasn’t until Marcus found us in the
room with Karl’s dead body that I learned it had been about an hour since we’d
narrowly escaped death.

He didn’t say a word as
he assessed the situation, looking from us to Karl’s body. I feared Marcus’
wrath as he looked down at Karl’s lifeless body, eyes wide and hand gripping
his dark hair. His jaw clenched as he stepped back, and I was about to tell him
what happened—that this was all in self-defense—but he never gave
me the chance.

“
Jax
,
Vince!” he shouted up the stairs. “I need you down in the pit.”

Within minutes, they were
downstairs.
Jackson stopped in his tracks so suddenly
,
Vince almost bowled him over
. He saw Karl, and then
his eyes moved to Nick and me. “Shit,” he mumbled. “What the hell happened down
here?”

The events that led us
here flashed in my mind again, and I tried to push it away. I wasn’t sure how
to explain it—how to justify it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.

“It doesn’t matter,”
Marcus interjected. “Whatever happened was within the parameters of Pack Law.”
With a look of disgust, he nudged Karl’s lifeless body with his foot. “He had
this coming.”

 
One look into Marcus’ eyes, and I could
see that there was no anger. No judgment. He only looked at us as though this
was the outcome he expected, given the circumstances. Even Jackson and Vince
appeared to accept it as they hoisted Karl’s body up and carried it up the
stairs.

Alone with Marcus, he
turned to us. “Why don’t the two of you head upstairs,” he suggested. “We’ll
take care of this.” He eyed Nick, worried once he observed his condition. “I’ll
send Miranda right up to check on your wounds.”

Nick finally released me,
and I climbed to my feet, extending a hand to him. He took it, and I used more
strength than I expected helping him up. His limbs shook with exertion as he
stood, and I wrapped an arm around his waist and tried to support most of his
weight with my own to keep us both upright. He was in rough shape, and I was
more than a little concerned.

Climbing the three
flights of stairs to our bedroom wasn’t easy, but we finally made it. I sat
Nick on the edge of the bed and was just turning away to grab a warm
wash cloth
from the bathroom when he grabbed my wrist and
pulled me back to him. I stood between his legs, looking down on his bloodied
and slowly swelling face. It broke my heart to see the conflict in his eyes,
and I wished I could take it all away.

“I’ll be right back,” I
assured him, brushing his blood-matted hair from his forehead. “I’m just going
to grab a cloth to clean you up a little before Miranda arrives.”

Nick brought a shaky hand
up and stroked my sore neck, tears filling his eyes. One escaped, leaving a
trail through the blood and dirt on his cheek. “God, Brooke,” he murmured. “I
thought…”

“
Shhh
,”
I soothed, running a hand over his cheek. “We’re fine.”

Nick’s brow furrowed, and
his gaze fell from mine, turning distant and empty. “What I
did
… What you must think of me…”

“You had no choice. He
caught us both by surprise.” I was surprised at just how quickly I’d accepted
what happened. Especially considering how conflicted I’d been all this time.
Whatever the reason, I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on it long, so I focused
on him. “Come on. Miranda should be up here soon. Let’s take your shirt off so
she can assess the damage.”

Nick moved to lift his
arms while I gripped the hem of his shirt, but he hissed and instantly gave up
when his rib cage protested. “Shit,” he muttered, his face contorted into one
of excruciating pain.

“It’s okay,” I soothed.
“Don’t push yourself. We’ll find another way.” The collar of his shirt had a
tear in it from the fight, and since he couldn’t lift his arms, I figured there
was really only one other way. I gripped the shirt on either side of the rip
and tugged carefully. The fabric split easily, and I slowly slid it down his
arms. He was able to remove it without too much discomfort from there.

The bruising on his upper
body was alarming, but I tried to keep my surprise contained so Nick wouldn’t
pick up on it. Either his injuries weren’t as severe as they appeared, or he
was ignoring them completely, because he looked up at me and smirked.

“Always looking for a
reason to rip my clothes off,” he quipped weakly, leaning back on his hands and
looking down at his ribs. I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. Suddenly
everything seemed marginally better. Nick was acting like his usual self,
always making a bad situation seem just a little less awful.

When he winced through
his laughter, it sobered me in an instant. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” I didn’t mask
the worry from my voice.

Nick nodded. “It hurts,”
he replied, “but I can feel it starting to heal already.”

I sat next to him. “Will
it take long?”

Nick took a breath,
careful not to inhale too deeply. “Tough to say. Cuts and scrapes heal within
hours… Internal injuries? They can take days, sometimes weeks if they’re bad
enough.”

“And these? How bad are
we talking?”

Footsteps drew our
attention to the doorway where Miranda stood with a bag of medical supplies in
her hands. “Answer her,” she instructed. “That way I know what to expect.”

Miranda sat on the other
side of Nick and ran her fingers over his ribs lightly. He flinched, but
allowed her to continue her examination. “Broken ribs,” he began. “Possible
internal bleeding.”

“Nick, that’s serious.
Maybe you should go to a hospital,” I
interrupted,
worried
because I knew that internal bleeding was potentially fatal.

Nick shook his head. “The
rate at which we heal usually takes care of what happens beneath the surface.
It’s not the first time I’ve punctured a lung or some other organ.”

“Usually isn’t always,” I
pointed out. “This could still take a bad turn.”

Miranda grabbed some
gauze and soaked it in some alcohol to begin cleaning some of the cuts and
scrapes on his skin. She’d tended to my wounds in the past, but it wasn’t until
that moment that I realized how her hands moved. It was familiar to her
;
like she’d done this sort of thing hundreds of times.

She caught me staring at
her in awe, Miranda smiled. “I was a nurse, right up until I had
Cordelia
.” Mentioning her lost daughter must have stung, because
her eyes lost a little bit of their usual glimmer. “Anyway, we’ll monitor him
closely. If the internal injuries don’t heal correctly, there’ll be some pain,
maybe some lightheadedness, and some very distinct bruising. Should that
happen, I assure you we’re more than prepared to handle any medical situation
that comes our way.”

As she rattled off the
list of symptoms and things to watch out for, I told myself I knew this. This
was all stuff I’d learned while on the force. I felt a little better knowing
she was equipped to care for Nick medically, even if there was still a risk.

“I’ll wrap his ribcage,”
Miranda informed us as she pulled a stethoscope out of the little black bag and
placed it on Nick’s back. “Take a deep breath in.” He did as he was instructed,
and she listened before moving it over to the other side. “And again.” He
inhaled once more, his face screwing up in pain as his ribs expanded.
“Everything sounds clear, which means you likely didn’t puncture a lung. I’ll
clean, stitch, and bandage any cuts that require it, and then the two of you
should rest. Your bodies will heal faster if you’re not expending your energy.
Sleep. Let your bodies do what they’re meant to do.”

After she was done
bandaging Nick up, she looked me over. My neck was bruised and there was a
small contusion on the back of my head from when Karl pushed me against the
bars. She removed several bits of fabric from my back where the silver had
burned me through my shirt and applied a little salve to my skin. It stung at
first, but was then cool and soothing.

“Keep an eye on each
other’s conditions and call for me should you need anything. I’ll bring something
to eat up in a bit. But, for now, rest.”

Resting wasn’t too
difficult; turned
out,
Nick and I were mentally and
physically drained. The difficulty was in the days that followed.

It wasn’t Karl’s death or
how he even met his end that weighed on me. It was how okay with it I really
was. I was
relieved
. Relieved that he
was gone and that he couldn’t torment me or anyone else ever again.

Yes, we put the safety of
the Pack before everything else—acted out of self-defense—while
avenging what had happened to me, but at what cost? By accepting Karl’s death
so readily, I worried that I had let go of my humanity.
That
one piece of myself that I had been holding onto so tightly.
My biggest
fear had been what would become of me. I wondered if life might have been
easier if I had abandoned my conscience—turned that switch off weeks ago.
I had been fighting the primal nature of what I’d become since the day I found
out, and it had done nothing but stress me out.

I didn’t want to become
someone who was passive about death, or someone who handed out executions like
they were parking tickets…no matter
who
the guilty
party was or the world I lived in now.

Fortunately, I didn’t
feel this way, and it continued to surprise me with each passing day.

Honestly, I figured my
humanity would have had a hard time accepting all of this and would continue to
fight against my animal nature. It was how I was raised, after all
;
innocent until proven guilty and then a fair trial where a
sentence was handed down. This particular form of justice was foreign to me,
yet I felt more than okay knowing it was our fight for survival that had driven
us. I understood and accepted it, but was that wrong? It didn’t feel that way.
In fact, it felt perfectly natural… So why exactly had I been fighting it? I
didn’t feel any less human, nor did I feel any more primal.

Truthfully, I felt
nothing resembling shame or remorse like I originally thought I would. Only
freedom, and I was
happy
. For the
first time in a long time, I actually felt joy. So why couldn’t I just sit back
and enjoy that? Why had I been so worried about embracing this life completely?
Why was I worried that my humanity would be compromised?

On some level, I always
knew it wouldn’t be like that. None of the others were numb to the harsher
aspects of this lifestyle—save for Karl. They all understood what this
life entailed and what it took to keep each other safe, and they were all some
of the most compassionate people I’d ever met. They always looked out for one
another and never put themselves before the good of the Pack. They had balance
between the two worlds, and up until recently, I had been precariously teetering
between one extreme and the other, unable to level out. It had been maddening
and confusing. I was either human or wolf. I couldn’t accept both equally, and
I didn’t know why.

Over the few days that I
struggled with sorting out my confusion, Nick seemed unaffected. I knew I
couldn’t hold it against him; he’d been living this lifestyle for the last
seven years. These types of situations weren’t out of the ordinary for him.
From what I’d heard, it wasn’t uncommon for him to execute others like us who’d
broken the rules. His humanity seemed completely intact, however. He had the balance
I had been craving from the very beginning. The balance I thought unattainable,
but eventually found.