Theon.She’s in the hospital, having lost too much blood. As a result, her healing had slowed down, so we had no choice but to take her to meet the head doctor of the Rexellen Hospital. As werewolves, we rarely ever visit hospitals, as our natural healing factor takes care of most of our scrapes and sicknesses before they can become problematic. When a wolf goes to a hospital, it could mean only one thing. They’d caught an unnatural sickness, had a mental ailment, or had been grievously injured.More often than not, the case is the latter.“She’s going to be okay.” Says Dr. Haeger, “At first, she was in a critical condition, and her body had slowed down healing to keep her alive But her natural healing accelerated as soon as we did a blood transfusion. She’d passed out from the mixture of blood loss, pain, and shock, I believe. She might possibly have a brain concussion, albeit a mild one. Other than that, Ruelle is steady and out of the danger zone for now.”“What about the stealer?”
Theon.Dr. Haeger sighs after thinking for a moment about the question.“Perhaps a historian can give a better answer than I can, Alpha. They are quite knowledgeable in the subject after all. But with my limited knowledge, I wish I could give you the right answer to that question, Theon, but the records we have about stealers are so biased that I do not know what to believe most of the time. As far as I know, that theory is still up to debate. There is a distinct lack of research on stealer biology. There is no way to even hear rumors as we haven’t had a stealer come around in a while. The last known stealer lived about 200 years ago if I’m correct, and the wolves then didn’t care enough to record such information about them. Yes, the stealer can mate with a widowed wolf. But can she cure a rogue one?”I curse myself for lacking that insight in the beginning.“I don’t think your plan is going to work, Theon. It’s not possible to heal a wolf going rogue.” Dr. Haeger’s words ring in my
Ruelle.Theon is not an idiot.By now I’ve realized that much. While he did believe I was his mate, he had his suspicions about Callista too. The only thing that kept him from actually believing a word that came from Callista was that he did not want her to be his mate. He even doubted his supposed knowledge about the stealer when it came to her. I suppose that was a perk of trying to be the mate of a King. Thank the Goddess for that.I mean, how can he ever pursue her? She is the stealer. He is the Alpha King of all of the Lycan Kingdom of North America. His very blood demanded respect, and he would do nothing to jeopardize the standing of his family. Callista and Theon is the most absurd combination to ever exist. Imagine how the masses under him would react if they thought the stealer of all people is his mate? They wouldn’t even care for the sacredness of the mate bond or whatever, they would only believe that the stealer is manipulating him with her abilities.No, I am the safer
Callista.I've got to stop passing out all the time.Really, I am so tired of waking up in places that I had no idea of getting into. This time, I find myself bound to a dark, stone wall with manacles and chains. With the dim light that illuminates my surroundings, I can see bars in front of me. I’m groggy and my whole body aches, but as soon as the bars register in my mind, my whole body tenses. An awful sense of déjà vu washes through me.A jail cell. Was I in a jail cell again? Why?What the actual hell? What did I do this time? If my memory serves me correctly, I was just about to die on the hands of a maniacal werewolf before I lost consciousness and I was trying to save that asshole sister of mine. And knowing Ruelle, she has got to have a hand with this. I never knew my sister was this vicious before, but now that I do, I wouldn’t put it past her to spin some story to Theon that would make me sound awful and land me in jail yet again.Unlike the last time, when I had been terri
Callista.When J comes for me, I am in so much pain. The numbness from the first time had long gone, and I’d passed out and come back to consciousness a few times. Whenever I passed out, I was given a reprieve but when my traitorous body decided to wake up, I was shown a preview of hell again.In the past unforgettable several hours, I’ve been physically assaulted, whipped, beaten with batons, and waterboarded. That last one made me think I would really die, thankfully it hadn’t gone for long. I had a feeling I was going to be really careful around water for a long while to come. If I thought breathing was a labor before, now it feels like torture itself.When J comes, I’ve been moved to another room and strapped into a chair from my wrists and ankles. I feel like every bone in my body has been broken, and a keening voice, filled with whimpers and pathetic moans leaves my lips, accompanied occasionally by a dribble of blood. The dungeon master is in the process of binding my eyes when
Callista.How could Theon have let this happen to me?I’ve been pondering that question since I woke up in the infirmary and am no closer to finding an answer than I did before. It is far too devastating just to be a misunderstanding.Later, I am laid on a crisp infirmary bed after being treated and bandaged, dressed in a loose hospital gown. I feel like a mummy, wrapped from head to toe. Dr. Harris had told me that I didn’t have any internal bleeding, fortunately. The dungeon master hadn’t damaged me that bad, despite all the blood.Like, he hadn’t done anything that would take a long while to heal. He’d hurt me plenty.But he’d done enough. I was once again bed-bound, and in my state, I’m going to take at least a month to fully recover. I’ve got four broken ribs, a sprained wrist, a full-blown concussion which had thankfully already healed into a mild concussion, and a whole lot of cuts and bruises. My whole back had been sewn up.I feel like a soldier who’d gone to war.The infirma
Callista.“I didn’t make a contract like that,” I reply. This was absolute news to me. I’d certainly remember if someone had asked me or forced me to write anything before being drugged with Wolfsbane. I didn’t remember much about what happened afterward, though, except for the parts with Theon in them.Oh, Goddess, what had Farris Leighwen done to me now?“Impossible, the document is legitimate. We even checked the validity of the agreement using an Earth witch. You yourself wrote it and signed it.” Theon answers, his brows furrowing. However, he isn’t stupid, and there is doubt in his eyes. Surely he must’ve realized by now that Farris had been at least a little shady with everything.“That’s not possible. I would remember doing something like that.” Even though I insist, I’m starting to feel doubtful. A witch’s magic didn’t lie. I try to wrack my brain to find signing and writing such a damning document anytime before.Had I actually done it? I’ve read that Wolfsbane caused tempora
Callista.“See this corridor?” The maid who'd called me, Helen, points at an extremely muddy corridor, “This needs to be washed, like, ASAP. The Alpha King absolutely loathes uncleanliness.”I look at the amount of dirt and gulp. “That’s…that is a lot of dirt,” I state the obvious, “This is the entrance, right?”“Yeah, and we need to keep it clean, all the time. The newbie is usually in charge of this. So,” She thrusts at me a mob and a bucket, “Get on with it.”So, the maids don’t really like me much. It might have to do with me being the stealer as well as a criminal now. They were all much older than me, in their twenties or thirties, and they were very, very cold. As soon as I was taken to the maid quarters and introduced to them, they’d told me that I wasn’t to expect any special treatment from them and that they didn’t really want a stealer of all people with them, and that the only reason they were gonna tolerate my existence was because their Alpha King had commanded it.Very