Chapter 4

Edric's POV:

Jolie comes sauntering into the room, carrying an instrument tray laden with antiseptics, gauze, and bandages. She’s busy training to take over from Doctor Lewiston one day, and honestly my father couldn’t be prouder. If my mother were still alive, she’d be bursting out of her skin with joy.

Since she came from a rich family, she always wanted Jolie to be more than ‘just’ a Beta’s mate. “Doc sent me to dress your wounds,” she tells Maya and put down the tray. “My name is Jolie, I’m this one’s sister— “she jabs a finger in my direction -- “and Luca’s mate.”

“Hello.” Maya gives her a small, joyless smile, but relaxes visibly, the tension draining from her face.

She is clearly much more comfortable around females. My sister looks at me, and I wait for the mind-link, because it’s so very obvious that she has a hundred questions, but she doesn’t do it. “I suppose asking you to leave would be pointless?”

“Yes.” I’m going nowhere. My wolf will tear me apart – figuratively speaking of course.

Jolie shrugs and starts cleaning Maya’s head wound. She’s tougher than she looks. She doesn’t even flinch when my sisters starts to clean the blood out of her hair. “Head wounds bleed a lot,” Jolie babbles, a sure sign that she’s nervous. “Even the superficial ones. Luckily Doc didn’t need to shave all your hair to put in the stitches – we can easily cover this little spot here.”

I decide to mind-link Jolie, because her babbling’s just too much. “What’s wrong with you?”

She stops cleaning Maya’s wound and looks at me. “This is her, isn’t it? The one everyone’s looking for.”

“I think so, but her eyes...they’re wrong.”

“Dad says she’s your mate. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“The Fates are fucking twisted. The hell that will rain down on our pack because of her…I don’t suppose you will reject her and wait for your second chance mate?”

“I don’t have a second chance mate.” And even if I do, I don’t think I can reject Maya. The bond is already forming; just the thought of rejecting her makes my heart ache.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” and then, because I can’t help myself, “you will respect her as the Luna of our pack. She is the one the Goddess chose for me.”

I break our mind-link. Jolie tries to re-establish it, but I block her. I don’t want to talk about my mate. Don’t want to think about the destiny the Mood Goddess chose for her. For me. Us.

Maya stares at me, a small frown furrowing her brow – she has no idea what just happened between Jolie and me. If she doesn’t know what a pack house is, does she know what a mind-link is? By the look on her face, I don’t think she does.

Jolie finishes her work in silence. “You can give her something to eat,” she tells me. “By the looks of her she needs it. Not too much though. You don’t want to make her sick.”

“Can you talk to me, and not about me?” Maya snaps.

A small smile plucks at Jolie’s lips. “I’m sorry…you are so quiet, I didn’t think…make sure he feeds you, okay, you need your strength. You have to spend the night here. Doc wants to look in on you later.”

“Thanks,” I say automatically, unable to take my eyes of Maya.

My sister gives me a knowing look, gathers her supplies, and heads to the door. “I’ll get you some food,” I say and get up, but she grabs my wrist, holding me back. She is strong for one so small and weak. To say that she surprises me is a vast understatement. I sit right back down, like an obedient little pup. “What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

But she won’t answer me. No. She can’t answer me, because she doesn’t even know. She’s been on her own so long, that she can’t even verbalise her feelings anymore. “Okay,” I say at last. “I’ll get someone else to fetch us some food. I’m hungry too.”

I’m lying, but I instinctively know she won’t eat if I just sit here watching her. Nor will she ever admit to me that she’s hungry. I get up again, but like a frightened child, she won’t let go of my wrist. “I’m not going far,” I promise, “I’m just gonna stick my head out the door.”

Her hand relaxes from around my wrist, and I quickly go to the door, hoping against hope that someone’s in the clinic. The Fates aren’t always that cruel. A young wolf with a wheelie bucket and mob is busy washing the floor. When he sees me, he drops the mop and stares at me with fear and wonder on his face before he realises that he’s making eye contact and droping his gaze. Most of the wolves never have to deal with me directly. All they know about the Alpha is that you have to fear and respect him. “Kid, run to the kitchen and get some food, will you?” I ask as nicely as I can.

“What kind of food, Alpha?” he asks, his voice quivering slightly.

Yeah, that’s a question. “Whatever’s left over from supper.”

The kid jumps to attention, and sprints off in the direction of the kitchen. Chuckling, I close the door behind me. He will learn, as all of them do, that I’m not the monster they think I am. Pups tell each other a lot of horror stories about pack leadership. It’s not surprising. In other packs, the Alphas are often brutal. Over the years, we have taken in a lot of rogues that escaped abusive Alphas – it’s one of the reasons our pack is so big – and wolves can be awful gossips. Pups hear the stories and think I’m the same way.

“See?” I say as I take up position next to Maya again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered through dry lips. “I don’t mean to be a burden. I’m not usually this clingy. It's just…unfamiliar. I’m not used to…any of this.”

“It scares you? Being here?”

Wordlessly, she nods, looking mortified. Admitting weakness isn’t something she does easily, I’m guessing.

“That’s all right--” I smooth tangled hair from her face --“what’s the point of having a mate, if he can’t be there for you, right? You have nothing to fear from me…or anyone else while you’re here. No one will dare lay a hand on you.”

She stares at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes, but still doesn’t speak. Goddess, what is it with those eyes? It’s unsettling. I’ve seen more expression in the eyes of psychopaths.

“What happened to you?” I ask, very gently.

Maya turns on her back, grimacing but not complaining. She pushes her hands in the bed, and tries to sit up, shrugging me off her when I want to help. Apparently, it’s okay for me to be here, but not okay to help her. I don’t know what to do, how to help her. This is not how I imagined it would be after meeting my mate. I had fanciful ideas, like all wolves I guess, but fantasy and reality are very often not the same thing.

“Where’s my backpack?” she asks. This answering a question with a question thing is gonna get old really quick.

“Where you dropped it. Do you need it?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s all I have.”

“I’ll send someone to get it, don’t worry.”

It seems silly to me, but what do I know about the life she had led up until now? If it means that much to her, I’ll go get her damn backpack myself and lay it by her feet. The life of a rogue is hard enough, harder for a female. It must have been nearly unbearable for her.

We are social animals, we need a pack – without one we invariably go one of two ways: Either we become more beast than man, or we simply lie down and die. I have a feeling my mate’s close to the latter.

The Goddess told me just enough to know that from the moment we meet, our destinies will be inextricably woven together, and that things will get a lot worse before they get better. But she didn’t tell me what horrors my mate would suffer before I found her. Maybe it’s time to go to the temple and seek out The Goddess’s guidance again, even though I know she rarely answers in a satisfactory way.