Chapter 57

Rowena

The first thing I noticed was the aching—no, searing—pain in my head. Next, I felt the same pain lower, in my ankle this time. In fact, my whole body hurt, but I was still too far away from consciousness to groan.

Then, I heard the voices: two voices, in fact. My father and Eric. They filtered in through the haze of my unconscious state, tethering me back to the real world once again.

“...want to tell her.” Eric’s voice was tense and insistent, a little hoarse as though he had been talking for hours.

There was a pause, and then my father’s deep voice responded. “You’ll only get her hurt if you do that. Do you want a repeat of what happened back then? The pool?”

Eric sounded upset as he retorted, “That was years ago, and I was a child. I’ve never let her be in harm’s way since then. When will you move on from it?”

Move on. I knew what they were talking about: the time I had fallen into the pool when I was a child. Eric was right when he said that it was a long time ago, and he was just a kid. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I knew that my father had never fully let it go, though.

But what confused me most was what Eric had said before: “I want to tell her.” Tell me what? What were they keeping from me? What was so dangerous?

“You let her get harmed now,” my father growled in response. “Where were you when she fell?”

There was a weighted silence. I could practically feel the accusation in my father’s words slicing through the room like a knife, followed by the cold, bitter guilt radiating from Eric. Finally, I heard footsteps, then the creak of the door as my father left.

Don’t blame him, I wanted to call out. It wasn’t his fault.

But my lips wouldn’t cooperate, my voice lost somewhere in the murky depths of unconsciousness. I felt a gentle touch on my forehead and my body instinctively responded, my nerves sparking at Eric’s familiar calloused fingers.

I felt something stir inside of me then—something faint, almost like a whisper. It radiated through me, starting in my stomach and spiraling outward. I felt as though my body had just lit up from his touch.

Get a grip, Rowena, I scolded myself, forcing the feelings down. There was no reason to feel like this. It was… wrong.

“Ro?” Eric’s voice was soft, achingly tender as he used a childhood nickname that I hadn’t let anyone use in years. “Can you hear me?”

I kept my eyes firmly shut for a few moments, feigning sleep. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I felt compelled to not let him know that I had heard his conversation with our father.

A few moments passed, then I felt the bed dip as he sat on the mattress beside me. His hand brushed my cheek and I had to resist the urge to lean into his touch.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “Dad’s right; I should have been there. This never should have happened.”

Before I could decide whether to reveal that I was awake, he gently shook my shoulder. “Rowena? Wake up for me, okay?”

Resisting a sigh, I let my eyes flutter open, squinting up at him with a confused expression I didn’t have to fake. “Eric? What…”

Relief broke across his features and he immediately started fussing over me, checking my head and gingerly prodding my swollen ankle. I winced as he touched me, sucking in a sharp lungful of air through my teeth. “Ow…”

“You’re in pain?” he asked, then sighed. “Don’t try to move. I’ve got some medicine here for the pain.”

For a few moments, I watched as Eric dug through a nearby bag to retrieve some pills and a tub of some kind of salve. I realized, as my vision came fully into focus once again, that I was back in my bedroom—not the hospital, as I had thought before.

Furrowing my brow, I gingerly reached up and touched the part of my scalp, right behind my ear, where I felt the most pain. I instantly winced again and jerked my fingers away when I felt several stitches.

Eric, noticing my reaction, cast me a sidelong look. “Stitches,” he said. “You had a pretty nasty gash on your head. Your hair will cover the scar, at least.”

I would have scoffed, had I not been in too much pain to have much of a reaction to anything. “I don’t care about scars.”

“I know you don’t.” Eric smirked at me and crossed back over to the bed, peeling the covers aside to expose my ankle. It wasn’t wrapped up, and I could see the swelling and the dark purple bruise.

“It’s not broken, is it?” I gasped.

Eric shook his head and sat down on the bed once more. “Dr. Meyers said it’s just twisted, maybe with a hairline fracture,” he said. “You got lucky.”

I frowned at the mention of our private doctor’s name. “I didn’t go to the hospital?”

Eric froze then, and for a moment, I thought I saw his fingers wrap a little more tightly around the bottle. But then he shrugged and got to work. “Figured you’d be more comfortable here.”

As he carefully applied the salve, his calloused fingertips glided over my skin, raising goosebumps in their wake. My pulse kicked up a notch and I silently cursed my body’s reaction. This wasn’t the time or place for these inappropriate feelings to be surfacing again.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked once he was finished. “Some water? Something to eat?”

I blinked up at him, taken aback by his doting behavior. Eric was a lot of things, but nurturing wasn’t usually one of them. “I… um, no, I’m okay for now. Just… what happened?”

His jaw tightened and I saw that protective glint enter his blue eyes. “That’s what I want to know. Who did this to you, Rowena? Who pushed you down those stairs?”

“Pushed me?” I echoed in surprise. “No one pushed me, Eric. I just… fell. My own clumsiness.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Heather hadn’t meant to hurt me, not really. It was my own weakness, my own clumsiness, that had caused me to lose my balance and tumble down the stairs. She may have provoked me, but she hadn’t actually laid a hand on me.

Although, as I laid here now, I couldn’t help but think about the strange lightheadedness I had felt before. I had felt feverish, even; I still felt lightheaded now, although not feverish, but I could only chalk it up to my apparent head injury.

Eric’s hand stilled on my ankle and he fixed me with an intense stare. “So you’re telling me no one laid a hand on you? That you just randomly fell?” he asked, not seeming to fully believe me.

I met his gaze steadily, doing my best to appear nonchalant even though my heart lurched at the warmth of his fingers still resting on my skin. “That’s what happened. I was feeling lightheaded and lost my footing.”

His eyes narrowed, searching my face intently. For a moment, I thought he saw through my words. But then he gave an imperceptible nod and resumed applying the cooling gel to my swollen ankle.

“Okay, if that’s what you say happened,” he muttered, not sounding entirely convinced. “Just… don’t keep anything from me, alright? I need to know if someone hurt you so I can make them pay.”

I felt a pang in my chest at the protectiveness in his tone. If only he knew what was likely the truth—that my wolflessness was the core reason I kept getting hurt. That my affliction, my lack of a wolf, was a constant source of victimization.

Pulling my gaze from the intense blue of his eyes, I stared at the far wall, giving a small nod. “I know. I won’t.”