Evelyn POV
I could hear voices calling for me, from the sky, from the clouds. Like gods. But I was alone, abandoned on some kind of waste land.
Nothing but sand and dried plants, burnt from the heat of the sun. The sun, was so hot it was burning my body, I could feel it boiling my blood. As if I was sitting in a pan of boiling water, unable to climb out.
“Evelyn, stay with us…” Reuben’s majestic voice covers the sky, his desperation clear. I am here, why can’t he see I am here.
“Reuben….Reuben I’m here, I’m down here….” I shout to the clouds, turning around to make sure I was definitely alone.
“Shhh, get some rest sweatheart.” His voice emits from the skies again like a calming presence as the sun starts to cool down, starts to set. Leaving me in darkness, except for the glow of the moon.
I walk for miles, trying to find anything …anything. What has happened? Where are my children? Why was I alone? What is this never-ending desert? No matter how far I walk, it never ends.
My thirst sits uncomfortably in my throat, the heat of the sun from earlier speeding up my dehydration. Nothing… there is nothing…not even animals. Until I see them.
My parents.
They are standing ahead of me, holding hands. A slight transparency to them. I run to them, but every time I think I am gaining pace, getting closer to them. They just seem further away.
Am I dead?
I can’t feel my wolf, I must be dead..
I bend over, placing my hands on my thighs to catch my breath. Without my wolf I have the energy of a human and I have overexerted myself. I feel very alone, not even having my wolf with me feels like I’ve lost my soul. In fact I think I have lost my soul. Why were they here, why was I here? Where was I? Confusion was weaving its control through me, through my mind.
“Mum…Dad?” I breathe out, my lungs stinging from the dry heat of this place. Their eyes look at me before a soft smile forms on Dad’s face, he can’t talk. They can’t talk because they are dead, I have to remind myself.
“I’m sorry…” I try to reach for them, my hands unable to touch them, unable to reach them.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you…” I cry out, my lungs suffocating me from the internal grief I was still holding.
“Hold her down!” I hear Noah’s voice from the sky, he was angry, he was concerned. I try to run to them again, but my arms and legs refuse to move, an invisible force holding them to the sand. Holding me down. I am immobile, who was holding me down?
“I’m sorry!” I cry out as their bodies start to evaporate before me, turning into the sand that covers the floor. I look down at the sand, realisation dawning on me as I fist some in my hands and let it flow back to the ground.
The sand had turned a charcoal black… this wasn’t sand…this was ash. My eyes force open with a start. My heart thumping in my chest as I try to catch my breath.
Where was I?
As my eyes focus I see the clean white ceiling of a hospital room. My theory confirmed by the sounds of machines as I pull my arm which pinches from the tubes inserted into my skin.
I feel a presence next to me, somebody breathing against my neck.
Reuben.
He was clinging on to me for dear life, tightly. His leg bend over and placed on top of my thighs. He was asleep but his eyebrows furrowed as if he was having a bad dream.
Something had changed, I could feel something buzzing through me that wasn’t there before but then again I was probably still high on medication.
I lay here, for how long I don’t know, just watching him sleep. Watching his eyelids move, his long ash brown eyelashes moving repeatedly.
I don’t dare wake him, but the pressure on my bladder forces me to finally get up. I pull out the tubes that cover my body, I didn’t need a machine to tell me I was alive.
I unravel myself from under his embrace, letting him take up the bed as he spreads himself out. I chuckle to myself as he searches for me in his sleep. I rather like him like this, asleep… peaceful.
I walk into the ensuite in the hospital room, taking in my appearance in the mirror. I look awful…back from the dead even.
My skin was pale, with a grey tinge to it. My white blonde hair messy and unwashed, greasy and stuck to my forehead. My skin held a sheen to it from sweat that hadn’t been washed off before I started sweating again. My eyes struggling to focus as my green eyes look sunken, not as bright, not as vibrant as they usually are.
That’s when I notice it…..something on my neck.
A mark.
Reuben marked me? My eye’s can’t believe what I am seeing, my hands not believing what they are touching. It was still slightly red but I could make out the royal emblem…a crown with a wolf howling to the red moon.
Reuben marked me, I gasp to myself. I could feel the buzzing of a bond through my chest, it sat there with the pack bond…a separate entity but not in a negative way. I felt it as soon as I had woken up, I thought it was medicine at first…that’s how blissful it was.
My wolf shoves herself forward in to my head, awake from whatever state of rest she had been in also.
“Shot…Gun..” She can only manage, her energy levels will take longer to heal than mine. The skin side always taking preference.
I was shot? I was shot in the chest! The memory stirs coming to me in snippets, in flashbacks. Eslpeth…Rex…?
I rush out of the bathroom, panic taking over me, to find Noah standing by the bed, tidying up the tubes that I had so hastily ripped off.
“Sorry!” I must have given him a heart attack as I notice the flat line of the pulse monitoring machine.
“Yes you did have me almost just jump out of my own skin… How do you feel?” His voice reaches me through the mind -link, I’m grateful he knew not to wake up Reuben with our conversation.
Reuben looked just as tired as me, he probably hasn’t slept.
“Honestly…like death! The children?” Were they okay?
“They are fine. I’ll go get them in a minute, they’ll be so happy that you are awake. You had us all worried for a moment.” He pulls me into his arms, holding me in an embrace that speaks volumes of how worried he was. I really must have scared him.
“What happened?”
“You were shot by a silver bullet that was laced with wolfsbane.”
“Wolfsbane?” I gasp, stepping out of his embrace. “You were hallucinating, crying out telling somebody sorry.” He looks to me with uncertainty, wondering if I remember.
Yes, yes my dream starts to come back to me. Nausea sets in my stomach from the image of the sand turning to ash.
“My parents, I saw my parents.” I clamp my eyes shut, not wanting to think about all that ash.
“Evelyn, it was a dream. It was the wolfsbane and the drugs we gave you to fight the infection from reaching your heart.”
I place my hand to my chest to feel the bullet wound that has left a scar before I place my hand back to my neck. A slight ripple of a vibration humming from the mark, I turn to see Reuben smiling in his sleep. Was he thinking of me?
“He marked you, he saved your life Evelyn.”
After filling me in on what happened, how Odin and Vicky managed to get away but how we were able to apprehend her rogue accomplish….how all packs were on high alert, how they are helping trying to find them, I decided to snuggle back into bed with Reuben. My wolf needed the closeness from him, she needed to feel his wolf too.
I nudge him over slightly to make room. He had moved in his sleep as his wolf was chasing my scent by resting on my pillow. So cute!
I place his arm over my waist as I lean into him, finding his scent and presence comforting. Although asleep, I could tell he was on high alert for any subtle change in my status as my movement jerks him awake. It takes him a moment of looking at me before he realises I am actually awake and looking at him.
“Reuben…” I place my hand to his cheek, which he leans into before kissing.
“You’re awake, thank the goddess…” He cups my face with both hands, looking into my eyes, an unreadable emotion forming on his face. He doesn’t wait, he pulls me to him, pulls my lips to him and kisses me as if the first time in years. As if I was the long prayed for water during a drought, food after a long famine.
His tongue invades my mouth, which was dry but he didn’t seem to care. I could feel the powerful humming of his desire for me through our incomplete bond. Heaven help me when the bond is complete.
His kiss starts of as passionate, not willing to let me go until he must realise I am in a hospital bed and he slows the kiss, making it more sensual.
“How are you feeling?” He finally pulls away from my lips but keeps his mouth touching them. Not ready to let me go just yet.
“I’m fine, slightly sore but I want to see the children?”
“They’ve been so worried, we all have been. Don’t you ever do that to us again, to me.” He growls softly from a memory that seems too hard for him to stomach.
Noah walks back in followed by Cassandra who pulls me into her arms. As Cassandra updates me with the children, Noah and Reuben have a conversation together about my recovery.
Noah would rather keep me under observation in the hospital but understands I am over the worse of it and as long as I promise to rest up, I can be discharged to home rest recovery.
It took about an hour for me to push to get back to Reuben’s house. I was desperate to see the children, to hold them in my arms.
As we arrived to the pack warriors, both mine and Reuben’s greeted me outside the alpha house to pass me their good health in recovering and that they were thankful to the moon goddess that I was healed.
Healed? Was that because of Reuben marking me?I wasn’t expecting when I arrived was for the house to be silent….I walk into the house to find Rex asleep sitting up on the sofa, his head resting on Pierce’s chest who was also asleep. On the other sofa was Donnie also asleep sitting up, but Elspeth asleep in Harry’s arms. A quiet growl emits from Reuben behind but I ignore it, she was safe, she was four. It was all innocent, they were only friends.
To give them the quietness that they need and to not disturb their sleep, I enter into Reuben’s office to sit on his sofa there.
But as I walk in, I realise the efforts he and his team went in trying to trace us. The room was a mess. Paper strewn all over the place, maps on the walls, pictures pinned to the walls of Odin and Vicky. Also another picture blacked out of an unidentifiable person…what was that about?
I pick up papers off the floor and place them back onto his desk to find signed legal documents with my name on them. I skim read the documents, not believing what I am reading.
“What’s this?” I ask Reuben as he walks in with a bottle of water for me. He walks behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder as he looks down at his desk.
“They are legal documents confirming my pack, my alliance and any businesses or finances become yours in the event of my death…”
“What? You did all this?” I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. Everything, everything would be mine to protect until Rex was of age. This was such a level of trust, he trusted me to fight for his legacy. To protect it for our children.
“Of course…I need to check on the rogue…”
“Wait, he’s here?” I turn to face him, anger forming on my face, my moment of happiness from his gesture gone knowing that man was on the pack grounds.
“I’m handling it….”
“I want to come!”
“No. You rest.” He places a kiss on my mark, creating tingles across my entire body that threatened to travel down south.
“What will you do?”
“I’m afraid he’s about to experience the wrath of the Alpha King.”
