Instead of replying, Gus just nods his dark head towards the television screen that takes up most of the wall. The news is clearly still focused on the Lycans and there’s no sign of that scrutiny letting up anytime soon. The network has cut together a montage, the highlights from the day. Sofie swallows her anger as she watches.
She sees Luke standing on a podium looking like he’s full of righteous fury. The crowd behind and in front of him seems to have tripled in size since the last time she watched the news. The placards they’re holding up include ‘Wolf Scum’, ‘Kill the Lycans’, ‘Humans First’, they’re an array of hate.
Her gaze is fixed on the screen, transfixed as she watches. Luke is asking for the wolves to come out of hiding, for their leader to discuss things face to face, man to man. There are shots of smoke at the drilling site, probably from the makeshift explosion that Finn and Darwin had engineered as a diversionary tactic. But the tactic has backfired, massively. Now Luke is blaming the werewolves for the fire at the drilling site.
“Can you turn that off? I can’t stand the sight of that douche anymore!” Finn’s voice makes Sofie’s head whip round to take in him and Darwin walking in. Her head reverberates from the shock of the move, but she tells herself to man up.
Gus doesn’t respond and he doesn’t make any move to turn off the television. “I’ll give you a minute. But she’s supposed to be resting!” Gus waggles a finger at Finn and Darwin, looking like an angry nurse before walking out.
Sofie is shocked, this caring side of Gus is something that she definitely wasn’t prepared for. She could take his rudeness, his anger and even his hate, but dealing with his kindness was going to prove more of a challenge. It makes her question if she had even really woken up from her surreal dream.
“How are you feeling?” Darwin stands awkwardly in front of her, fiddling with some gauze in his hands.
“Tired of everyone asking me that question,” she answers truthfully.
Darwin nods sagely, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with himself as he worries the bandage in-between his fingers and then the penny drops. “You dressed the wound.” She tries not to feel disconcerted at the fact that Darwin must have seen her in an embarrassing state of undress.
“I seemed to be the most qualified of the group.” Darwin is sheepish, not quite meeting her eyes, probably conscious that she’s embarrassed. “I took pre-med before I switched to geology, seems like a lifetime ago now!” Darwin stops, realizing that he’s babbling.
“Thank you.” She smiles at him gratefully and sees the warmth in his eyes as he takes her in.
“Don’t thank me. You saved our lives. We should be thanking you!” He moves from one foot to another like he’s finding it hard to stand still.
“Don’t mind Darwin, he’s been a bundle of nerves since we got here. This is actually one of his better moments, believe it or not.” Finn raises his eyebrows at Sofie as he teases the older man.
“How are things out there?” Sofie nods towards the outside, wondering how the Lycans are taking having two more humans in their midst, and not just any old humans, but ones that were intrinsically involved in Shale and turning Spring Canyon into a drilling site.
“Could be worse. At least they have an Xbox.” Finn shrugs not willing to add any further information.
Sofie rolls her eyes at her friend and then makes a mental note not to do that again, it hurts too much.
“You look better!” Darwin’s voice is unreservedly bright and Sofie winces inwardly at how hard he’s trying to lie.
“Yup, you’ll be up and around and annoying me in no time!” Finn looks like he’s about to give her a friendly punch on the arm. Then he remembers that she’s about as fragile as a porcelain doll at the moment and he thinks better of it.
Sofie doesn’t know what to say to them. They probably know more about what’s happening to her than she does anyway. They’re just trying to put a brave face on things and she doesn’t want to take that away from them.
“And when you’re up and about again, I’ll show you what I’ve come up with on Luke.” Finn gives her a look that speaks volumes. “What I’m working on is going to put him away for a very, very long time. I’m really close, Sofe, I can feel it.”
Finn’s excitement is contagious and Sofie finds herself nodding along in encouragement. “That’s great, Finn, really great.”
“Well we should leave you to get some rest, don’t want to tire you out.” Darwin starts shuffling towards the door. “I really am glad to see you, Sofie.” He doesn’t say anything else and he’s gone before she even has a chance to respond. But the emotion in his voice has brought tears to her eyes.
“Don’t mind him, you know he’s about as emotionally retarded as you are, Braun,” Finn laughs, breaking the moment. “He’s been really worried about you, for a while there we didn’t think you were going to make it.” Finn’s voice cracks and he stops abruptly, like he doesn’t trust himself to say anything else.
“I’m going to be fine, Finn. Don’t worry about me. Just look out for Darwin.” Saying three sentences has wiped her out more than she thought possible and Finn must see how tired she is as he heads towards the door at lightning speed.
The sound from the television reminds her that Gus didn’t turn it off when he left and her eyes go wide as she sees what’s playing. Luke is calling Ashton out, saying that if he doesn’t present himself then he’s proving that the Lycans don’t want peace with the people of the world. If Ashton doesn’t show then he leaves Luke with no choice but to remove him and the rest of the werewolves from the canyon, by any means necessary.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“He can’t do it.” Sofie bursts out with the words as soon as Gus walks back into the room.
Gus looks between her and the television screen, putting two and two together. But he doesn’t offer her any kind of consolation that what she’s seeing on the screen is any different to what’s happening in real life.
“It can’t be true. Ashton can’t be planning to do as Luke has asked. It’s just a way of baiting him, of getting him out in the open. Once that happens Luke can do whatever he wants!” Sofie’s anger has fuelled her tirade, but she can feel that it’s taken more of her energy than she would ever have thought just to string those sentences together. In the silence that follows Gus gives Sofie her answer without having to say anything. “That’s what he’s gone to think over, isn’t it? He’s actually thinking about doing it.”
Gus doesn’t meet her eyes, instead he looks down at the ground, concentrating on a spot on the floor. “Ashton would do anything for the safety of the pack, well, just about anything.” Gus looks at her then and it’s clear that he’s saying that he won’t sacrifice Sofie for the sake of the pack, but there’s no judgement in his expression, if anything he looks like he understands. “If Ashton faces Luke then he can make a deal with Luke, he can get you to a hospital, to save you, without having to worry about you being arrested when you get there.”
Sofie listens to Gus’s words but she’s only really half-hearing them. “And what happens to Ashton?”
Gus’s silence speaks volumes. He clearly doesn’t trust Luke any further than he can throw him and he’s right to feel that way.
“I heard them talking. Turning me, it could work, couldn’t it?” Sofie bites her bottom lip, not wanting to show any sign of weakness in front of Gus.
“Ashton is my friend and more than that, he’s my Pack Master. But when it comes to you he doesn’t see straight. He can’t. He and Lindsey are barely speaking to each other now. He doesn’t want to hear that turning you might be the only way to -,” he stops abruptly, his eyes wide like he’s realized that he’s said far too much.
“It’s alright, Gus. I know how bad it is. I’m the one feeling it.” She smiles weakly at him and he ducks his head in acknowledgement, looking ashamed of his faux pas.
“You’re a brave lady, Sofie. You risked your life to help your friends. You’d make a go
od member of the pack. I’d be proud to have you.” Gus doesn’t look at her directly and Sofie sees how hard it is for him to say the words. In a way his compliments mean even more when it’s clear that he’s a man that doesn’t give them away freely. “I should let you rest, Ash will be back soon.”
Sofie barely hears him leave, he pads so quietly across the floor, typically wolfish in his quiet elegance. Sofie thinks back over what Lindsey and Ashton had told her about being turned. She had such limited information, there was so little that she actually knew about the process. They had told her that she would have to be near death for the transformation to work. Check, she thinks to herself ruefully. She had overheard Lindsey say that now they knew Sofie had the Lycan gene, perhaps the transformation could work without the power from the stream. Perhaps.
Sofie can feel her body slipping away from her, piece by piece and she knows that she doesn’t have long. She’s not getting better, whatever they’re doing for her, it’s just buying her time. Being turned, it’s the one chance that she has, the one chance that she has to survive, to stop Ashton from giving himself over to Luke, to keep the pack together. But Ashton doesn’t want to believe what’s happening to her, he’s in denial that this is the only way to save her. The time has come. Sofie knows what she has to do. She has to make Ashton’s decision for him.
It takes all of her strength to move from the couch and her necklace bangs against her chest, making her skin ache. She struggles to take it off, fumbling a few times as her clumsy hands and fingers remember how to work. She lays it on the table, seeing how the light makes the dark stone sparkle. She takes a deep breath, pushing all of her fear and pain to the bottom of her stomach. Here we go, she thinks to herself as she sets about unwinding the bandage from her side. It takes a long time, far longer than it would have if she were in full control of all of her limbs. Finally she gets to the bottom layer of the bandage. It’s soaked in blood, her blood. She knows that the only thing stemming the flow of blood, at least slightly is the gauze taped to her side, putting pressure on the wound. She holds her breath and rips it off.
She covers her mouth, muffling her cry of pain. The wound in her side is angry and red and leaking. It has a yellowish/black tinge around the skin, as if it were infected. Right now she prayed for something as simple as an infection. Whatever was happening to her was far more serious than that.
She gathers all her strength together and forces herself to stand up. Her legs feel like they belong to someone else, and it feels like she’s a toddler learning to walk all over again. Well, that’s if you can even call it walking, it’s more of a shuffle. She can feel the heat of her blood dripping down her side as she moves, biting her lip against the pain.
She shuffles into the kitchen, knowing she needs to be quick if this is going to work. She doesn’t know how much blood she can lose before she passes out and she can’t run the risk of bleeding out here on the kitchen floor. She needs to get outside, she needs to get to Ashton, before it’s too late.
Suddenly, she hears the sound of an argument outside and then footsteps, one set and then another heading towards the door. She supports herself against the kitchen counter, so that she doesn’t fall down. At that moment the door bursts opens and Ashton and Lindsey walk in, arguing. They’re so focused on what they’re saying that it takes a few seconds for them to see her and then a few more to process what they’re seeing.
Ashton is by her side in an instant as if he had flown there. “What are you doing? Where’s your bandage?” He looks around them, panicked as if he expects to see it lying on the floor in a heap.
“I took it off.” She swallows hard as she sees the expression on Ashton’s face. “You said I had to be dying for it to work.” She smiles weakly. “So here I am.”
“What? What are you talking about? You shouldn’t even be out of bed.” Ashton moves to lift her up but she pushes him away. Weak as she is the expression on her face tells Ashton that she’s not going to go quietly.
“Don’t.” Sofie shakes her head, trying to make him understand. “This is my decision, Ash. Let me make it.”
“What? No!” Realization dawns on his face and the look in his eyes breaks Sofie’s heart. “Lindsey, tell her she’s being crazy!”
Lindsey has been frozen to the spot, looking between Sofie and Ashton like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Sofie looks at her with hope in her eyes.
Lindsey, you told me I had to wake up. This is me waking up. Sofie uses what little energy she has left to send Lindsey a message with her mind, just like she’d taught her to do. She skips over the fact that Sofie’s little kamikaze mission probably wasn’t exactly what her friend had in mind.
Lindsey takes a breath, nods and then fixes her attention on Ashton. “She’s right, Ash. It’s her decision.”
Ashton’s face crumples at her words. But Sofie doesn’t give him time to argue. “It’s the only way. I won’t let you surrender to Luke to save me, it’s suicide.”
“And what you’re doing is so much better than that?” His blue eyes are so full of conflict that she feels the urge to reach out and comfort him, but she has to stand firm.
As he’s talking pain slices through Sofie’s head and her side like a sword and she cries out.
Ashton holds on to her tight, as if he’s afraid she’s going to disappear in front of him. Lindsey looks over her, concern plastered over her face. “She’s losing a lot of blood, Ash. We don’t have any more time to wait.”
Ashton still doesn’t say anything, it’s as if he’s in shock, like he doesn’t believe that this is actually happening.
“I’ll be alright. Trust me. You said yourself I was tough,” she reminds him, wishing that she felt strong. “Ash, I don’t want to die lying on that goddam couch.” The anger in her voice surprises even her. At that moment it strikes her that we don’t know how much we love life until we face the prospect of it being taken away from us.
Ashton looks between his best friend and his lover, shocked and angry at them both for forcing his hand. “Damn you, Sofie Braun for making me do this.” He grits his teeth as his eyes burn golden. He barks an order at Lindsey. “Assemble the pack.”
Lindsey doesn’t wait for him to say it twice, she runs out of the door faster than Sofie has ever seen her move. Ashton lifts her up into his arms, careful not to hurt her, and he cradles her close to him. She splays her hand out over his heart, feeling it beating quickly.
By the time he’s taken her outside, the rest of the weres have assembled as if by magic. They stand in a circle, ready for what is about to happen. Ashton carries Sofie into the center of the circle, placing her softly down on the grass.
“It’s time.” His words echo out around the assembled pack and, as one they hold each other’s hands, creating an unbroken circle.
Ashton kneels down next to her, stroking the line from her cheekbone down to her jaw. His eyes are so full of love that it nearly chokes Sofie. He leans down so that only she can hear him. Her breathing is going in fits and starts now and her vision is starting to go blurry. She’s bleeding out. This is what it must feel like to die, she thinks to herself. It’s more peaceful than she had imagined, it feels like she’s just slipping underwater.
“Damn you for making me do this.” His voice growls in her ear, but it’s not anger that she hears, it’s fear. “I can’t lose you.” He can barely get the words out, like saying them is too close to making it real.
“You won’t.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. “Have a little faith,” she smiles sleepily, feeling her grip on reality tenuously thin.
Ashton takes a deep breath, “Don’t you die on me. I love you Sofie Braun.” The words are said so softly it’s like they’ve been carried on the wind from far away.
Ashton steps back and by the time she’s blinked, he’s standing beside her in his magnificent wolf form. His eyes change from gold to blue and back again, the man overcoming the wolf. This is going to hurt. He sends the thought to her
and she nods to show that she’s heard him.
He pauses, like he’s re-thinking the whole thing, but Sofie doesn’t give him the option to back out. She looks at him with an unmistakable intensity in her eyes. Do it, she tells him. I trust you. I love you. Do it for me.
A beat more passes between them before the wolf opens his mouth and closes his jaws over her arm, biting her, hard. Sofie screams, but it’s like she can’t get enough air into her lungs. She remembers flashes of her dream, the dream where Ashton was chasing her in the woods. She had thought that Ashton was killing her in her dream, that it was telling her that she should be afraid of him, afraid of his power. And that’s what it feels like now, like he’s killing her. It’s a pain like she has never known.
But he’s not killing you, Sofie tells herself. He’s giving you a second chance at life. She focuses on that as the world spins around her. She feels like she’s freezing and burning up at the same time. She feels strong and weak, elated and depressed, heavy and light as air, large and small, young and old as the dirt she’s lying on. She is a mass of contradictions and then her eyes close.
***
The world seems to be spinning around her and what happens next could only be described as what she would imagine a trip on LSD would be like. Sofie watches as images appear before her eyes, her parents the last time she saw them, Ashton the first time they locked gazes. Absently, he wonders if she knew she loved him even then. But she doesn’t have time to contemplate that for long. She’s suddenly aware of her body, aware of it in microscopic detail almost. It seems as if she can feel the very tips of her fingernails, that she’s conscious of the longest strand of hair on her head.
That’s when the pain starts. She had thought that Ashton’s bite would be the worst of it, but that was nothing compared to this. Her head feels like it’s going to split apart, and she wonders if that’s even biologically possible. Sharp aches run through her and she hears repeated cracking echo on in the silence, like someone eating potato chips really loudly at the movie theatre. It takes a few moments for Sofie to realize that what she’s hearing is coming from her, from her body. It’s the sound of her own bones breaking and then being re-aligned, shifted into something else, into some other being. Her skin is being stretched like a drum and she feels like she’s being pulled in a million different directions at once. She opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. There’s no one to hear her anyway. She’s all alone, in the blackness of her mind.
Torrent (Alpha Love - a Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 4) Page 14
