*Maddox*
I walk ahead of the stretcher carrying Isla and try not to pull my fur out. If I had thumbs, I might’ve already pulled out enough fur around my forehead that I’d look bald.
Images of a wolf with a receding hairline come to mind, and I almost laugh. But nothing is that funny right now.
What the actual fuck was she thinking?
I already know the answer to that question.
As much as I want to blame Isla for all of this, it’s my fault. She left because I was rude and dismissive. She left because she was upset with me. What else could it possibly be? She hasn’t been feeling well, and I didn’t even check on her today while I was gone to look for the missing kidnappers.
The castle comes into view ahead of me, and I’m glad to see it. I’m not as energetic as I was before, so I don’t leap over the fence in a single bound. Instead, I call ahead, and the side gates are open when we get there. Using the mind-link, I call for a servant to open the door for me as well, and I trot down the hallway to my own room.
Seth is waiting for me. He unlocks my door, and I mind-link him to say, “Collect the clothes I stripped out of. My keys are in my pocket.”
I’ve got to stop leaving my keys lying around.
“I already got them,” he says, and I see them lying on my bed. “Shall I send the healer into Isla’s room? Is she all right?”
Grabbing my clothes in my teeth, I head to the bathroom and say, “Yeah, she needs medical attention. Her shoulder is hurt.”
“I’ll let Mystica know,” he replies, and I pause in the doorway of the bathroom.
Something about his words has me on edge. “Seth, stay in there with her while Mystica is there, at least until I can get there.”
“Okay.” There’s a questioning lilt to my Beta’s voice.
I don’t want to explain to him why I am leery of Mystica. I’m not sure how much of her past he is familiar with, but I don’t want her filling Isla’s head with things she doesn’t need to know about.
Shifting into my human form, I close the door and turn on the shower, hoping I can wash away some of the stress in the shower before I get dressed. I won’t put these clothes back on, but I’ve got to stop leaving my keys lying around. Even if they don’t unlock Rebecca’s room, I don’t need people going to places where they don’t belong.
The warm water sinks into my sore muscles and starts to ease the ache, but it does nothing for the pain in my heart.
I will go and speak to Isla as soon as I can. I have to find a way to fix this, but it won’t be easy. She was awfully upset at me to do something like this. I didn’t think she was capable of striking out on her own. I thought she’d be too afraid, too timid.
That just goes to show I don’t know her as well as I think I do….
*Isla*
The lights of the hallway have me opening my eyes. We are back in the castle. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere at the moment, except for maybe in my mother’s arms.
I am carried to my room and transferred onto my bed. Mystica is there already and has a sheet spread over my blankets so I won’t bleed on them.
“Stay in your wolf form for now, dear,” she instructs me. “Let me take a look.” She shoos the others out of the room, but Poppy is standing in the corner, and I have an idea that someone else is present, too, behind me, near the door.
I have no idea who it is, but I know it’s not Maddox. I would smell him if it were.
I would sense him.
Perhaps he needed to go check on his other breeder–his only breeder, I suppose–to see if all of this excitement has made her go into early labor.
From the looks of things, I’m guessing early would amount to about fifteen minutes.
Mystica is muttering under her breath as she takes my bag off of my back and inspects my shoulder and my head. She’s already removed my bandages by cutting through my fur. I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I shift much. “Your head wound appears to be superficial,” she explains to me.
It doesn’t feel superficial.
“This bite in your shoulder is more serious. I’ll take care of that first. Okay, dear, I need you to shift so I can sew you up more easily without all of the fur in the way.”
“I’ll step out for a moment.” I recognize the voice as Beta Seth.
“You don’t need to stay, dear,” Mystica calls after him as the door opens.
He says nothing, and once she gives me a reassuring smile, I go ahead and transform back into my human shape, which is a little painful because of my injuries, but I’m okay.
Another sheet comes over the top of me, and then Mystica is back to patching me up.
This time, when the door opens, I’m not at all surprised to see that it’s Seth.
“I said you could go,” Mystica repeats, a questioning tone to her statement.
“I know,” Seth says as he settles into a chair near the table where I usually take my meals.
That’s all he says, and Mystica doesn’t question him further, so I suppose there must be a reason he won’t leave.
And I suppose that it’s because he’s afraid I might take off again, or Maddox is. I can’t blame them. They paid a lot of money for me, at least, in theory. They did forgive the debt my Alpha, Ernest, owed them. So, I suppose it would make me upset if someone who had cost that much left. I should just stay here and become a maid like Poppy or something.
I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I do know that it would make me unbelievably forlorn to see Maddox every day and have him treat me like I’m just another maid.
I wonder if there are other women in the castle that he has slept with who are just servants to him. Maybe they are stronger than I am, but I couldn’t handle that. Perhaps they can put me on a wing of the castle that he never goes to.
The sting of the needle as it passes through my flesh, again and again, has my turning my head to watch as Mystica sews up my bite. It looks pretty nasty, but I don’t think there are too many pieces of flesh missing. If the wolf had torn the meat away from my shoulder, I’d be in worse agony than I already am, and while I am certainly feeling torment and torture, it’s mostly in my heart, not my shoulder or head.
When she is done cleaning and sewing up my shoulder, Mystica wraps it up with a bandage. There we go. And your head just needs to be cleaned and wrapped.
“You won’t need to shave my head and stitch it up?” The idea of Maddox wanting to have anything at all to do with me if I’m balled makes my stomach twist into a knot. But then I have to ask myself why I’m holding onto this idea that there’s a possibility that this is all some sort of misunderstanding, and he still wants to be with me at all?
“All right, dear. We’ll let Poppy get you cleaned up and dressed,” Mystica says, repacking her doctor’s bag. “Take two of these pills for the pain every six hours. Poppy, see that she remembers. They make you a little sleepy.”
“When can I get out of bed?” I ask her.
Mystica pats my hand. “I’ll come to check on you tomorrow. For now, rest, and dear… try not to get upset.” With those words, she turns and looks at Seth and says, “Try not to let people upset her.”
He clears his throat, and Poppy is staring at the Beta as he gets up and follows the healer out. “Why do you think he stayed?” I ask her.
“Seriously? That’s the first thing you say to me?” she barks. “Isla, I was worried sick! I went to get you dinner, and you're gone when I get back!”
I realize I owe her an explanation and an apology. “I’m sorry,” I say as she goes into the bathroom to get what I assume is a cloth to wash me down with. “I just didn’t know what to do.”
Poppy shakes her head at me and begins to wash me. I want to tell her I can do it, especially since she’s being so rough, but she doesn’t seem to be in the mood to listen to me.
“After all I’ve been through with you. I was so worried when you were kidnapped! Now, you run away, and you don’t even send me a mind-link to tell me you’re leaving!”
She’s got every right to be angry. I’m an awful friend.
But then, I’m not used to having friends.
“I am sorry, Poppy.”
She finishes getting me cleaned up and drops a nightgown over my head. “Do you want your cold dinner?” she asks, gesturing at the table where it’s sitting on the silver platter.
“No, thank you.”
She humphs under her breath and gets my pain pills for me and a glass of water. I swallow them, feeling like a child who has misbehaved.
Maybe that’s exactly what I am.
Now that I’m no longer bleeding or dirty, she helps me get beneath the blankets on the bed and covers me up. “If you need anything, let me know,” she says. “Don’t try to get up. Even if you just need to pee.”
I thank her again, but she doesn’t say I’m welcome.
As Poppy goes to turn off the light and leave the room, my bedroom door opens slowly. There’s no knock, no announcement that someone is coming in, but I don’t need him to say it’s him. I sensed his presence before he walks into my room.
“Your Majesty,” Poppy says with a dip of her head that tells me she’s not happy with him either. I don’t pretend to know what he’s done to her. Maybe she thinks he’s the one that started all of this.
“Poppy,” he says. Maddox follows her out of the room with his eyes before he’s looking at me, and I feel like a small child again. His gaze is heavy, and I think it might crush me.
I expect him to shout at me, to lay into me right from the beginning, but the first thing he asks me, still standing by the door is, “How do you feel?”
The answer that slips from my lips is uncensored.
“Replaced.”