Pretty poison, p.2
Pretty Poison, page 2
By the time Wade hauled him from the shower to towel him dry, the smells of his father, brothers, and home had washed away.
Noah’s mind shut down.
They walked him through another door to a utilitarian bedroom and dumped him on a narrow bed, where he lay in a boneless heap. The beta placed a basin next to him. “In case you throw up again.”
“His body temperature is lower than ours, more human than shifter. Turn the thermostat up. I don’t want him uncomfortable.” The alpha leaned over him, palm cupping Noah’s cheek. “You’re going to be all right. I promise.”
Noah shut his eyes, and after they’d gone, when the room was dark and the ticking of the baseboard heater proved the alpha’s command had been obeyed, Noah finally realized he wouldn’t be raped. He wasn’t safe, but they were leaving him alone. For now. He surrendered to exhausted sleep.
* * *
When he awoke, the basin was gone. Someone had moved him under the sheets and a green cotton blanket. He smelled a stranger in the room, but numb by his terror, Noah didn’t cringe. He turned inside the snug cocoon of covers to find the indistinct blur of a new shifter standing guard at the door a few feet away. Miraculously, his wire-rim glasses rested on an otherwise bare night table. He groped and awkwardly shoved his glasses onto his nose. Able to see now, Noah lowered his gaze in the submissive pose he was positive would be expected of a prisoner and used the opportunity to surreptitiously study his guard. He was tall like most shifters and dark, with a long tail of black hair streaming down his back from an elastic band at his nape. He was dressed like city shifters—jeans, a simple blue work shirt, and scuffed boots. Noah couldn’t be sure. Last night was a blur and all shifters looked the same to him, big and bulky with muscle. As blunted as his sense of smell tended to be, though, he didn’t recognize this shifter’s scent. This one was new.
The stranger frowned, but didn’t speak to him. Instead, the guard reached for a cell phone strapped to his waist. “He’s awake.”
Without his leg brace or forearm crutches, Noah sat up in the bed and scooted to lean against the plain oak headboard. He tugged the blanket up to his chin, only his head remaining uncovered. He had to pee and his bad leg hurt like fire, but until he knew how much trouble he’d landed in, he wouldn’t move again.
One of the betas from last night walked into the sparse room moments later, and Noah sighed in relief that it wasn’t the shifter who’d slapped him. “He hasn’t been up?”
“Too scared.” The guard studied Noah through narrowed eyes. “He’s pretty scrawny. I’m not sure he can.”
The newcomer grunted. “Wade won’t like that. C’mon.” He and the guard tore Noah’s blanket away. They helped him to the bathroom, and when Noah couldn’t stand upright, the beta from last night supported him while Noah urinated into the toilet. And Noah thought his hospital stays were embarrassing? The pokes and prods from dozens of human nurses hadn’t compared to this. The shifters steadied him while he washed his hands and brushed his teeth. They handed him a comb for his hair, then a washcloth to wipe his face.
When they returned him to the bedroom, they plunked him in a tangled clump on the mattress, but his bladder wasn’t ready to burst. They’d permitted basic grooming. A tray of food now rested on the night table where his glasses had been. Noah’s mouth watered at mountains of scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon.
His morning could have been a lot worse.
The guard exited the bedroom, but the beta from last night stayed. He nodded to the food. “Eat.”
Noah stared at the steaming platter. His empty stomach yowled. He guessed the meal could have been drugged, but they didn’t need to sedate him to make him do what they wanted. They must not have settled on killing him. Not yet at least, not if they were feeding him. He didn’t see any purpose in starving, especially since refusing food would be considered a challenge. That, Noah knew, would be met with merciless efficiency.
Wrapping a corner of the blanket around him to cover his nudity, he reached for the tray. It was heavier than it looked, weighed down with more food than Noah was accustomed to, and he snorted when he noticed the cutlery was plastic. Like he was dangerous?
“You’re on suicide watch.”
Noah’s jaw dropped. “I don’t want to die,” he protested.
The beta shrugged. “Sick and injured wolves do desperate things.”
Sure, they did. Like submit to antiquated mating pacts to spare the lives of their kin. But a deal was a deal. City shifters might deem Noah damaged beyond repair, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hold up his end of that bargain. “I said I’d cooperate.”
The shifter rolled his eyes. “Then, eat.”
Noah glared at the beta before grudgingly returning his attention to his food. The massive portions were more in line with the quantities his brothers and his dad regularly consumed. Shifting burned lots of energy. They needed the extra calories. Noah didn’t. Dr. Phares had him on a strict diet, carefully balancing nutrition and caloric intake so he wouldn’t gain weight that could throw off his precarious balance or hinder his physical therapy. He never went hungry, but he never enjoyed this kind of excess, either. Though his family mixed with humans often, most shifters didn’t. The city pack was no judge of proper portions for damaged wolves like him.
Still, he couldn’t refuse.
Picking at the scrambled eggs, he lifted a bite on the ridiculous plastic fork to sniff it. According to Dr. Phares, his sense of smell was almost as muted as a human’s, but blunted senses were better than none at all. His nose scented nothing amiss. Just eggs. He poked out his tongue to test the taste and groaned at the explosion of cheese mingling with the eggs. He shut his eyes, a shiver of delight working up his spine. When had he last been allowed cheese? Probably not since his mother’s heart attack, shortly after his recovery plateaued following his first shifts.
If cheese masked the taste of drugs, Noah didn’t care.
He shoveled the bite into his mouth. Then another. And another. Ducking his gaze to avoid the tiny curl at one corner of the beta’s lips, which Noah supposed passed for a smile, he ate scrambled eggs—only the eggs—until his cavernous stomach filled. Before last night, he might’ve been embarrassed at his haste, but the food tasted wonderful. Besides, with his modesty preserved by only the stingy corner of a blanket, pride numbered among the many items he couldn’t afford anymore. He ate rapidly and gluttonously, reasoning that increasing his food intake must have balanced out the calories he’d burned while he’d struggled with his terror last night. Even then, when his fork slowed, mounds of food remained on the platter.
“More,” the beta commanded.
Too bad Noah couldn’t justify consuming the rest. Piles of crispy bacon taunted him especially, but he didn’t know when or if he’d see a pool for exercise again. He didn’t want to risk force-feeding, though. He nudged the eggs with his fork. Squaring his shoulders, he screwed up his nerve to ask for his leg brace. “I can’t walk without it,” he said, pausing to consider how to condense the dry terms in a way someone unfamiliar with his medical history would understand. “My knees hyper-extend. Mostly the right leg, but also the left. I wish I could control that, but I can’t. I could dislocate the joints, tear muscles and tendons. Unless you want to carry me to the bathroom every time I have to pee or watch me crawl—”
“Eat.” The beta crossed his arms over his chest.
That wasn’t a “no” exactly. To show his good will, Noah forked more fluffy eggs into his mouth. “I need my medicines, too,” he said after he’d consumed the bite. “Pins stabilize my hips. The white lines running down my legs? Those are scars from my surgeries. Dr. Phares said I might be able to walk without pins, plates, and bars strengthening my bones once I’m fully grown, but not yet.”
“You’re twenty years old.”
“Exactly.” Noah nodded. “I’m small, even by human standards. Dr. Phares wants to give me another year to see if I hit a growth spurt delayed by the accident.”
“Shifters mature by sixteen.” The beta scowled at him. “You’re short and too skinny, but you’re an adult.”
Frowning, Noah shoveled another heaping mound of scrambled eggs he didn’t want into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “Listen, I’m not like you. Not like other shifters.”
“But you are a shifter.” The beta glowered. “A stubborn one who needs to shift.”
That was what he was afraid of and the last thing he should do. “My doctors adapted to my physiology. After I stopped therapeutic shifting to try to heal the damage, we worked around using bars and plates as much as we could, but I have a few left in me. Anything foreign to our bodies disappears during a shift, though. So I can’t shift, okay?”
Eventually, Noah stopped trying. He dutifully ate as much of his breakfast as he could stand. Only then did the beta move, walking to the bed to collect the still half-filled plate. “I won’t make trouble. I’ll do whatever he wants, I swear. Just please...tell me what’s happening? Why is he holding me prisoner?”
“You aren’t a prisoner. You were rescued,” the beta said, but when he left with the dirty dishes, Noah heard the lock click.
* * *
The shifters brought more food when Noah’s stomach told him it must be time for lunch, and with the heaping platter of fried chicken, they brought his forearm crutches. If he was careful, he could cross the fifteen feet to the bathroom without destroying his knee. Again, he dutifully ate under the watchful gaze of the beta assigned to him. He asked for his meds, true fear edging his polite if fervent requests. When his anxiety for his family spiked and his nerve broke, he begged the tight-lipped stranger to tell him what he’d done wrong. Hadn’t Noah complied exactly with what the city shifters had demanded of him? The countless other questions he couldn’t and wouldn’t ask ate at him. Why had he been jailed instead of taken to the alpha’s bed? Was he on trial? Had the pack finally decided to punish him for dealing with humans? Or worse, had they judged him too injured to survive, much less fulfill his duties as the alpha’s mate?
Nothing.
No response.
His guard at dinner at least gave him some glimmer of what he faced. When he asked for his meds, the beta flinched. And sneered. “Poison.” That was all he said. One word: poison. Technically, the shifter was correct. Noah knew it. His family knew it. His medical team knew it. The only substance that would prevent a shift long-term was aconitum—wolfsbane—and since Noah couldn’t control his shifting, he’d been on the drug for years.
And he’d been without it too long.
Noah sensed the turmoil building inside his mind, the stirring of the wolf fighting to break free. Even after the beta’s condemning “poison,” Noah had pleaded with him, as pathetic as an addict begging for his next fix, even though Noah didn’t crave aconitum. He didn’t get a high from it. The drug made him sleepy and nauseated. He hated it, but he feared losing the few medical appliances in his body during an unwanted shift even more. Enough to grovel. Enough to promise anything.
He got stony silence and the tense line of the beta’s back as he marched out the door when Noah refused to touch the mounds of steaks prepared for his supper.
He should’ve known his rebellion would be reported.
Noah sat on the bed, fidgeting restlessly, skin itching with how bad the wolf inside called to him. It wouldn’t be long. Years had passed since he’d last shifted, those instincts too ruthlessly denied. Noah wouldn’t need the lure of the moon, which he damn well knew was only at first quarter. It would happen. Again and again, so fast and furious he wouldn’t be able to stop. His wolf would take over, whether he wanted that or not. His crippled wolf, with legs as damaged as Noah’s, unable to stand or walk, unable to fight. Unable to hunt.
They’d kill him then. That’s what they’d wanted when Noah was four, after the fall. Shifter healing couldn’t mend such devastation. Noah would never be normal, not by their standards. He wouldn’t be able to provide for himself or defend territory. Until he woke from his coma, his parents hadn’t known if Noah’s intelligence had been affected or if he would be functional. For many years, he hadn’t been.
So many surgeries. Once Noah began shifting at a delayed thirteen, the spider web of scars mapping his body from the accident had vanished, but he’d nevertheless spent the bulk of his childhood in hospitals and rehab centers. The fall had injured his wolf. His shifter blood healed him sporadically and sometimes had no effect at all. Infections had set his recovery back and had nearly killed him twice. He’d fought, though. Every time. He’d regained full use of his arms and hands. He’d learned to read. Then, had relearned it after a nasty bout with encephalitis had wiped out whole sections of his memory. When his first shifts had mended the worst of the damage, he’d climbed out of his wheelchair before his recovery had plateaued, too. He’d never run a marathon, but with a little help and support, he could walk. He’d even managed to complete a home-study course on website design and had begun building his business online, which was unheard of in the shifter community, where adults learned blue-collar trades passed from father to son. Noah might be the first shifter to earn a human degree, an achievement he and his family were proud of.
None of that mattered. He was useless in the eyes of other shifters, weak. A sick animal to be culled from the pack. City shifters had shunned his family when they’d appealed to humans for help in saving Noah’s life, and his parents had sacrificed everything, leaving town to avoid the shifters that might hurt him.
There was nothing to prevent them from hurting him now. And Noah couldn’t prevent the shift that would spell his doom from happening. Especially after the pack’s alpha walked through the bedroom door with a platter of raw, bloody meat.
Noah was close, his wolf near the surface. He’d smelled the metallic tang of blood before Wade opened the door. Noah scrambled to the other side of the bed, shoving his body into the corner, to hell with his bad leg. Once that intoxicating scent intensified in the confines of the room and the fresh bright red of the kill made Noah’s mouth water, resistance would be futile.
“No,” he groaned as the shifter laid the platter of meat on the bedroom floor.
“Stop fighting this. You need to shift. If you refuse, I’ll command you to do it by nightfall.”
Noah squeezed his eyelids shut, chest heaving at the delicious scent. “No, no, no,” he mumbled, fingers clenching and releasing the sheets as he pushed away.
“Your strong will is to your credit, but what lies must they have told you to compel you to deny what you are?”
When Noah shook his head, the alpha’s arms snaked around him, gently tugging him from the bed. Noah tried to yank away, but he hurt so bad. His skin itched, too tight for his body. His bones ached to the marrow. The alpha pulled him from the bed. He carried him to the floor where the meat waited, as though Noah’s weight was hardly a burden, as if Noah’s squirming was just a trifling annoyance. His brothers were so careful with Noah and afraid of hurting him, he’d forgotten that about shifters. They were fucking strong.
“Accept what you are meant to be,” the alpha said, settling Noah on the hard floor. Wade pulled his own shirt off. He dropped his hand to his fly. He unzipped his pants. He kicked free of his clothes. “Shift.”
Then, the bastard crouched and tempted Noah’s wolf by loosing his own. Thick black fur pushed through Wade’s skin, his bones elongating, his chest narrowing.
That was too much for Noah, more than he could bear. Despite his grief-stricken cry, his human mind receded, and the wolf tore free to obey and join the alpha. Unlike Wade’s transformation between man and wolf—smooth due to years of practice and experience—Noah’s shift was awkward. Painful. He grunted, groaned, and shouted as his bones broke, at the terrific ache in his chest as the wolf’s extra ribs took shape. He contorted while new vertebrae wedged into his spine. His skin burned, his fur slowly pushing through. He screamed in agony when his skull reformed, his glasses skidding across the floor while he twisted and convulsed, but the wolf triumphed. Even as blood dripped from his fingertips where his claws had erupted, Noah’s wolf pushed its snout forward to lick at the stinging wounds.
Already back in his human form with his mission accomplished, Wade stroked the top of Noah’s head. He scratched behind Noah’s ears, which felt amazing. Noah thumped his tail against the oak floor.
“You’re starving needlessly. No one will hurt you or your wolf again,” Wade said, rising to fumble for his discarded clothes. “You agreed to honor the pact, but you must be stronger before the mating can proceed.”
The wolf wanted the meat. He was cavernously hungry, his belly a gnawing pit, but the platter had been knocked aside during Noah’s writhing. The wolf couldn’t reach it. No matter how he tried to push his legs beneath him, the wolf could not stand and he wouldn’t crawl, not if he could help it. His right haunch tensed, but the muscle refused to work. He had better luck with the left leg, which he could at least push upright, but the leg buckled when he gave it his full weight. He whined, maddened by the lush scent of meat.
“Eat,” Wade said, shirt bunched in a ring around his neck. He pulled his pants over his hips. “Your alpha demands it.”
The wolf didn’t have an alpha. The scent of his father, the closest thing to an alpha the wolf had known, didn’t perfume the air, or the tangy musk of his brothers and sister. That lack and his loss suddenly vised his chest, his grief over his absent family more wrenching than his sorrow at the distance separating him from the food he craved.
Wade nudged the platter closer. “Eat it all or you won’t have the energy to shift into a short, stubborn man again.”
