When Ivy answers what medications she’s taking, she says just one name under her breath and I don’t quite catch it, so I have no idea, still, what those pills I fetched from her car are for, but Cat’s eyes move to me just briefly before she writes something down on the paper and purses her lips. “How long have you been mated?”
“It’s a couple days since he… caught me and bit me.” She says this with ambivalence in her voice and it angers me to hear the tone she uses as well as the words that make it clear to Catrina Savage that she’s with me against her will. I know this is the truth, but it won’t change a thing. She’s mine. And as soon as she’s out of this clinic, well enough, she’s getting mounted, knotted, and again taught who she belongs to. Maybe the lessons will stick this time.
My chest hurts as I have this thought, because I don’t know if my lessons will make her submit in a way that I lose the Ivy I’ve been growing to love, the one who forgets she wants to go away and does sweet things and looks at me with smiles in her eyes.
I don’t want to put bruises on her. I wanna make her smile with her mouth and with her eyes. I want excitement like when she was anxious for me to taste that sandy fruit sauce she made for me. I want her to look at me like she did this morning and then climb onto me and wrap her arms around me. I don’t want her crying in a ball on the bathroom floor and punching me when I try to hold her.
I clamp my teeth together and level her with a dark gaze. She looks away from me. Again.
“Right. I’ll talk to Tyson for a minute. Try to rest. How’s your pain?” Catrina asks.
“It’s not too bad,” she says. “It’s there but better than it was, for sure.”
“I gave you some pain medication and I gave you a small dose since you’re such a small girl but if the pain gets worse, you let me know and I’ll get you some more.”
A greying bearded man, not a shifter, not even half shifter, pokes his head in, then he looks at me with a startled expression. “Catrina. A minute, please?”
There are more people in that other room now and I don’t like it.
Lincoln sits there and catches my eyes. I gaze at his feet, seeing Ivy’s two bags there. He didn’t have them when he ran as wolf. He must have gone back to the site and retrieved them. He signals Catrina also, and hands her a dead snake. He fetched that, too.
“Good. Now we know precisely what we are dealing with,” she says, looking over at me.
I nod at Lincoln. He thumps his chest.
I don’t like the feeling I have right now, which is similar to when I had to go to the bar to meet women and there were people everywhere. I’m even more uneasy now because these people are the people Uncle warned me about. They are closing in and I have to wonder if they do have any ill intentions. These people seem more than aware of who I am, almost as aware as I am of them. It’s as if there’s static in the air, the way it feels when there’s a pending storm.
I sense none are threats, but I don’t trust that feeling because it’s contradicting everything I’ve been taught. I’m at war with what to feel because of all the lies.
I wait for Cat’s return. Ivy’s eyes are closed and she’s either trying to sleep or pretending to sleep. Despite her eyes being closed, I know she’s awake. I know by the pace of her breathing, of her heart, that she’s warring with emotions and filled with stress.
As for me, I’m staying alert because if any of those people make a move toward us that gives me any feelings of threat, I’ll be ready to either rip them to shreds or bolt with my woman.
I now know for certain Cornelius hurt Catrina Savage at least once, likely a lot more than once if he’s the source of her spending these years without her son, without her husband. I know that was her scent. I knew it earlier when she had that woman beside her with a similar scent but not close enough that I could be mistaken about who Cornelius was with.
I know little to nothing else but what I’ve pieced together and barely given myself an opportunity to process, as Riley would say, because of Ivy and because of me. The way I process now might be different from how I’d process if I hadn’t neglected to shift for so long. I hate this feeling I have, the no-control feeling, over protecting my mate, over the people around me; I hate the way my mind keeps shuffling through all I know, or all I thought I knew.