“Yes, I just… never thought I’d be happy that someone was dead.”
I almost laughed. But thought I might get slapped if I did.
Instead I sat next to my mate and held her hand.
“I get that.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“We wait.”
Chapter 16.
Tayte.
Damn, my head hurt.
I forced my eyes to open, though they didn’t want to. There was Sam, by my side. In a stark white room I had to assume was the hospital.
“Hey.” I swallowed, trying to make my mouth work properly. I was as dry as the desert.
“Hey, yourself,” Sam said, standing up. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got pulled through a hedge—backwards.”
Everything hurt. My head, my chest, my belly, my legs.
“Yeah, well you did a pretty good job of almost dying, but we weren’t gonna let you.”
“How…Oh…”
The memories of this morning came back to me in a flash of pain and knives and cruel laughter. “The bears.”
“Yes, the bears. What were you thinking, giving yourself over to them?”
He sounded angry at me, which was strange. After everything that had happened with Celeste, I’d thought Sam would be relieved to get rid of me.
“I was fixing all our problems in one go. The bears would leave the pack alone, and you three could be happy without me.”
That got me a soft punch in the arm.
“Ow.”
My head spun from the pain and he pushed a handle into my palm.
“Push this. It’s morphine.”
I glanced down at the green button and pressed it. Anything to help with the throb in my brain.
“Thanks.”
I lay my head back and tried to swallow again. It was like the desert in my mouth.
“Is there any water?”
Sam handed me a cup and I swallowed some down, the brief wetness enough to get my tongue to unstick from the roof of my mouth.
I closed my eyes, the pain dragging on me.