Pretty Poison (6 page)

He didn’t have his leg brace or crutches anymore. He didn’t even have a lousy Ace bandage, but after waiting what felt like decades for the beta’s return with the brace Wade had promised him last night, Noah gave up. Smears of cum had dried on him in flaking patches that itched. He reeked of sex. Dr. Phares would kill him for risking it. His father and brothers, too. He hadn’t gambled a hyper-extended knee on walking without extra support since he’d been a rebellious teenager because it wasn’t smart. But if he was careful and moved tentatively, he could shower.

Stringing the blue silk boxers around his wrist, he circled the bedroom, using the furniture to keep his bad leg steady, just like he had in his room at home when he was younger and stupid. He hit the light switch when he entered the bathroom and cringed at the resulting flare overhead. The first kernel of pain throbbed at the base of his skull before his blind groping doused the narrow room in shadows. At least he was in a bathroom. Over-the-counter painkillers wouldn’t dent the migraine, but until he convinced them to give him his meds, he’d take whatever he could scrounge.

He bumped into a cabinet and knocked over a plant before he found the bathroom vanity in the dark. Wall sconces providing a softer glow flanked both sides of a huge mirror hanging over the sink. Once his hypersensitive eyes had adjusted, he screwed up the nerve to glance at his reflection. And cringed.

Due for a trim before the caravan of SUV’s had arrived at the farm, his closely cropped hair spiked at weird angles, the rich red color accenting Wade’s bite at the crook between his neck and shoulder. The alpha must have cleaned the wound at some point during the night because blood hadn’t crusted around the torn skin and muscle. Finger-mark bruises and love bites painted his chest and hips like an artist’s brushstrokes on canvas. Even his glasses hung askew, one end kicking up higher across the bridge of his nose.

He looked like he’d been ravaged. Lifting a hand to straighten his glasses, Noah startled at the bunched blue silk around his wrist and yanked the boxers free, the pink of embarrassment coloring his cheeks when he faced the mirror again.

He promptly pivoted.

Bad enough that Wade’s beta had seen him like this. He wouldn’t engrave the image of his debauchery into his mind more than he must. A few minutes in the shower probably wouldn’t help much, but Noah didn’t have the stones to face what he’d been up to last night again until he’d washed the flaking cum off his body.

After retrieving towels from a cabinet and setting his glasses aside, he limped to the shower and then gaped at the blurry knobs at the tap. Or rather stared at where the knobs used to be. He reached behind him, blindly scrabbling for the glasses he’d rested on the vanity, but when he slid them onto his nose, what he thought he’d seen, what his faulty vision must have mistaken and
couldn’t
have seen, didn’t change.

The knobs of the faucet had been stripped.

Only faint circles of residue marked the porcelain. Gulping, he shuffled to the huge bathtub next to the shower stall, finding the same absence marked by twin circles of grime that hadn’t been scrubbed free.

That Noah was considered an inferior shifter, his wolf weak and damaged, didn’t matter. He could read these signs as though on a billboard. Wade didn’t want him to bathe.

His jaw dropped, stomach balling at the evidence of the bathroom fixtures that had probably been intact as early as the night before, but he shakily admitted, if only to himself, that he could understand why. The mating with Noah hadn’t been a love match. Noah hadn’t willingly offered himself in the alpha’s bed and if dozens of shifters hadn’t arrived to force Noah from his home, his father and brothers would have fought this mating. Noah had surrendered only to save his kin from punishment for crimes far worse than denying a mate pact. A defective wolf like him resisting one as powerful as Wade would’ve been considered grave insult among city shifters.

Wade’s scent saturated Noah’s every pore, the smells of their sex and mutual lust providing ample evidence of their mating. Proving Wade’s strength and dominance, his desirability. And his control.

Noah hadn’t been raised inside the dynamics of a pack. His dad functioned as their alpha after his mom had died, but none of them had ever truly jockeyed for higher standing in their small, isolated group. Position didn’t mean a lot in a family of six.

It signified a lot more in the city, where families allied together and unruly shifters needed the iron fist of an alpha to maintain order. Noah’s family had learned to respect humans and their ways. If his family hadn’t reined in their more primal instincts, human physicians wouldn’t have continued medical treatments for Noah. Shifters in the city had no such motivation. An alpha exacted discipline, frequently through the service of betas that ensured his orders were followed. The pack strictly policed enclaves of shifter families and provided schools for their children. Jobs. Safety. As long as a fair and capable alpha led his pack, shifters and humans in cities were more likely to live in peace.

Noah had risked that. His family had defied pack law and spurned the pact formed with city shifters before Noah had been born. So severely, Wade had forcibly retrieved his mate from their family home. Had other shifters stirred against Wade? Questioned his leadership? Noah was widely considered a lousy wolf, but even he knew the slightest chink in an alpha’s aura of strength could be disastrous, sinking a pack into anarchy.

If he bloodied his fingertips, he might be able to turn the taps, releasing water to bathe the sex smells away, but any sign of rebellion from him would be dealt with mercilessly.

Instead, he lurched to the vanity sink and wetted a washcloth there. If Wade had left that faucet intact, wiping away the worst of their sex and dried semen must be okay. Noah industriously lathered soap into the cloth. Nudging his tank top up, he scrubbed his itchy abdomen first, until the skin pinked.

His heart beat a little funny, sped up.

When he rinsed the cloth and smoothed it over his arm next, his hand shook.

Anxiety knotted his gut.

Though he wiped the irritating dried cum from his ass and thighs, his skin itched worse than before. His thoughts scrambled. The less he smelled of Wade, the more intense the uncomfortable, disconcerting feeling grew. He stubbornly continued with his bath. He wouldn’t spend the day caked with semen and sweat—

He didn’t realize the shift was upon him until his spine snapped, dropping him in agony to the Spanish tile floor. The spasms remolding muscle and bone overwhelmed everything else.

* * *

Panting through dry lips, limbs as heavy as cement, Noah lay in a ball in the den of Wade’s suite. He couldn’t remember pulling himself to the outside door. He didn’t know how he’d managed even a clumsy crawl with Wade’s tank top still looped around his neck. His wolf wasn’t the most graceful without the obstacle of human clothing to hinder it, but the wolf must’ve been desperate to make it this far, a distance farther than Noah had been willing to risk as a man on two feet.

He shivered, moaning softly as frigid air conditioning pebbled his skin. His body was too depleted by his unwanted shift to lift an arm to reach for pillows, a cushion, anything to warm him. In all his years of surgeries, physical therapy, infections, and injuries, he’d never been this weak.

The opening door hit his lax arm. Noah couldn’t move.

No alarm resounded, though, nor did a gasp of surprise break the quiet.

Eyelids heavy, Noah peered at the pair of boots that drew near and after a finger at his chin nudged his gaze upward, he blinked in drowsy exhaustion at the beta. Who frowned. He set Noah’s leg brace aside and studied him long minutes, until Noah found the strength to speak. “Tired. Can’t get up.”

The beta’s mouth quirked and he reached for the cell phone attached to his belt. He stabbed a button and brought it to his ear. “Send up liver, gizzards, whatever’s handy, and lots of it. Yes, immediately.” He shoved the phone back into its holder. “You tried to wash off, didn’t you? It’s too soon for you to lose Wade’s scent. Your wolf’s smarter than you are.”

Noah blew out a quavering breath. “Locked.” They’d locked him in.

“I said the wolf was smart
er
.” Chuckling, the beta grabbed him by the biceps and hauled Noah from the carpet, propping him to sit against the spindly legs of a chair. “I didn’t say he was
smart.
”

Once the second platter of meat arrived and the beta—who finally deigned to introduce himself as Fletcher—had shoveled the slimy mess down Noah’s throat, Noah felt better. Horrifically weak, but not helpless. Steady enough to choke on the entrails and object, not that Fletcher listened.

“I need my muscle relaxants. My migraine pills,” Noah mumbled between bites, but Fletcher didn’t pay attention to that, either. When he asked for his glasses, the beta pushed to his feet and returned with them minutes later, though.

The wire frame had bent.

The right lens tipped up worse than before from the bridge of his nose. Noah could barely look through the bottom edge of the lens. He ripped them off and gently tried to bend the frame back into shape. When he failed, Fletcher snatched the glasses away to try as well. When he handed them to Noah and Noah returned the glasses to his face, the frames rested more or less on his nose. Sort of. Mostly. Still a little cock-eyed, the thin wire design hadn’t been durable enough to withstand a second involuntary shift. Noah counted himself lucky that the frame hadn’t snapped.

The problem was, he still couldn’t see. He squinted at Fletcher and then, scowling foul temper, Noah tore his glasses off. “Must have scratched the lenses.”

“Humans make them practically bullet proof these days.”

“Then you smudged them.” Noah pushed the glasses away.

“Maybe your vision’s improving.”

Noah’s eyesight hadn’t changed since he was thirteen so he didn’t bother to answer that nonsensical insanity. “This is why I can’t shift.” He glowered at the beta. “Shifting messes up everything.”

“Nothing’s broken that can’t be mended,” Fletcher said, ignoring Noah’s contemptuous grunt. The beta tucked the mangled glasses into his pocket. “Eat.”

When he’d finished off the food, Fletcher peeled a pressure stocking up Noah’s bad leg and shoved his feet into new tennis shoes. Then, he straightened Noah’s leg for the brace. Fletcher had trouble positioning and strapping him into it. Exhausted, Noah was little help. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Couldn’t make his fingers work, either. Fletcher left him on the floor near the door, returning with a pair of sweatpants and scissors. “Wade said to give you clothes that covered up more of you, if that made you comfortable.” The beta glowered. “Even though it inconveniences everybody else.”

If the shifter expected Noah to relent, poor him. Not a chance.

Fletcher stuffed Noah into the sweats, which were big on him. His hips and legs were lost in cotton even with the added bulk of his brace. Fletcher cinched the drawstring waist tight and hacked off several inches of fabric at the bottom. If Noah ever made it to his feet again, he wouldn’t trip. It wasn’t pretty, but acres of fabric curtained his scars now.

“Rest. Your mate will call for you soon.”

* * *

The beta poked him awake later. Muscles tight after who knew how long laying on the hard floor, Noah rubbed sleep from his eyes. He accepted a fresh plate of food from Fletcher. He’d eaten half of the chicken before his stomach reminded him that eating uncooked meat was gross.

“I can’t do this,” he whined, belly roiling in fierce objection.

“Your mating bite has almost healed. He won’t like that.” Fletcher grinned. “Good sign, though. You’re growing stronger.”

He handed over Noah’s forearm crutches so Noah could make it to the bathroom without injuring himself. He washed the chicken from his hands and his face. Someone, probably Fletcher, had left a new toothbrush and a comb for him on the vanity. By the time he emerged, he almost felt human. When he cracked that joke, Fletcher grimaced. “The alpha needs you below.”

His nerves jittered, tension stiffening his shoulders as he followed the beta out of Wade’s rooms and into a corridor wide enough for three shifted wolves to walk side by side. Marble tile lined the floor, a collection of four closed doors marching down each side of the space with a picture window at one end and a stairwell at the other. Of course, the pack house was huge, a mansion with extra wings for shifter business and living quarters. As a reflection of a thriving pack, the place would be more richly appointed than his family’s small cluttered home by necessity. Shifters visiting from other packs would need to be impressed with this pack’s success. Intellectually, Noah understood that, but his nerves screamed at the wainscoting, silk draperies, bronze finials, and other elegant touches that emphasized Noah wasn’t at the farm anymore. And likely never would be again.

He carefully maneuvered down the steps, first one floor, then another. When he reached the bottom, his muscles quivered with exertion. “I hope you guys have a hot tub and a masseuse because my thigh—”

“Through here.”

Noah trailed Fletcher’s retreating back. His crutches and footsteps echoed eerily in the vacant hallway, a mirror of the one three floors above, but with arching doorframes leading into cavernous public spaces rather than private rooms. A formal dining hall. A library and den. Another dotted with drafting tables and the detritus of a home office lining the walls. Noah paused a moment to catch his breath and stare at the computer equipment, lusting. He wondered if any of his web clients had tried to contact him since he’d left the farm and if his business was dead. If he didn’t soon get back online, it would be. “I need my laptop.”

“Later,” Fletcher said. “C’mon.”

Later wasn’t no, so Noah followed. Dread shivered up his spine as they left that wing of the house, threading through a central abandoned kitchen with pots bubbling on a stove. They walked through it and into another section of the sprawling home.

He didn’t remember much about his entry into the pack house, but he recalled faces. Lots of faces. As alpha, Wade’s home would be open to many shifters and spacious enough for entire families. Wade wouldn’t want his most trusted betas to be far away. He’d heard dozens gathered below their bedroom window last night alone.