“Patience,” he said to his cock with a chuckle, because there was no need to rush anything, not now that he knew that sooner or later that she would come to him, begging him to give her relief.
He would, but only after she’d begged him sweetly and he would make damn sure that there was begging. Christ, just the thought of Kara on her hands and knees with her legs spread with her ass up in the air, waiting for him to fuck her had him reaching down and absently stroking his cock as he continued to walk up the stairs. He couldn’t come like this, but it felt good, so fucking good. He knew that it would probably make things worse, leave him even more frustrated than before, but he didn’t care, not now that he knew that he’d have her begging sweetly for his cock soon enough.
*-*-*-*
Something was seriously wrong, she realized as she pulled off her clothes, but instead of feeling some relief she only felt hotter. God, she was burning up. Her skin felt like it was on fire. She looked down at her body, expecting to see blisters forming on her skin, but there was nothing but a simple pink flush spreading over her body.
She was on fire, she thought deliriously as she stumbled past the bed in the room that she’d ducked into a few minutes ago in her attempt to get away from the psychotic bastard that had bitten her ass. Head spinning while her breaths came faster and shallower, she kept forcing her legs to move even as pain shot through her bones, demanding that she stop moving and possibly breathing, anything to stop this pain.
Everything hurt, her bones, her skin, her joints, her teeth, her gums and even her hair. Her head spun faster, making her stumble forward and slam into a piece of furniture. She wasn’t sure if it was a dresser or a desk since her vision had gone blurry the second that the pain had started.
Why was this happening to her?
The rational part of her brain knew exactly what was happening, but she couldn’t make sense of anything right now. She just wanted it to stop, all of it, the fire, the pain shooting through her body and the feeling of being torn apart from the inside out.
She just…she just…she just needed it to stop, she thought, releasing her death grip on whatever it was that she was holding onto and reached up, grabbing onto her head as severe pain shot through her head, making her cry out. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t take this for another second, she just needed this to stop…she just needed…she just needed…
“I’ve got you,” she dimly heard Drew say as she felt her body leave the ground.
Everywhere that he touched her felt like she was being stabbed with shards of glass, tearing her body apart before dossing acid over every inch of her as the sounds of screams vaguely registered in her mind. As she felt her body move through the loft, she prayed that the pain would knock her out and put her out of her misery, but the pain refused to release her.
It kept her conscious, making sure that she felt every little bit of agonizing pain as it tore away at her, tormenting her and proving to her that hell did in fact exist.
*-*-*-*
“You’re fine,” he swore to her as she continued to sob quietly in his arms. “You’re fine, Kara. I swear to fucking God that you’re fine,” he promised her as he struggled against the urge to panic.
Again.
As soon as she’d started screaming and he realized that she wasn’t going to stop, he’d called Ryan, demanding that he get all the fucking doctors the Pack had in here to help her. Hell, he’d been so fucking desperate that he’d even ordered his Beta to contact the Sentinel Compound and get their people down here to help her.
That’s when Ryan broke the news to him.
Some females when they hit their first real mating heat went through pure hell. It was an extremely small percentage of females and more than half of those that went through it, died. It was something that the Pack normally didn’t talk about out of fear that it would cause their females to avoid matings at all costs. It had taken his Beta, Mick and about ten other Pack members to tackle him and take him to the ground as he lost it. The second that he shifted they all got the fuck out of the way.
He’d stayed in his shifted form, pacing back and forth in front of Kara until her voice grew hoarse and the only thing that she could do was whimper. That’s when he shifted back to human, unable to take it anymore, and carried her into his room and straight into the bathroom. He turned the shower on, set the water to cold and climbed in with her in his arms where he’d been holding her ever since.
He’d stopped shivering a long time ago and had gone numb, but unfortunately for Kara, she hadn’t. She was still in pain, whimpering and crying as she held onto him, desperate to stay in his arms as pain tore through her body. The rest of the Pack males, including her cousin had been forced to leave hours ago and look after the club.
Mick had originally refused, grunting and shaking his head as he kept his gaze locked on his younger cousin. Drew had never seen the large man display so much emotion before, but tonight he’d looked like his heart was being ripped out of his chest and torn in two. Drew knew that Kara was close to her cousin, but he’d never realized until tonight how much she’d truly meant to the normally stoic shifter.
That explained why Mick had risked his position in the Pack all those years ago when he’d brought Kara, tiny, trembling and full of spit and fire before his father. He’d always wondered what Mick would have done if Drew’s father had refused Kara amnesty and now he had his answer. The shifter would have abdicated from the Pack and risked everything for her.
It made him even more curious about his mate’s secret and he knew that she had a fucking secret. When this was all over and she was better, and she damn well would be getting better, he was going to make damn sure that they finally had that talk.
“Drew,” she whispered on a sob as buried her face more tightly against his chest and held on weakly, her poor little body wracked with pain for hours, making it impossible for her to do much more than to lay limply in his arms.
“Hang in there. Everything is going to be fine,” he assured her, pressing a kiss to her cold forehead.
“It hurts,” she whimpered, trying to tighten her hold around him, but instead her arms fell limply by her sides as the last of her strength finally drained away.
“You’re just being a baby,” he said, hoping to piss her off enough so that she could tell him to go fuck himself, call him a prick, anything so that he knew that she was going to be okay.
Instead, her eyes fluttered shut, her head dropped against his shoulder and she took her last breath.
Chapter 16
“Don’t even fucking think of it, Kara,” he said as he continued to push down on her heart. “You’re not getting out of this that easily, you fucking pain in the ass!”
He stopped pumping her chest for a minute, leaned down and placed his mouth over hers, breathing for her until the little pain in the ass stopped fucking playing around and did it for herself.
“Come on!” he said, giving her two more breaths, having absolutely no fucking clue what he was doing, but refusing just to sit there and accept that she was gone.
No, it wasn’t happening like this.
This was not how their story was going to end.
No fucking way.
He pumped her heart several more times before he leaned back down and-
“Fuck!” screamed like a little girl when he realized that Kara’s eyes were not only open, but pure silver and she was staring up at him.
If he’d been able to have a heart attack, he would have had one right then. When she didn’t say anything, but kept on staring at him, he had to admit, only to himself of course, that it fucking creeped him out.
Breathing hard, he sat back, waiting for her to say or do something to let him know that she was okay, pissed, in pain, anything, but she simply closed her eyes, turned onto her side and promptly fell asleep, leaving him sitting there, panting and wondering what the fuck just happened.
*-*-*-*
“Mmmmm,” she released a sleepy little moa
n as she turned over and sighed with a little dreamy smile.
God, she felt so well rested, which was a definite first for her. For years she’d been surviving on very little sleep, working long hours during the day and learning everything that she could at night so that one day she wouldn’t have to worry about working for scraps and getting her ass pinched by some prick who had too much power to fire her.
Being talked down to, hit on and made to feel like a cheap bimbo had grated in the worst way, but she’d had no choice. She’d needed to stay in Boston, kept hidden by Drew’s Pack and unfortunately, she’d had to do it on her own which meant that she’d had to take any shitty job that she could, most times she’d been forced to work two jobs just to get by. Why? Because living in Boston was insanely expensive.
Her tiny apartment that she’d recently been evicted from had been in an okay neighborhood with moderate crime, no elevators and located on the fifth floor and that had cost her a lovely thirty-two hundred dollars a month. If she’d moved to New Hampshire or just out of the city she could have paid half of that for a mortgage for a house with a yard and no neighbors waking her up at three in the morning, blasting their television because they were bored.
Boston was one of the most expensive cities to live in and she was stuck here, which meant long hours and little sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been able to sleep more than six hours a night. Even the days when she’d been forced to follow Drew’s Pack up to New Hampshire or take up one of the cells, she’d never been able to sleep well.
Actually, she’d always slept worse when she left Boston, because of the constant fear that lived in the back of her mind that she would either be discovered or the Pack that didn’t want her around would maim her as a warning to stay away. She could never let her guard down, not since she came here, not even before that when she was a child and realized that she was in danger.
But for some reason, for the first time in her life she felt rested, like she’d slept for days. God, she felt so good, so well rested, warm and comfortable. She didn’t want to open her eyes and end this feeling so she simply lay there, savoring this feeling that she might never experience again.
She didn’t ever want to let this feeling go. So, she simply decided to turn over, keep her eyes closed and go back to sleep. She was never leaving this bed, she decided. It was possible to stay in this bed forever. She was a shifter and therefore, she could technically live forever. As long as she didn’t drink or eat anything, she would be-
“It’s about fucking time,” a seriously pissed off voice said, completely wrecking the most perfect moment of her life.
It figures that the grumpy bastard would be the one to ruin everything, she thought with a heavy sigh as she reluctantly opened her eyes and forced herself to accept the fact that this was probably a once in a lifetime experience. Oh well, at least she felt better than she had in a long time.
She opened her eyes, rolled over onto her back and stretched like a well-rested cat. God, she felt so-
The sound of the door slamming shut, startled her, making her sit up and frown at the closed door that was still rattling on its hinges, making her wonder what the hell his problem was.
Shrugging it off as some form of male PMS, she flopped back down on the bed, closed her eyes and decided to go back to the wonderful world where she wasn’t being hunted by her old Pack, hated by her new Pack and mated to a man who obviously wasn’t a morning person.
*-*-*-*
One Week of Pure Hell Later…
Well, one week of pure hell later Drew had officially earned the name, “The Prick,” by all the Club employees and Pack members that made the mistake of getting within fifty feet of him. By mid-week, most of the employees had figured out that if they didn’t want to get yelled at and made to cry that they should take their problems to Ryan while the rest of the Pack had simply made themselves scarce.
Kara on the other hand had been taking it easy for the first time in her life. She still worked shifts at the club to help out, especially since the wait staff kept calling in sick or flat out quitting, but now that some of the pressure was off her, she was slowly able to relax and do things that she hadn’t been able to do in years.
She’d started reading again, her favorite pastime when she was a child before everything went to hell. Over the past week she’d gone to the library, the movies and simply enjoyed taking long walks around Boston Common. Not alone of course, because the asshole who was apparently not speaking to her, looking at her or even acknowledging her presence in any way, had assigned Mick as her personal bodyguard.