My body had woken before my mind did. I felt the expanse of the bed beneath me and it was wrong somehow. Too wide, too long, too few pillows. The room was wrong too. The window was closed and I couldn't smell the woods or hear the birds. The strangeness overwhelmed me and I sat upright, eyes opening to find myself somewhere I didn't know at all. The fog around me was such that I stared wildly at the sterile white room and couldn't understand what I was doing in a hospital.
Until I remembered the events from before and a grief filled my chest. I remembered my parents, my father bound in iron and the smell of his burning flesh and I let out a sound of agony and confusion. The kids. The children, they have to be alive. My grief started to joust me into a panic and I jumped out of the bed, knocking over the saline line that was connected to my arm as I moved. The action made a loud clank and caused the saline drip to be ripped from my arm.
The commotion alerted a man who stepped into the room and saw me awake. He wore a doctor's coat and opened his mouth to speak to me. I turned and ran for the nearest window. The man followed me, frightened. His glasses were slipping down the edge of his nose so low I expected they could fall from his face any second.
"Please girl, you're alright. Calm down." As I reached the window I looked down to notice I was several stories up. The landscape outside was not one of large pine and fir trees. There was a mix of maple and oak and birch trees scattering the land. The sobering realisation hit me that I was likely very far from home. The realisation was compounded with my secondary realisation that I no longer had a home to go back to.
I stopped trying to escape only after viewing my own reflection in the mirror. I met my sunken, traumatised grey eyes and stopped running. I looked even worse than I felt. My cheekbones were hollow and sunken like I had been starving for weeks.
"How long have I been-"
I had turned to face the little man again, but before I could finish my question I was met with the sight of my mate. She was towering a whole foot above me, staring down with a look of guarded relief on her face. She was two full feet away but I could feel in the air that she wanted to come closer.
"How long have I been asleep?"
My voice was raspy and quieter than I remembered it. My wolf inside of me answered the question before the doctor opened his mouth to speak. We have been asleep for four and a half days.
My rage resumed exactly where it had left off and I glowered at the woman. Even knowing the irrationality of it, the thought crossed my mind to jump from the window. I would certainly break my legs and be strapped right back to the same bed I had jumped from, assuming I didn't die from the impact- but the desire riddled me anyways. I turned to run for the window when the woman's voice stopped me.
"What is your name?"
Her voice was thick and honeyed and stable. The sweet sound of it made me sick.
My wolf swelled inside of me, excited. I averted my eyes from her and closed them. All of this was wrong and severely fucked up. My mate murdered my parents ten feet away from me and kidnapped me to this strange place and just because she felt bad for doing it, I was meant to forgive her.
"You- I can't bear to talk to you. You have taken everything from me."
"Not everything. The children-"
Knowing that she knew about the children I crossed the distance between us in an instant, so I was only inches away from her face and I scowled, feeling my fists tighten. A small voice inside me was horrified at her own acknowledgement. Not everything. I couldn't rationally decide if it was an apology or a threat.
"You better not have hurt them, not a single goddamn one of them."
My voice was venomous and hateful. Raspy and all.
"I haven't."
She spoke in a soft whisper and I noticed the room was empty. The doctor seemed to have fled the murderous tension of the room. Her hazel eyes overwhelmed me with unwanted feelings. I tried to move back and replace the distance between us when she caught me by the wrist in a delicate hold.
"We rounded up the children and introduced them to our own nursery when we found them. None of them were harmed."
I yanked my arm away from her and stepped back to escape the flood of feelings in my chest. I couldn't stand it, any of it. My mind was in shambles and the state of my feelings was even more treacherous. I thanked the Moon Goddess for having allowed the kids to be saved. My father used to say that every blessing counts in a disaster.
"You have a minor concussion from when you fell. You've almost entirely healed now. When you're better, we'll talk."
"I have nothing to say to you."
I saw her eyes swimming with something. I felt my own compulsion to stop hurting her and ignored it. The Moon Goddess herself couldn't stop the rage I felt. This woman had ruined my life and she had hardly even existed in the scheme of it.
"Then you'll listen."
The veins in my first were popping and I grinded my teeth so tightly they felt like they could snap. I couldn't understand why my father had taken someone from her pack, true, but that did not excuse what she had done to him. I turned away from her and attempted to piece the parts of my memory from the days before together.
I replayed it all in my head, flipping it around to digest it.
"What is your name?"
Even without looking, I could feel that she was still watching me. I stayed silent. Everest begged me to answer her. Her wolf is suffering, Liana, please. All she's asking is your name, it doesn't mean you have to forgive her. They can't stand to see you this way.
'Good.' I answered Everest, provoking her to whine lowly inside of me.
'She will have to earn every decibel of forgiveness I decide to give. If I decide to give it at all.'
Everest detested my answer but she understood it. I crawled back into the hospital bed without so much as glancing at her. When I finally snuck a glance back to where she had been standing, the woman was gone. I let a breath of exhaustion leave me and I decided to go back to sleep, hoping everything would become clearer to me when I woke up again.