Ivan
"Fuck, that hurts…" Nefra whined as I finished removing the bandage from her stomach.
"I hate the tape humans use…" Throwing the remains to the side, I rested my body against her again. "But you needed it."
"I really didn't." I looked up, raising an eyebrow. "After I had Penelope, I did some healing magic. They took the bandages off there, but I put new ones on before I came home."
"Why?"
"Figured it would keep Ricky away from me for a while…" I liked that she'd relaxed. We'd been on the bed for almost half an hour, the tension gone. We're now comfortable enough to talk without trying to fight it. "They tell you to wait six weeks before you do anything, but my teacher taught me how to do the spells to heal from giving birth in days… I was eating at the hospital, so I had the energy to do the spells. But, as long as he assumes I can't do anything… he's not inclined to force anything."
"You just had a pup…" I'm clueless about childbirth, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to have sex right after having a child. My body's reacting to her arousal, but even if things were different, I wouldn't expect my mate to service me while she's taking care of our baby.
"He doesn't care. He… doesn't even like her," Nefra's expression soured, her nose wrinkled and lips pursed at the thought of him. A growl came out in response, unable to imagine someone being so stupid.
"How can anyone not love that pup? Did you see how the pack reacted to her? They adore her. My sister's going to bankrupt me spoiling her, and I don't care."
I had no regrets about that.
If the man took care of Nefra and Penelope, I'd have some reservations about taking them, but he's a monster.
The pup drew you in, staring at you as if she saw into your soul. I've only had her in my life for a few hours, but I already miss her. How is it possible that her biological father doesn't want her?
'His loss. If he can't appreciate what he has, then he's not allowed to keep it.'
Everything he threw away, I'd cherish. I'd missed the first week of Penelope's life and the whole pregnancy. Those are things I have to make up for.
"Ricky… He only let me keep her because his family made him. I… he wanted me to…" Nefra didn't finish, biting her lip as the thought ate at her.
"I'm glad she's here," I cupped her face, kissing her nose. "She's our pup, and he can go to hell. I won't let anything happen to her."
"But… she's not yours," Nefra's afraid to hope, and I can't blame her. Until today, we shared the same fear.
"Blood means nothing to me. You're my mate, and she's my pup."
"Not that simple."
"It is to me…" I want to make her understand, but I know werewolves are the only race that experiences this sort of connection. No one else senses the bond like we can, and that affects the intensity when we first meet. So, whether or not I like it, I have to take it slow. "Are you ready to keep going?"
"I'm okay…" her face went hot, her lashes fluttering. She's torn between asking me to stop and not wanting to. "You don't…"
"I'll stop when I'm satisfied you're healed," As much as I'd like to take the time to shift and use my wolf's power, we don't have the time.
'We have a new problem now.'
Nefra's out of danger. That's what I wanted, but it pulled me out of panic mode. Now, I can focus on her body the way I want, and it's difficult to hide my appreciation.
Goddess, she's beautiful.
I love that she's not petite. Women like that terrify me. I've had nightmares about crushing someone just by sitting too close to them.
Now that she's out of the baggy shirt, I notice all the details I'd missed before.
She's curvier than I thought. Her breasts were full and distracting. They curved into her long torso, flaring at her hips, giving her an hourglass figure.
Without the bruises, you see her natural tan and the lines of old scars, marks, and something that looked like a brand on her hip, but it's small and old.
I'm the luckiest guy in the world, and every single one of my friends is going to swallow their tongues, including Luke.
"What?" Nefra swallowed hard, not looking me in the eye. She knew what I'm doing, embarrassed by my attention.
"Do you… have any on your back?" I wanted to tell her she's gorgeous. That I'd never seen a woman as perfect, and all the things I wanted to do, but that would probably scare her. So, I switched my focus back to her injuries, hoping it's enough to bring the temperature down.
"No," she's lying. Why didn't she want me to look at her back? I'm already looking at the rest of her in underwear; it wouldn't be any worse.
"Mate," I slipped a little of my Alpha tone into my voice, even though it wouldn't do anything to her. As my mate, we hold the same rank, meaning she had biological resistance to my powers. Still, she jumped, not used to the tone. "Let me see your back."
"No," she started fighting me again, her face growing pale. What is she hiding?
"Nefretiri…" I slid off her, wrapping my arm around her waist as she struggled against me. "I just need to see…"
I flipped her onto her stomach and froze.
Most of her back's covered by her hair, but I caught the stitches on her shoulder blade.
Once I moved her hair aside, I faced something far worse than bruises. At least twenty stitched knife wounds, each tended to with surgical thread.
Someone's keeping them clean, but the scarring has old and new marks, meaning they're keeping the wounds open.
Why would someone do that?
The emotions overwhelm me and I can't express anything, not even rage. There isn't a name for this.
What had this asshole done to her? How could anyone live like this and not break?
I've been to war; I've fought as a soldier, a warrior, and an Alpha, and this is something you'd see in a prisoner of war. Even the rogues we capture in my territory get better treatment than this. Yet, my mate lived inside this pain every day while I…
Fuck, no. I had to fix this now.
"Ivan… please don't…" Nefra whispered, and I tensed. That's the first time she'd said my name, and it was like that?
My heart broke again.
Saying nothing, because I had nothing that wouldn't sound condescending, I climbed on her again, resting my chest against her back. This time, I didn't stop myself from kissing her, focusing on her neck and hair, needing to comfort her.
Something clicked in my head, dragging my guilt to a new level of hell.
This is my fault. I did this to her.
I didn't hold the knife or put my hands on her, but our connection existed long before today, and instead of questioning the phantom pain and searching for answers, I'd run from it, pushing it away.
'She's been calling for me, and I ignored her!'
"What are you doing?" Nefra's voice trembled, but her body relaxed. "It feels... different."
She's right, but I can't give her an answer. I'm not doing anything different.
"Are you allergic to silver?" I got close to the stitches on her shoulder, catching a whiff of the metal on her skin. Who puts silver in a wound? I've never heard of a medical practice doing that.
"No..." She sounds confused, but I'm not.
"I think you are."
Werewolves have allergies to pure silver. It's not lethal like in myths, and not for the reasons people might think.
Our legends say the moon goddess formed the first werewolf out of the soul of a mortal and a wolf, using silver thread to tie them together because it's impossible to fuse two different creatures without something to bind them. Supernatural doctors found there might be some truth to that myth, but say it's a unique mutation in our cells. Other shifters have the same mutation but don't have the allergy.
They chalk the rest up to magic.
However, when you have outside silver in the blood, it's harder for healing to happen.
"Who's taking care of these?" As carefully as I can, I pull at the smallest cut. I expected it to bleed, but it didn't.
"One of Ricky's mistresses..." Nefra tried moving, but I kept her still to check under her skin. "That… hurts."
"I know, just give me a second."
The silver piece is paper-thin, implanted under her skin to keep the wound fresh. That's the same effect it has on werewolves, but what about sorcerers and witches?
The silver's as pure as you could find, the metal burning my skin. Blood oozed from the cut, but I got to work licking it closed, ignoring the discomfort in my throat.
Both of us are in pain, but it's worse for Nefra. The thread isn't dissolvable, so I had to thread it through Nefra's skin to get it out, and some of the wounds have deeper silver deposits, making it impossible to grab. My fingertips are raw and bloody, and my hands started trembling.
It's so bad I opted for tweezers from Nefra's bathroom.
Nefra cried and whimpered, destroying me from the inside, but we had to get this done.
"I... got it all..." With a sigh of relief, I removed the last piece of silver, hurriedly licking the wound before it bled too much.
I'm sick from the silver, but I didn't show it.
Nefra's in worse shape, her body covered in a film of sweat. Still, I'm glad we did it.
A small pile of silver lies beside us, enough to make a nickel. That might not seem like much, but all that was in Nefra's body.
"Thank you..." she sounded hoarse, sitting up and covering herself. During all this, I'd needed to take her bra off, which left her in her panties.
"You don't have to hide from me," I hope someday she won't get uncomfortable being naked around me, but we've already pushed a lot of boundaries tonight. Someday, we'll be in a place where the awkwardness is nonexistent, but that's not today. "Here."
Pulling her off the bed, I scanned her body, running my hands over her ribs and a few bruises. Her skin's less swollen, and all the dark spots are fading. That's a good sign.
It meant the bones were healing, making her pain more manageable. We'd have to do this again, but not as urgently.
Nefra tried staying self-assured and not covering herself, but she couldn't hide the hesitation. Did she think I didn't like how she looked?
Fuck, this wouldn't be easy. A worthless corpse abused my mate for who knows how long, and she's not sharing the extent. So, I had to be careful about how I acted.
Anything could be a trigger.
"You're perfect," I whispered, picking up my shirt and sliding it over her head. "No one's as beautiful as you... but I don't want you to be uncomfortable."
"I'm not... perfect..." she smiled, appreciating the compliment. "But... Thank you. I... This is all... weird."
"Weird is underselling it," I didn't just give her the shirt to cover herself. My scent's all over it, and it could help her relax. As a werewolf, I didn't mind being naked, so walking around shirtless doesn't bother me. "Where's your clothes?"
"In Penelope's room," wincing, Nefra glanced around the room, taking stock of what she needed. "I... don't have anything here except for some documents."
"Wait... all of this is his?" Two dressers were in the room, and two more in the walk-in closet. I have a lot of clothes, but not as much as this asshole.
"A quarter of the closet and that dresser are his harem... They keep some clothes here when it's their weekend."
"Their weekend?" This is disgusting. Nefra was this asshole's wife, and his mistresses got to leave their clothes here, and she didn't?
"I'm not allowed out on my own during the weekends. Ricky... brings three of them to stay with me when he goes out of town. Even when he's here, they stay..."
"Where do you sleep?" I prayed to the goddess that she didn't sleep in here with them.
"On the couch. I don't enjoy sharing the room with him, so I moved all my stuff into the nursery so I didn't have to come in here except to clean..." She looked ashamed, but I didn't blame her.
These people were using her like a slave, treating her like a disgraced Omega—a practice I didn't allow in my pack—and making it impossible for my mate to escape.
Who does something like this? No female I know would tolerate their partner bringing other people into their home and forcing her to serve them. Nefra didn't look like she liked it either, so what was this asshole doing to force her to stay?
Nothing's adding up here.
Everything looked normal, but it wasn't. The level of cleanliness, the mistresses who were also babysitters, and the silver. That was the strangest thing of all.
Why did they put silver in those wounds?
"Nefra?" I watched her pull a lockbox out from under the bed, but frowned when she failed to unlock it. I reached over and popped it open with two fingers, not realizing I'd broken it until I held the lid in my hand. "Sorry... actually, no, I'm not."
"It's... fine," she tried brushing it off, but I saw the awe she was trying to tamp down. She's impressed. "I just... need this."
She held up a document and several Polaroid photos.
"Can I see?"
Nodding, Nefra handed them to me.
The photos were of Penelope in the hospital. A few in those plastic containers they put the baby in, but the rest were of Nefra holding her.
The pang in my heart sank deeper for not being there. Those were my pup's first moments; she didn't have me with them.
'I'll make it up to both of you.' My princess deserved more than this; she'd have it, even if I had to move heaven and earth to do it.
"You didn't put anyone down as the father?" The document was the mother's copy of the birth records, not the birth certificate itself. The father's portion was blank, and Penelope's last name was Jordans.
"I didn't want to." Nefra shrugged, closed the box as best she could before sliding it back under the bed. "He didn't deserve to be on the birth certificate. I didn't tell him, and he never bothered looking over it when we got home. He just told me to put it in the lockbox."
"That makes things easier." I was already thinking about what I needed to do. When we're done here, I'd talk to Scott about filing everything so I was on Penelope's birth certificate, and all her legal documents would end up in Colorado. "I still need to change her name to Treyson."
"That's... arrogant of you..." I might've worried if she wasn't trying to keep from smiling. "She's—"
"She's mine. Get over it," I cut her off, stepping aside so we could leave the room. "We can argue about that later. How about you get what you want so we can get out of here. I'm done smelling him."
"Fine," she rolled her eyes, the first sign of her actual personality.
Penelope's room was nothing like the rest of the house.
Where the house was red, gray, and black, the nursery's almost overwhelming with color. The walls were images of wolves running in the forest, and the ceiling black with planets and stars set up as galaxies. The crib's bedding, a rich forest green with lighter shades of mint.
Did Nefra do all this herself? Yes, it had to be her. You could sense all the love and effort she'd put into making this space safe for our pup.
I turned to my mate, eyes wide. This is incredible.
"Don't look so impressed," Nefra smiled, pulling clothes out of the drawers and stuffing them into the bag. She only had a few outfits—which would change soon enough—and a few things for Penelope. "I'm good at copying things. All of this is from the internet."
"I'm still impressed... I can't do stick figures, let alone copy art and put them on a wall. But... Why wolves?"
Did she subconsciously sense the pull toward us?
"Don't know. I've always loved wolves," she looked at me, not saying what we were both thinking.
Of course, she's drawn to wolves.
"Want to grab the rest of your stuff?" she handed me my shirt once she'd changed into a tank top and leggings. I appreciated the look because it's comfortable, but I expected her to take more.
"Nothing else is mine," she looked sad as she set the duffel on the crib, glancing around the room. "This is all we own. Ricky... he burned all my things when we moved here."
"He what?!"
"He... said I had to let go of the past, and I couldn't do that if I was holding onto it, so he... piled everything I had outside and... set it on fire. This... is all I managed to save."
She opened the bag again, showing me two boxes. One looked like an old jewelry box, the other a larger one with her name carved on top. There were other runes around it, and I assumed it had something to do with her magic.
My knowledge of the craft was limited to defense against it, but I know treasure when I see it in someone's hands. That box was more valuable to Nefra than gold or jewels. It was her inheritance, something I understood well.
"Nefra..." I hesitated with the question that'd plagued me, but I pushed the doubt away. "Where's your family? They... can't have ignored you and let you go through all this..."
"I... don't have a family," setting the boxes back in the duffel, Nefra withdrew, which I feared she'd do. This was a delicate subject and made more sense. "My mom died a few months ago... I don't have anyone else. Not that I can remember."
"What do you mean?"
"I... sometimes I have trouble remembering things from when I was younger. When Ricky started hurting me. He used to not hold back and... It did damage. When Darla started coming over, he stopped doing things like that, but... I still have trouble with it."
"He caused brain damage?" No, this guy wasn't living past tonight. I'd get Nefra into the truck and come back to the pack and come back for him.
"No... I'd be a vegetable if he'd done that... It's nothing serious... I just... have trouble remembering some names and places..."
"Nefra, that's not normal!" I wasn't trying to scare her, but her attitude toward this wasn't right. She was describing brain damage as if it's nothing and treating fragments of her memory as if she'd forgotten where her keys were.
"It's okay... If it was that bad, I'd go to the doctor, and I haven't needed to... not even for the—Can we go?"
"You haven't needed to go for what, Nefra?" I grabbed her arm, prioritizing my mate's health over treating her with kid gloves. What if the bruises and broken bones weren't the worst of the abuse?
"It's nothing."
"It's not. Nefra, you need to tell me."
"No, I don't..." Nefra pulled away, hurrying out of the room with the bag. Whatever she was hiding, it scared her. "It's nothing. Just... my own thing."
"I don't know what that is." I followed her, watching her sit on the couch, grabbing her pillow like a weapon, but not against me. "You can trust me. Whatever it is... I'll be here. I'll help you through it."
Nefra refused to look at me. What should I do?
I'm not the gentle guy who can be a therapist. I'm the guy who needs it. This is my mate, not an interrogation, and I'm lost.
I can comfort her with patience, but that won't get us answers. She's reluctant to share information, which makes it more difficult.
"Nefra... whatever it is, I won't judge you. I'm your mate. We grow stronger together..." I was talking out of my ass. Being a mate is new to me, but I want those things for us. "We help each other. We work together."
"Sometimes..." Nefra closed her eyes, clutching the pillow as if it held her together. "Sometimes... I hear voices talking to me. It's like inner voices, but... they're not."
I was prepared for that.
"Okay..." What else can I say? When she screamed in the parking lot, I got the feeling she wasn't talking to me, so I'd backed off, not wanting to agitate her anymore. "Do you think it's something magical?"
"I don't know."
"Is he aware you're a sorceress?"
"No."
"How?"
"He doesn't." She was getting defensive again.
"Nefra?"
I was pushing again, but I felt we were close to something.
"He doesn't," she repeated, her knees drawn up to her chest. "He can't. If he did, we'd be dead."
"Why?"
"Because of... what he does," her voice trembled as she hid her face behind her hair. This wasn't an act. It's me she's afraid of now. She didn't want me to know because she assumes I'll judge him. Or her?
"What does he do, Nefra?" This was it. Whatever was keeping my mate from opening up is inside that question.
"He's a traveling nurse," she whispered, but that wasn't the whole truth. "He gets sent to hospitals to work for a while, and then he comes back."
"Nefra..." I got on my knees, pulling back her hair—still wondering why it was so damn long when it looked so uncomfortable—putting myself in the most submissive position a werewolf can do to show her I wasn't trying to dominate her. "What does he really do? Don't worry... I'll protect you. He won't-"
"He's an assassin!" she screamed, burying her face in the pillow, her body shaking, and I panicked, thinking she was convulsing.