With Everything I Am (59 page)

“How are you feeling?”

Like garbage, through and through,
she thought but did not say out loud.

“It hurts.” And that wasn’t a lie. It was just an understatement.

“Poor baby,” he murmured and he was lucky she was wounded or she’d have attacked even though he could rip her to shreds with his claws and his teeth.

“Regan said you had a nice visit,” he told her.

“We did,” Sonia affirmed.

His hand squeezed her shoulder with approval.

 
She again fought the urge to tear her stitches out of her back by attacking him.

“Do you feel like moving around?” he asked. “I’ll help you in the bath.”

She did not
think
so.

“Are you telling me I stink?” she snapped irately.

He chuckled before he said (false) fondly, “You never stink, my little one.”

She’d had enough and therefore started to pull away from him saying, “I should move around. I don’t want to get stiff.”

She didn’t get very far before his hands went under her arms and he pulled her gently up to rest on his chest with their faces close.

She put her hands on his chest and pushed back but his arm slid around her lower waist and he held her still.

When she stopped moving, his other hand went behind her head, grasping her hair in one big fist, pulling it over her shoulder and twisting it again and again until it formed a long twine. Then he wrapped it around his palm at the side of her neck.

He watched his hand doing this as if enthralled.

“Callum,” she called and reminded him, “I was going to move around.”

His eyes came to hers and he announced, “You’re still pissed.”

Oh, he was right about that.

Apparently she
could
be something with Callum but “pissed” was all she was
ever
going to be.

“Can I have a
day
to get used to the fact my mate is a
werewolf?
” she asked caustically and then went on, “Or is that asking too much?”

He grinned at her (the arrogant bastard!).

Then he used her hair to pull her face to his and he touched his lips to hers.

Looking into her eyes, still grinning, he granted, “You can have a day.”

Now,
that
was when she would have attacked if she could have attacked.

But he simply marked her hair at her good temple with his (that particular business finally explained by him being half-wolf), let her go, moved away and left the room.

She washed as best she could, dressed and decided to hang out in their room because she couldn’t face anyone.

Leah came up with a tray of food in the late afternoon.

At that moment Sonia was grateful for Leah. It was good to be around her kind, for one, even if that made her a bad person for thinking it. For another, she liked Leah. Leah was funny and sweet and a little bit crazy and Sonia could be herself around her because, obviously, Leah was used to a life filled with vampires and such.

While Sonia ate, Leah talked, telling her wild stories of vampire concubines and captivating stories of places called Feasts and terrifying stories of something called The Sentence. All of this sharing how she’d fallen in
love
with Lucien.

The story had taken over an hour to tell and Sonia, long since having cleaned her plate, stared at her new friend when she was done talking.

“As you can see,” Leah concluded, “I’m safe, healthy and happy and Lucien is…” she smiled a sweet, eloquent smile before finishing, “happy too.”

“And I’m happy for you,” Sonia replied softly, meaning every word.

Leah grinned at her. “If you embrace it, Sonny, you’ll be happy too and, I promise, it’ll be beyond your wildest dreams.”

That was doubtful.

Sonia had had her “wildest dreams”. She knew how good it could be and it was
not
that.

“I don’t have much choice but to embrace it,” Sonia told her. “It’s destiny.”

“I know. Mine was too and destiny is
my best friend,
” Leah declared on a giggle.

Sonia laughed softly, not agreeing in the slightest but also not wanting to break Leah’s happy mood.

Ryon came up shortly after and she let him off the hook by smiling at him the minute he walked through the door.

Caleb came up not long after and she visited with them while Leah returned her tray but she came back with Lucien.

Lucien regarded her carefully as he walked in but even though he freaked her out more than werewolves, she’d lived with vampires all her life (apparently) so she knew better than to fear him (hysterically rather than generally because Lucien, the individual, was still kind of scary).

Regan arrived a few minutes later with a board game and they all started playing.
Even Lucien who didn’t strike Sonia as a board game type of…
being
.
Then again, she was getting the sense cold, aloof Lucien would do just about anything to make his bride happy, including playing a board game.

Therefore, hours later, Sonia was lying on her belly on the curvy couch by the fire. Regan and Lucien were in chairs pulled around to the side of the fireplace by the couch. Leah was sitting cross-legged on the floor at Lucien’s feet. And both Ryon and Caleb’s long bodies were spread across the floor as they lay on their sides with pillows under their elbows, heads in their hands when Callum walked in.

He stood at the couch by Sonia’s feet and stared down at them from his colossal werewolf height.

“We’re almost done with this game. You can sit in the next one,” Caleb announced.

“There won’t be a next one,” Callum declared meaningfully (and, incidentally, kingfully), walking down the couch and pulling Sonia up cautiously before sitting down, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles and setting her down with her upper torso on his thigh.

She wanted to pull away but she couldn’t mainly because her back had begun to really hurt and she hadn’t wanted to mention it and worry anyone but also because they were all watching her with Callum.

So she just settled in like she didn’t care (when she
did
).

They finished the game, folded it up and said their goodnights and Sonia decided now was the time for pain pills because she didn’t mind Callum worrying.

She started to push up from the couch (he’d followed everyone to the door and closed it behind them) but, quick as a flash, he was crouched at her side with a big palm in the small of her back.

“Just stay there, I’ll bring your injection out here,” he told her and then moved to the bathroom.

Holy cow.

She’d forgotten about her injection. How could she forget about
that?
And how could she take it with her back already on fire?

“Callum,” she called. “I need my pain pills.”

“After the injection,” he replied, walking in with the syringe already loaded.

She stared at it like it was a living thing which existed only to do her harm.

Callum saw her look, crouched at the head of the couch and his hand cupped the side of her face. “Two minutes, baby doll,” he said gently. “Then it’ll be over and that whole time I’ll be right here.”

Boy, she hated the fact that she loved him, that there were so many things to love and that all of them were lies.

He moved to her side and murmured, “Can you get your jeans down for me?”

It hurt but she did.

He injected her.

The burn was ten times worse and seared through her back like wildfire.

She was panting when it was done but felt Callum’s warm hand cupped at the back of her neck which she told herself didn’t feel good (when it did).

Then, when she fully recovered, Callum did something strange.

He usually righted her clothes before she recovered but her jeans were still low on her hips and his palms went to her bottom, fingers spanning her hips and his thumbs slid over the pinpricks exposed by her jeans. He was sitting by her thighs and he started talking as if to himself.

“I hate these,” he said softly. “Fucking hate them.”

She got tense (or, she should say,
more
tense) but he wasn’t done.

“But I should love them because they’re a part of you.”

Sonia pressed her lips together and closed her eyes tight.

She gave it a moment before she asked, “Can I get up and get my pain pills? My back is beginning to hurt.”

His fingers curled into the waistband of her jeans and he pulled them up before he offered, “I’ll get them, baby doll.”

He gave her the pills, helped her dress for bed (another nightgown, a miracle!) and he held her close when they were under the hides, acting like the devoted king to his injured queen.

They were in the same position as she woke up early that afternoon when he asked, “Would you like me to tell you more about my kind?”

She’d get Regan, Mara, Callista, Ryon and Caleb to do that.

She wanted nothing from him.

“The pills make me drowsy and they work pretty fast.” That wasn’t a lie. “I don’t want to miss anything.” That
was
a lie.

“All right, honey,” he murmured and went on to comment warmly, “You know, you’re taking this a lot better than I expected.”

She could have laughed.

She didn’t.

“You don’t know me very well,” she told him the truth for once.

His fingers slid into her hair and cupped the back of her head. “True, but everything I learn, I like.”

Liar, liar,
liar,
she thought but she just let out a fluttery, stupid sigh.

His fingers tensed against her scalp.

She prayed the pills would work their magic and, luckily, shortly after, they did.

* * * * *

The next week, Callum was patient mainly because Sonia was still feeling goodly amounts of pain which he took great care in assessing by often asking the soft, sweet, “How’re you doing, baby doll?”. He also demanded that he be the only one to clean, put ointment on and
re-bandage
her wounds. And, surprisingly, other than that, he gave her space to rest and
heal
.

Also, Callum gave her space because Gregor turned up since Regan told him Sonia had been injured.

Gregor gave her the whole, “Callum’s a big boy and doesn’t need you to protect him so you’ve no business throwing yourself in front of an angry werewolf even if you didn’t have any idea he
was
an angry werewolf,” lecture (although it didn’t go quite like that). Then Sonia gave him her, “So, you and your son are vampires?” interrogation (and that was exactly how she started it). Then it was done and Gregor settled in like he was going to stay a while. This was evidenced by him having a lot of luggage not Sonia being overly perceptive. This also made Callum’s patience slip a little bit but, for some reason, made Regan seem really happy.

Lucien and Leah left several days after the My Mate, The Werewolf Incident which Sonia found distressing as she’d grown fond of Leah very quickly and she liked being around them. There was something beautiful about the two of them. The way they looked at each other, acted toward each other. The quiet but obvious way they were just
in love
.

Normally, considering Sonia’s circumstances, this would be added torture but Sonia cared about Leah and she also started to like Lucien. He seemed the sort of man who deserved to be happy and he acted like the kind of man who’d waited a very long time to be so and appreciated it deeply now that he had it. Considering Leah told her that Lucien was older than Callum by
four entire centuries
, a long time for him was, literally, a
long time
.

Regan, Mara and Callista shared with both Sonia and Leah a good deal about werewolf nature, history, lore and just about anything else they could share because Mara, as ever, liked to talk. It was a fascinating culture with a rich history and they were proud of it (as they should be).

There was only one hiccup in the first week and that was close to the end of it.

Sonia was in bed reading and hadn’t switched out the light and settled in long before Callum came up. This was what she’d made a habit of doing, saying she was going to bed early because of pain and needing to rest, and, considering Callum didn’t know an awful lot about humans, he didn’t know any better. But Gregor gave her knowing looks and Regan gave her increasingly penetrating ones.

By the time she sensed him walking up, she couldn’t feign sleep as he’d know since the door was open and he’d see the light go out not to mention, he probably would hear her moving.

Luckily, he smiled at her when he walked in but went directly to the bathroom. She had time to turn out her light, turn on his, put her book aside and get in a sleeping position before he walked out, naked and heading to bed.

She told herself he didn’t hear her sucking in her breath at the beauty of his naked body (but she didn’t believe herself) and this was proved false anyway when he grinned at her knowingly.

Once in bed, he immediately, and adeptly (totally ignoring her painstakingly crafted sleeping position), slid her closer to him, rolled her to her belly then to her side, avoiding her back and pulled her to him, face-to-face.

Then his hands started roaming.

She tucked her face in his throat and bit her lip because his hands on her felt way too nice and she missed them.

Way too much.

“Sonia, baby doll, do you want to play?” he asked softly.

She shook her head.

“I’ll be gentle, little one.”

She loved it when he was gentle almost as much as she loved it when he was rough.

“I’m in a little pain. The pills aren’t working as well as they used to,” she lied for she felt okay. The pain was mostly a twinge by then and the wounds had started itching, indicating they were healing.

“All right, honey,” he murmured but his hands still roamed, though they’d slowed and the caresses felt soothing rather than exciting.

Then he asked, “Do you want to talk?”

“About what?” she asked back and her voice sounded higher than normal.

His hand slid up her arm, his fingers curled in at her neck then her jaw and they tipped up her chin so she was forced to look at him.