Chained

Chapter 17 - Introduction

Nico's POV

A grimace was planted on my lips as I trudged through the burnt open area outside the house, towards the infirmary. The stench of smoke and death still lingered in the air, determined to stay despite the ruin mostly cleaned away. There was a heaviness that hung in the air, the playfulness that came with the winter snows all but forgotten since the attack.

Exhaustion pressed itself against my muscles but no matter how many times I tried to sleep I could only manage a few hours at a time. Even my father had eased up on me, letting me take the week off from my duties. I should have refused the rest, told him that if I was to be Alpha then I would need to work through anything the pack faced, but selfishly I took the opportunity and spent most of my time at the infirmary where the panther was. Though she wasn't a panther anymore.

I sighed trying to ignore how determined I was to kill her during the fight.

She had been given her own room in the infirmary and my father had brought in a specialised doctor from England who had experience with were-panther patients before. I guessed it was because he too felt guilty for how we treated her.

When she had first arrived, the pack healer, Richard had said that she was young but no one had really believed it until they saw her in her human form, she was just a girl, no older than I was.

Tension knotted in my stomach as I entered her room to see her still asleep curled into herself. As quietly as I could, I approached her and sat down at the chair next to the bed.

A tray rested on a mobile table and presented an untouched bowl of soup and a muffin from her dinner. Although she hadn't eaten anything since she woke up, I refrained myself from grabbing the muffin for a midnight snack.

I chewed on the inside of my lip as I studied the moonlight that danced over her blood-stained pale skin and was lost in her matted pitch-black hair. She had been in such an appalling condition when I had found her that there was no time to wash anything but her wounds. The rest of her body was covered in ash, dirt and blood. I studied the bandages that wrapped around her. One around her shoulder, a wound that I had given her that had re-opened during the fight and another that covered two particularly brutal wounds around her neck  should have killed her. There was another around her stomach and across her back, but were hidden under her hospital gown and the thin white blanket she had thrown at me when she first woke up.

Her face wasn't much better. There was a vicious bruise on the side of her cheek paired with a split lip and a smaller cut on her forehead. I couldn't help but stare at her the scar that reflected in the moonlight and ran from the side of forehead to her cupids bow. It was perfectly straight as if it had been cut by a scalpel. Its precision is probably what kept her from going blind, I doubted Markus would ever do anything to limit her fighting abilities. It gave her features a hardened look that I noticed was furthered when she was awake and she had starred at me with narrow, untrusting eyes and pursed lips. But as she slept her features were almost soft. Her lips puckered out slightly as she slept on her side and her expression was calm.

I grimaced as my eyed wondered to the handcuffs that bound one of her wrists to the bed. When she had woken to see them, she looked at me with such terror I hadn't known what to do. The doctor had insisted on them after she had jumped from the bed, she had been lucky her broken ribs hadn't punctured a lung. It also prevented her from ripping out her IV again which only worsened her condition. Because I had been given the week to rest, I was put in charge of watching over he in case she woke up again, though it seemed that every time she saw me the only thing I did was make her panic.

Despite the horrible nature of the chair, I found myself being lulled into a light sleep beside her.