The Sixteenth Moon: A Rejected Mates Romance

Chapter 16: A Day in the Life

Kana slapped at the pealing alarm clock and missed. It took three attempts to shut off the blaring noise, but once she did, she was wide awake and hating it.

Coffee.

Shower.

Medicine.

Stretching.

More coffee.

Her morning. In that order. Or she'd hate herself the rest of the day.

And she had something to do that night she was looking forward to.

Gritting her teeth, she shifted her leg beneath the light comforter and sheet, and hissed out a breath when the ruined muscle screamed, shooting all too familiar pain through her leg. Closing her eyes and biting back a cry of pain and frustration, she concentrated on the flexing and releasing exercises her physical therapist had taught her.

Flex. Hold. Release.

Flex. Hold. Release.

She continued the same movements over several long, agonizing minutes, until the muscles in her thigh finally loosened. Once the pain had been downgraded to a burning ache, she slowly, carefully slid her leg to the edge of the bed and lowered both feet to the floor. Expelling a pent-up breath, she closed her eyes once more, groaning into the silent room as she massaged her thigh with practiced hands.

It had been over a year since the attack. Since she'd thrown her body in front of a rabid shifter to save those children. Over a year since she'd died on the operating table from blood loss, only to be revived by means of human medical intervention, and the goddess-given shifter healing gift.

She'd died because she couldn't heal herself. Because her wolf was gone. Without her wolf, she's been at the mercy of human doctors and an overworked shifter healer who'd fought to save her, to keep her heart beating even with the gaping claw marks that had severed the artery in her chest, and the savage bite marks where the male had ripped the meat from her thigh, exposing bone.

Without her wolf spirit to heal her, she'd suffered agonizing surgeries and painful healing sessions to stitch her body back together. There was little they could do for her leg. With the missing muscle, they simply grafted skin from her back to sew the flesh of her leg back together, then assigned a physical therapist to help her learn to walk using other muscles the rabid shifter hadn't ravaged.

Over a year during which she'd prayed to die. For the pain and anguish and devastating loneliness to stop. Without her wolf, she wasn't just subject to slow, human healing, she was also completely alone for the first time in her life. Empty. A husk. A hearth without a fire. Cold. A shifter without a wolf spirit was a shifter without purpose, for what use would Ailune have for a cracked vessel, unable to carry the spirit she'd entrusted to her?

When would it stop hurting? When would the pain cease claiming her? Would the day ever come that she would wake up with a smile. With a semblance of hope that that day would be painless, would be free of the frustrations and humiliations of a being a lame shifter? A shifter who couldn't even heal her own body.

Her cellphone chirping from her bedside table brought her out of her spiraling thoughts.

She smiled down at the text, her face creaking at the movement. After long months of disuse and atrophy, the muscles around her mouth were finally being exercised again. After long months of having no reason to smile...she was smiling. She was actually smiling.

Cole: We still on for tonight?

Cole. Her boyfriend. Her smile grew. She and the human male had been dating for two months. At first, she'd been terrified that he would be the first of many bad ideas. She was a shifter female, despite not having her spirit--at least that's how the government would classify her. They didn't care about a little detail like losing her wolf spirit, they only cared that she wasn't human. Hadn't been born human. And it wasn't like she'd kept the fact that she was a born shifter from Cole. When they'd first met and he'd asked her where she was from and about her family, she'd been honest. Of course, she'd left out the part about being rejected by her fated mate and mysteriously and painfully losing her wolf spirit. She'd only told him that she wasn't a normal shifter, that she was more human-ish than shifter, and he hadn't seemed bothered by it.