My Love but Not My Mate

Chapter 3

‘...’ – speech in wolf form

“...” – speech in human form

Chapter 3

   How could he have treated me so bad? I couldn’t understand why he would do that. I knew he hated me for being so low compared to his magisterial role but I was his mate and I had always believed he had a duty to take care of me.

   Every time my chest gasped for air, my body shivered with new pain from the broken rib. I could no longer walk on, not like this. I had to find somewhere to hide until the bones reconnected and healed. It needed to be somewhere that I could lay down straight yet still be comfortable; which was a stupid idea as I always liked to be curled up from the cold night air.

   I found a pile of dried leaves and moss and used it for my bed for the next night, hoping that the pain would have subsided (even if the slightest) so that I could return to my pack and my family the next morning.

   ‘Layla? Layla!’ I heard my brother’s voice, and I thought I must be dreaming of it due to my lack of company. ‘Layla, why are you lying like that? I’ve been looking for you for ages.’ It had been ages; I must have been asleep at least three hours.

   ‘Because my ribs broken, Jasper.’

   ‘How?’ he asked, purely shocked and sounding like he was about to cry.

   ‘Tyson ran into me and I hit a rock.’ That had done it, he growled and cursed and pounded his front paws on the hard earth. ‘Jasper, Jasper, please. You’re not helping. Could you carry me to camp?’ I asked. Though I hated asking my brother for anything, he was my brother and we would do almost anything for each other.

   ‘I’ll try my best, Lay, but I don’t want to hurt you.’

   ‘You won’t. Help me onto your back and just take your time. And please, when we get there, do not tell mum or dad, I don’t want dad to feel like he should give Tyson a lesson.’

   He gasped with the idea of not saying anything. ‘Why should I keep quiet? He hurt you!’

   My ears vibrated with his high pitched yelp. ‘Promise me? He’s my mate and your Alpha. Just keep your mouth shut,’ I warned. We both knew what Tyson might do if Jasper complained.

   It was a struggle, for him as well as me, but with some rests and naps we managed to reach the camp that we had been running to all day. Jasper placed me down as gently as he could and I winced every time my side would bend even the slightest. Mum and dad paced over and I just said I had slipped on a patch of wet grass and hit a rock with my side, my eyes averting to Jasper behind them with a warning gaze.

   ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ mum began. ‘It will take a month at least before you feel right enough to move.’ Great, a month of agony and a month of sniding comments from everyone else.

   ‘I’ll be alright, Mum. I just need to stay like this and it will soon heal.’ Something inside me was telling me that I was right in that fact.

*****

   The month passed, the pain in my side peaked and then started to dim as the bone of my rib re-attached and healed. Tyson was not amused as half of the pack refused to move on while I was still too fragile to even take a light jog. He even ran off at one point, the urging of his character was one of his downsides.

   But now that I was healed, Tyson made us run twice as long as usual. The deer had once again moved on but we needed the amount of meat that three oxen were made of to feed us all. We hadn’t eaten properly for about a week and we needed to hunt. The night before, I had begged with Tyson to let me off from actually doing any hunting in case it caused some unnecessary aching in my side. He was irritated by this but I could feel the sympathy through our link that he really didn’t want to cause me any more grief. Brushing his cheek along mine, he let me merrily jog along at my own pace while the rest of the pack (the patrollers had returned a few days ago) went off to kill the oxen we had searched out.