Shattered

Careful Footing

Zack's POV

When Katt passed out, my heart stopped. No, I thought, I was not going to lose her. She made me feel something I thought I was incapable of feeling, something beautiful. I wasn't going to let her go when I had just found her.

My father, who was closest to Katt, made a move to help her, but I growled. Even though his question had been completely innocent, it had been the cause of Katts panic attack. And I wasn't particularly eager to let anyone near her, anyways. It was strange, but I felt the need to protect her.

With a low growl back at me, my father backed away from Katt. It had been disrespectful of me, and I knew I'd hear about it later. But at the moment Katt was my priority. Carefully, I scooped her up in my arms and held her against my chest. Her own chest rose and fell quickly, and she fidgeted as if she was having a bad dream.

"Tessa, I need you to set up a bed in the infirmary. We have an emergency." I spoke through the mindlink, praying our best pack doctor wasn't busy.

"On it." Tessa repled in a matter of seconds.

As soon as she spoke back I stood up and carefully yet quickly walked in the direction of the infirmary.

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Katt's POV

It was late at night. I quickly rushed about the house, praying that they'd be late. I had passed out earlier in the middle of working, slept for almost six hours. And now, if I didn't finish my work, I would pay.

Soon I heard the sound of tires against gravel and drunken laughs. They were back. They were back early. And they were drunk. Blinding fear passed through me, and all of my instincts told me to run, to leave, to escape. So for the first time, I tried to leave. I ran to the nearest window. I jammed my elbow into the glass hard. Sharp pain ran up and down my arm, to my shoulder, and back down, focusing on the area that the glass had made contact with. But I didn't care. The fear outweighed the pain, and this time I slammed my fist sidways into the glass. A spiderweb of lines appeared, and more pain rushed up and down my arm. I had broken a finger, I thought. There was no other way that the pain in my hand would be so great. But, again, I ignored it. I out all of the strength that I could into the next blow, and the glass gave, shattering beneath my clenched hand. I put my leg through the window first; more pain hit as a shard of glass that had been pointing upwards pierced my skin. But I couldn't stop. I had heard the sound of a door slamming, and now there were footsteps pounding up the stairs. I put my hand on the window to support myself when I slipped, and only then did I realize how much blood was on me, on the floor, dripping off the window sill.

And then, just as I was about to jump one story down to the soft grass, a hand came around my upper arm, and I froze. I felt breath hot at the back of my neck, and smelled the whiskey on my brother's breath as he whispered, "Well that doesn't seem like too good an idea."

And then everything went dark.

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Zach's POV

It was 4 hours when the screaming started.

Terrible, ear piercing sounds left her throat. She just screamed. For hours and hours she screamed, she screamed until she physically couldn't scream any longer. Tessa tried everything; she used sedatives, injections, she even dug out some old books from the library to see if there was anything she could do. But there was nothing. After two days she started thrashing around, and they had to restrain her. Eventually she started reacting to people touching her. If anyone went near her she'd kick out, punch, anything.

And there was nothing I could do.

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Luke's POV

When the headache started I ignored it.

I was under a lot of stress, I told myself. All of this searching, this regret, this anxiety, it was getting to my head. That had to be it.

Except I was wrong.

I realized it wasn't normal when it went on for over two days, nonstop, just a constant, throbbing headache at the base of my skull. It became constant. I would've almost been able to forget it if it wasn't so present.

Though I knew something strange was going on, I didn't say anything until I started seeing black spots. Until I noticed it wasn't normal, until I noticed it had layers, almost as if it was disconnected from me, but still completely attached.

That was when I realized it wasn't my pain I was feeling. It was hers.

When it hit me I was like lightening. I barreled down the stairs, through the hallways I'd began to memorize, and to the dining room, where our main database had been set up.

"She's hurt!" I yelled, breathless. My vision was going in and out. Anger was burning through me. My wolf was angry. My eyes landed on Derek and I saw red.

"You." I growled. I took a step towards him, then stumbled. My head hit the solid wooden floors. the last thing I saw before I blacked out was her face.

White hot burning pain split through my head like a dam cracking open, and then I was out.

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okay I'm not even going to try to apologize. I've been absolutely terrible. school is like my only excuse. and the fact that my wifi is crap. but yeah, I saw that I had 7k reads (?!?!?!) and I was like WHOA WHAT so I wrote this up for you guys because OMG YOU'RE SO AWESOME. Uhm anyways yeah for the next month idk how i'll be because i have sooooo much stuff planned BUT after that I'm going to really push to update more often.

THANKS TO EVERYONE THAT STAYED WITH ME.

-Britni

(unedited)