Skinned

¤ Healing Wounds ¤

Snow was sticking, and all I could see was white.

Every stretch of my limbs were strained, the icy ground biting harder and harder at every land of my paws as I ran.

The stench of rot—the familiar smell of decayed blood, stuck sickeningly in my teeth and stained my fur.

Everything I saw was vague, almost blurry, but all the emotion I felt was clear as day.

I felt enraged and vengeful, like a king who was denied his retaliation.

The emotions were dangerously up to the extreme, and it could never outweigh anything I felt during my lifetime.

This was different. This wasn't mine to feel.

This was Killian's.

And I get to be immersed into his raw, untethered power.

It was all so consuming, and it frightened me to know that it was the type of wild that could conquer the skin, completely obliterating all sense of control.

This was what he meant, the danger that followed upon his shift.

Anyone could get lost in it.

I started to feel my heart hammer itself into my chest, breathing in lung full of air as Killian's unbridled instincts began to make an influence.

It consumed me, filling every fiber of my being with an insatiable appetite for slaughter.

A beeping sound began to ring into my ears and voices started to fill the noise.

And the sound of Killian's deep, chilling snarl sent me jolting with a loud cry.

"No!" I sobbed out, and immediately woke up to me being held by several hands down on the bed and Maxon's eyes keeping a terrified gaze on the heartrate monitor.

"What—" I breathed out, looking around frantically as I tried to shake the two, bulky looking nurses' hands off of me, "Where am I? Reed, Heath—"

"Your heart rate spiked a few seconds ago," Maxon told me, "How're you feeling?"

"Don't fucking touch me," I snarled at the two male nurses, ignoring Maxon's question. The two men reeled back, hands slipping off of my body as they felt my threat make a bite.

"We'll be fine," Maxon assured the two wolves, dismissing them with a weak smile. And I didn't miss how the one with the buzz cut threw me a sour look before walking out of the room.

I sunk back down on the hospital bed, my gaze travelling up to the ceiling as Maxon took a seat beside me.

"How long have I been asleep?" I asked.

"A day," Maxon said, and gestured for the tray full of food on the table beside me, "Help yourself with some food. You lost a lot of blood."

"I shifted that night, Maxon—" I swallowed down an impending cry as I recalled the very moment that Heath chased me down the lake, "The baby, is it—"

"The sudden shift wasn't able to complicate your pregnancy," he gave me a long look, "it didn't do the pup any harm. In fact, I think it can withstand the force of your shift; odd, but fairly astonishing."