Amber Silverblood: Silverpack

Chapter Forty Six

Would you think badly of me if I told you I stayed in bed for more than forty eight hours after that? Because I did. And I don't regret it, not one little bit. I've been through so much crap these past few weeks that I feel like I deserve a little R&R now and then, especially after nearly being chopped to pieces by a lunatic with a sword.

When I woke up the next morning, Mom went through her typical routine of freaking out, asking me if I was all right at least a thousand times, and putting her hands everywhere short of where the sun don't shine to make sure I didn't have a fever. I let her do her thing, still feeling too tired to put up a fight. Besides, it was nice to know someone cared about me after...

My thoughts were cut short when I heard the floorboards creaking outside my bedroom door. I turned to look, expecting to see Stark standing in the hallway. Instead, I saw Mr. Wrogan.

"Hello, Amber," he said in his deep rumbling voice. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," I answered for about the thousandth-and-first time.

"And your arm?"

Hesitating a little, I raised the bedsheet off my body and looked down to see my other hand bound from my fingers to my wrist. I tried to move it, and it rose up off the mattress a few inches before falling back down again. I barely felt a thing the whole time.

"It's still numb," I finally answered. "And I can't move it."

Wrogan sighed and nodded. "That's to be expected. It'll get better, but it might take a few nights. Make sure you take in plenty of moonlight."

"Where's Stark?" I asked as soon as he stopped talking. "Is he okay?"

"He's in his room," Mom told me while she dabbed my forehead with a wet rag. "He's... well, he's—"

"The ramidreju potion is doing its work," Mr. Wrogan interrupted her. "He woke up about an hour ago, but his wounds are still quite severe. He is not in the friendliest of moods."

As if on cue, Stark's voice rang through the hallway, "Is he still here? I told you to get out of my house, you..." I never got to find out what, exactly, Mr. Wrogan was, because his rant was cut short by a fit of ugly sounding coughing.

"Oh no," Mom said, rising. She looked at me, and then through my bedroom door.

"I'm fine, Mom," I assured her. "Go take care of him."

Mom smiled a little. "Thank you, sweetie." After planting a quick kiss on my forehead, she hurried out of the room, having to squeeze to get around Mr. Wrogan.

"Your mother is a very kind woman," the giant said after she was gone.

I nodded. "Yeah, she is."

"Not everyone is so fortunate to have a mother like her."

I looked at him, and then snorted and shook my head. "Are you going to tell me you're only like this because you never had a mother?"

Mr. Wrogan drew up straight, his head scraping my ceiling. "Like what?" he asked.

"Kidnapping little girls and running experiments on them so you can sell them to the highest bidder."

Wrogan looked down at me, affronted. For a second I thought he was going to storm out of my room, probably taking the top part of my doorframe with him, but then he sighed and shook his head.

"You don't understand, Amber," he said in a softer voice. "That's not me. That isn't the kind of man I am."

I huffed in my throat. "The past few months really could've fooled me."