Darren rubbed at the back of his neck as he sat in one of the dining chairs he had brought into the sitting room, while Ben sat in another, elbows on knees and hands tightly folded together as if in prayer. Dustin sluggishly paced in the foyer just beyond the open French doors, and diligently watched the sleeping figures of Katey on one couch and Logan on its pair across from her.

The loups-garous had loosened their work attire, top buttons and ties undone. It’d been several hours since the attack and neither of them had shown any sign of consciousness. But, as long as the three men could still hear their gentle breathing and strong heartbeats, they knew that there was still hope. 

Ben glanced to the clock on the wall, the pendulum swinging with each second that dragged. Dustin blew out a short breath and stopped just inside the French doors. Darren looked at his beta and his impatient, shifty gaze. 

“Brooding won’t make them wake up,” he commented as he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. The air in the house was cool, but the sitting room took on a balmy, suffocating temperature. 

Ben rolled his shoulders. “What else are we supposed to do? I can’t just carry on with my evenin’, knowin’ that they’re like this.”

“I knew a loup-garou in Italy that tried to turn his girlfriend,” Dustin said, brushing his fingertips underneath his chin with a distant look in his eye. “She was unconscious for nearly a day before she started fading.”

“Katey won’t fade.” Darren had to stay strong for his pack. If he showed the slightest bit of panic, they would latch onto it and begin to doubt themselves and everything they secretly believed from the beginning. “She’s strong. She’ll pull through.”

Ben hung his head and ran his hands through his hair, gripping at the roots. Dustin turned away, his arms crossed and shoulders rigid. Darren swallowed hard and turned his attention back to Katey, who looked to be sleeping soundly. At least she wasn’t in any pain… yet. 

​

***

Katey moaned as feeling finally returned to her body. Everything ached, from her muscles and bones to her skin, as if she had been stretched too thin and then pushed back together. She moved her head and pain shot down her spine. She hissed and struggled to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt bruised and swollen. The lights blinded her, and she squeezed her eyes shut again with a whimper. Bright dots danced in Katey’s vision as her retinas tried to recover from the sudden assault. 
Darren’s voice whispered somewhere in the room. “Ben, turn off the lights.” 

She sensed some movement in the room, and assumed it was Ben obeying the alpha. Beyond her eyelids, she could tell the light directly above them had been cut off.  

Katey sighed and blinked for a moment, trying to think, but that, too, made her hurt. She glanced between the three loups-garous and their anxious gazes. 

Through the haze and chaos of alien sensations and pain, she could tell she lay on one of the sofas in the sitting room. She squinted around and recognized the old furniture and crystal chandelier in the dining room. 

As her foggy mind reached into the past, another face appeared. One distorted with rage and the golden eyes of the wolf staring at her with hunger and distressed longing. Growls and harsh words hummed in her ears, and she remembered exactly what happened. 

More pain streaked through her body, but it could do little to distract her from the memory of Logan bent over her with teeth bared in a snarl. Katey found the energy to push herself up, but Dustin gently pushed her back down onto the sofa, his touch like needles jabbing into her flesh. The prickly edges of the bandage tape bit into her skin as it shifted under her clothes.
“Just take it easy. Everything’s okay. How do you feel?”

“Don’t shout at me,” she moaned, her own voice sounding like a clanging gong in her ears. 

“I’m not.”

“Give her ears a bit to get used to it,” Darren whispered from behind Dustin. 

Katey blinked hard and raised her hand to her throbbing head, the effort to move expending what little energy she had. “Where’s Logan?”

“He’s right here.” Ben motioned toward the loveseat on the other side of the room.

Katey turned her head and her throat closed up. There lay Logan’s limp and unconscious body. His face was blank, as if he were sleeping. 

Dustin rubbed his thumb across her tender shoulder, a comforting gesture to her nerves. “Don’t worry, we crammed meat down his throat after we brought you two home. He’s just resting now.” 

Katey glanced down to her body, as if to make sure it was still in one piece. “Everything hurts.”

Darren took a careful step forward. “It’s going to hurt for a little while. But, once everything sets in, you’ll feel relatively normal again.”

Her thoughts were a tangled mess, searching for an explanation why everything was so sensitive and vivid. Her eyes widened as her mind slowly cleared. 

“Am I...” She could barely voice the word, afraid that if she spoke it aloud, her hopes would be dashed to pieces. 
The guys glanced to each other and Darren nodded solemnly. “We think so.”

Katey took deep breaths and it was like each inhale was a new experience. Air passed in and out of her lungs, but it didn’t quite feel the same as it had before. She glanced around the room. Everything from the fibers of the red carpet to the rough texture of the wallpaper was clear and vibrant. With her eyes wide open, she realized that colors were brighter, more distinct in their varying shades. 

Not only that, but her nose was assailed with potent scents and smells she couldn’t quite recognize. The guys’ distinct scents from their cologne and deodorants, the metallic acrid scent of dried blood smeared all over her hoodie and jeans, the musty smell of old carpet, chemical odor of the paint and building materials, the earthy scent of the wood floors in the foyer and living room. She could even smell the food in the refrigerator all the way in the kitchen.  

As the aching subsided, she began to feel something like shocks of static under her skin that made her muscles twitch. A tingly feeling in the back of her skull developed and slowly dissipated as the moments passed. She recognized it as a caffeine buzz, but like everything else, it wasn’t quite the same.  

There was another sensation. It was a visceral and emotional pull, like a loosely tethered rope between her and each of the men in the room, like a constant reminder that they were there. The connection pulsated as if strength and life were surging between all five of them. 

“What time is it?” Katey strained her vocal cords to speak louder, though her ears protested. 

“A little past ten o’clock,” Ben replied. “You’ve been out for a while now.”

Dustin’s hand gripped her shoulder a little tighter. “We are so sorry this happened. We thought Logan knew better than to go behind our backs. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Katey could hear the sorrow in his voice, but what was more, she thought she could smell it. Like a predator smelled fear on an animal of prey, Katey smelled their worry, their regret, and guilt as clearly as if it were written on their faces. 

“If we had known,” Dustin continued, “we would have taken every measure to keep an eye on him. I… I wouldn’t have left you alone in the classroom either.”

“But… I asked for it.” 

Dustin sat back on his heels and withdrew his hand as if he had been burned. A ripple of shock filled the room.  

“You asked for it?” Darren questioned, a tinge of anger making the words sharp and cutting. “I told you that you couldn’t become a loup-garou. We told you the risks. You knew you would have died.”

Katey felt the edges of her mouth twitch into a weak smile, straining against tired and sore facial muscles. “But, I didn’t die. I’m still here and… it worked.” 

She was proud of Logan in a weird, morbid sort of way. He did what they thought he couldn’t do, what they thought no loup-garou could do. It was worth the risk of death to give him such bragging rights, and worth the risk to know that now, nothing could come between them. 

Darren shook his head, fury surging from him. “That’s not the point. He could have killed you. If Dustin hadn’t walked in, he probably would have. We don’t know how long he had been holding onto you like that. He could have put way too much venom into you. You lost a lot of blood... We weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”

Katey turned pleading eyes to the pack. “Please, don’t be hard on him about this. I wanted it, he turned me, and he didn’t kill me. Everything turned out fine.”

“Oh, rest assured, Logan will get his punishment for what he did.” Dustin’s Irish accent chose now to make an appearance. The anger flowed off him in buckets, threatening to drown Katey’s delicate nerves. “He disobeyed us and he could have killed you. We can’t let that slide.”

Katey looked between their frustrated gazes and tried to push back the thickness that developed in her throat. She understood how much worse it could have been. She wasn’t a fool. They all told her the dangers, but they also said she was special, that they already thought of her as one of the pack. If they didn’t want her to try it, they shouldn’t have encouraged her. 

The guys’ heads swiveled to Logan as he began to move. 

 

(End of Excerpt)