Authors: J. Rose Allister
“Shit,” she whispered. “You’re twenty-one fucking years old. Shit, shit, shit.”
She typed her reply with shaking fingers as she heard her parents coming down the hall.
I can’t. I’m sorry
.
Chapter Ten
In the history of all time, Terra was certain no other woman her age had ever been grounded by her parents. Or, if one had been, that the woman would never actually go along with it. Yet as she lay on her bed, staring at memorabilia of a pubescent era gone by, Terra knew she had to accept her punishment for now. So there she was, restricted to the house with her car keys and cell phone confiscated.
Of course, her parents didn’t know about the other cell phone, the only one that truly mattered. The thought prompted Terra to roll onto her side and stick her hand beneath her mattress, fishing around until her fingers found what she was after.
There were no new messages.
She stuffed the prepaid phone back and sat on the edge of her bed. There hadn’t been any more texts since she’d turned down the offer of leaving town with Connor and Nash the previous night. Not even a good-bye. She could just text them herself, of course. Hell,
call
them, since both of her parents were at work and wouldn’t know. So why did her fingers tremble over the keys every time she thought about doing it?
Terra had no answer, save a single word. Fear. Fear that they would try to pressure her to join them when she wasn’t sure she could resist. Fear that they wouldn’t, because they were angry with her for refusing. Fear that they might not answer the phone at all, because they were too far away, no longer cared, or because something had happened to them.
Jesus, a grown woman couldn’t live her life submerged in such a deep pool of “what ifs.” She was a survivor. Doctors and friends and family had all said so. She’d faced down death. She’d come out of the coma too weak to move or even breathe on her own, and then had walked out of the hospital a few months later. She’d spent the night with a couple of raging stud werewolves, seducing one in front of the other after watching him get a knife jabbed into his thigh. If she could stare down all these challenges, why couldn’t she fire off a simple text?
The men were connected to her now. Connor was, definitely, and she felt an invisible zip cord of emotion pulling her toward Nash. Unsettling a thought as that should be, Terra didn’t shy away from it. She clung to that sense of belonging, like a safe cocoon that enveloped her loneliness. Nevertheless, it didn’t change the fact that she was alone. Very much so.
Terra rose and wandered over to her vanity table. With slow deliberation, she turned in a circle, checking herself from every angle. Today’s ensemble was completely black, much like her mood. The ribbed turtleneck hugged her slender torso. Black denims molded her ass and the bare swells of her hips before skimming straight down to her bare ankles. She stripped her clothes off, along with her black bra and panties. Her gaze fell to the mark still visible on her shoulder. The bite looked much better today. Bruises had already begun to fade, and the red punctures looked less angry. There were other small bruises on her, too, ones that the hospital staff had pointed out during her humiliating exam the previous night. Two marks kissed her inner thighs, and another crested one of the hips Connor had gripped while she rode him hard. There had also been some minor bleeding from her vagina, ultimately attributed to her rather adventurous and uninhibited loss of virginity.
Vaginal smears and blood samples had been whisked off to the lab, but unlike her parents, Terra was not anxious about the pending results. How could a being with supernatural healing powers transmit STDs? Even if they contracted one, their body would just shuck it off. Admittedly, pregnancy wasn’t something she’d considered. However, doctors had speculated that the injuries sustained when her leg and pelvis had been shattered in the accident could very likely prevent conception.
She moved closer to the mirror, blocking most of her lower half while trying to picture herself through the men’s eyes. Her eyes skimmed her diminutive breasts, with the slight upturn to her pink rosebud nipples, the nipped-in curve of her waist, and the bare pussy that still appeared foreign to her. Today, the area sported itchy red bumps, a razor rash from her crazy impulse.
What had Connor and Nash thought of her naked body, really? The response seemed favorable in the heat of the moment, but was what they saw truly hot enough to make them still want her? Her own reflection didn’t impress her all that much. When her cowboys had been clutched together in that motel room, they looked like porno stars. Inserting herself into that scene, however, didn’t seem realistic. She didn’t fit. Was that why they didn’t bother contacting her now? Maybe the scars had been too much of a turn-off. Maybe her breasts were too small, or she hadn’t been good enough at sex to please Connor. Maybe they’d decided she was too flawed.
Her eyes drifted away from her dissatisfactory findings up to the cheerleading memorabilia on the walls. Life interrupted, adolescence interrupted, and now, love interrupted.
Anger boiled up inside. A hot flood of bitterness flowed, not unlike the rage she’d felt after coming out of her coma to be told day after day about all the things she couldn’t do. A thin thread of reserve snapped, and she stormed over to the smiling face on the wall. She’d been so naïve, so unaware of the turn her life was about to take.
“You didn’t have a care in the world, did you?” Terra said to that face. She shook her head and pulled the photo off the wall. “You thought life was just going to sail along the way it always had. Your biggest problem was deciding which cute outfit to wear.”
Hot tears crested, blurring out the smiling image just as fate had done so three years before. Three years of refusing to cry over that loss, of gritting her teeth and showing the world that she would get it all back. She’d pushed through the pain through sheer anger, forcing herself beyond her limitations. Self-pity had never been allowed, and mourning for the loss of friends and prom and graduation had been strictly banished. Had she let that sorrow in, she might have lapsed into an emotional coma she’d never have survived.
With an anguished cry, she hurled the photo to the floor. It landed facedown with a tinkle of broken glass. A sweep of her arm brought her pom-poms and trophies crashing down. Her “flower child” wall art followed, and then she stalked to her door and tore her teen heartthrob poster in two, right down his smiling, handsome face.
Item by item, memory by memory, Terra went through and targeted pictures, stuffed animals, leftover Barbies, and more until any and every piece of her childhood sat in a torn, jumbled heap in the middle of her faded carpet. By the time she was finished, her fingernails were broken and the walls were mostly empty. The space appeared oddly barren, but she didn’t care. Her room deserved the same abrupt, violent end to adolescence that its occupant had suffered.
At last, Terra collapsed to the floor beside the pile of devastation, heaving in sniffling, ragged breaths. “Fuck!” she shouted.
Her shoulders shook as all the pent-up disappointment and anger erupted in a maelstrom of long-overdue emotion. She clutched her arms around her bare torso, trying to hold together what little of her sanity remained as the sobs went on unchecked and unabashed. She cried until her nose was running and there were no tears left, only occasional spasms in her diaphragm and a mind-numbing fatigue.
At last, Terra wiped her burning eyes and stared at the rubble she’d created. Some of it was truly garbage. The rest she’d probably want to keep for posterity’s sake, in another incarnation where she wasn’t acting like a crazy person. In either case, her parents would unglue at the way she’d spent her time in solitary confinement.
Her legs groaned in protest as she rose. A frightening sight greeted her in the mirror, and she ignored the red, puffy eyes and runny nose while she grabbed tissues off the vanity and blew her nose. Her limbs felt heavy, much like her frame of mind. She pulled on a bathrobe, tying the sash as she headed out the door. A few giant trash bags should take care of things before the folks returned.
Halfway downstairs, a sound caught her attention and prompted a frown. The television was on in the den. Considering how anal her dad was about leaving electronics turned on in an empty room, that he’d forgotten to turn the TV off was an obvious sign of how hard he’d snapped over Terra’s initiation into womanhood.
She padded barefoot into the room, rounding the couch to look for the remote that lived near Dad’s favorite chair. It took a moment to register that as she was coming around the recliner, it was swiveling to face her.
A familiar shock of red hair shot Terra’s eyes wide, as did the glint of a metal from the gun pointed straight at her.
“Crying over your poor choice in men?” the huntress asked, her eyes glittering from the reflection of the TV screen.
Terra froze. “How did you get in here?”
The woman tapped a fingernail against the barrel of her gun. “The one with the weapon asks the questions, remember?” Her eyes narrowed. “Where are they?”
“Who?”
The other’s lip curled. “You lied to me. Don’t try to deny it. I know they were here.”
“I didn’t lie. I never told them where to find me, and I don’t know where they are.”
“I found the bloody slug I pumped into that asshole werewolf in the backseat of your car.”
Terra swallowed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
The woman used the remote to mute the TV volume, and then she grunted and rose from her seat. Terra flinched back instinctively from the gun barrel waving her direction. The huntress slid toward her with cat-like grace, dressed in a sleek, gray knit top and slacks that stretched over a feminine array of curves Terra might have envied, had she not been possessed by more immediate worries.
Terra forced herself to remain still, clenching her teeth as the woman stopped inches in front of her. Without warning, the huntress yanked open the front of Terra’s bathrobe. Her hands flew to cover her nakedness as the woman’s charcoal eyes honed straight in on Terra’s shoulder.
With a disgusted snort, she stepped back. “Liar.”
Terra pulled her robe closed and cinched the belt.
“I thought you claimed you were nothing to those animals?”
“And I’m still nothing,” Terra said. “As evidenced by the fact that they aren’t here.” She pointed to her puffy eyes. “Why else do you think I look like this?”
The ever-present cool reserve in the woman’s tone snapped. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. You can’t get marked by a werewolf and have it mean nothing to them.”
“Obviously I can, since they left me here. Look, what do you want me to say? I stupidly let a couple hot guys seduce me, and one of them bit me in the middle of it. It didn’t turn me into their mate or a werewolf. It didn’t change a damn thing. They left town right after.”
An oily smile slid along the woman’s porcelain face. “They’ll be back.”
“I doubt that.”
“I know it.”
“How?”
The gun rose higher. “Because I’ve got something they want.”
Icy fear clutched at Terra’s pounding heart. “Weren’t you just listening? They don’t want me. Even if they did, they have no idea you have me, and I have no way to contact them to tell them otherwise.”
That wasn’t exactly true, of course, but she wasn’t about to mention the special cell phone.
The click of the gun safety releasing sent a gasp from Terra.
The woman smiled. “No worries. You just did.”
“I just did what?”
“You just told them I’ve got you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Those pathetic excuses for cowboys are bonded to you through that bite. They’ll be able to pick up on your emotions now, no matter where they are. As soon as they sense you’re in trouble, they’ll come running on all fours.”
Terra blinked. Shit. They could actually feel it when she was afraid or distressed? Connor hadn’t mentioned anything about that. Then again, the huntress could be lying or misinformed. Her werewolf heroes didn’t seem to give a shit about her loneliness. She’d just had the emotional equivalent of Armageddon when she’d all but leveled her bedroom, and they hadn’t come running. Or maybe they were too far away to sense her emotions.