Talbot grunted. He turned me back toward the freight elevator. My vision was hazy and spotted, but I could see the white wolf and the five other wolves surrounding Jude, who had been abandoned by his so-called father—thrown, quite literally, to the wolves. The Daniel wolf stood steady, but the other five scratched their paws at the ground and growled at Jude, looking eager to attack.
My brother dropped to his knees in the midst of the pack. He threw his hands over his face. “Please … I just want to go home now,” I thought I heard Jude say as I slipped from consciousness and my mind faded to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Stuck
HOW MUCH LATER, I DON’T KNOW FOR SURE
I awoke to something warm and wet brushing my face. I swatted it away and rolled over on my side to find a mound of soft white fur acting as my pillow. It smelled wonderfully of almonds, and in my half dream–like state I was ready to snuggle up with it and go back to sleep. But that was when I noticed the blanket lying under me. It was the plush velvet bedspread—on Caleb Kalbi’s bed.
I sat up quickly—too quickly—and was about to bolt when little white spots started dancing in front of my eyes. I lay back down against the soft pillow.
“It’s okay,” I heard a familiar voice say from somewhere nearby. “You’re safe. We just brought you to the most comfortable place we could think of.”
“Daniel?” I asked. My vision was still a little weird, and I couldn’t place the voice.
“No, it’s me, Talbot.” He turned to someone else in the room. “Do you think she has amnesia?”
The other person apparently ignored him. “I’m here, too,” he said.
“Gabriel?”
I shook my head, and my vision cleared up a bit. Gabriel and Talbot stood at either side of the bed, looking fuzzy in my vision—but almost like brothers—and also quite concerned. They weren’t the only ones in the room with us. Five teenage boys sat on the floor just beyond the foot of the bed. They bowed their heads almost to the ground when I looked at them.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Why did my ankle throb so badly and a knot in my back feel like it was on fire? Why were my dress ripped open and my abdomen wrapped in what looked like makeshift bandages torn from bedsheets?
“You gave us quite a scare there,” Talbot said. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.” He took a step toward me, but suddenly, my pillow growled and Talbot took two paces back. “Whoa, easy there,” he said, with his hands up, as if afraid my pillow might bite him. I knew I wasn’t completely with it, but this whole situation seemed incredibly surreal.
“What happened?”
“You’d better get to work healing yourself. Your body can only do so much with wounds this bad without your help—especially with how much werewolf venom you’ve probably got in your system. We tried to use our own powers to help speed up your healing, but I’m afraid that kind of transfer only works on superficial injuries.”
I squinted at Talbot, noting the genuinely concerned look on his face. I didn’t understand him at all. He was evil, yet he wasn’t? And had he said something about being in love with me?
“He’s right, Grace.” Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed. Apparently, my pillow didn’t have a problem with that. “There will be time for explanations later. Right now we need to make sure you’re okay.” His arm was supported in a sling made of scraps from his monk’s robes.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I lifted my arm. A bandage around it was soaked with reddish-brown sticky, congealing liquid. Blood. My blood. Then the fight with the wolves suddenly came back to me. “What happened? Where’s Caleb? Where’s Jude?” I scanned all the vaguely familiar faces in the room. “Where’s Daniel?” I practically shouted.
My pillow whined and pushed me up as it shifted. I turned, kneeling on the bed, and discovered the pillow was actually a white wolf. He whined with agitation, shaking his head back and forth. It almost seemed like he was trying to tell me something.
“Caleb got away,” Gabriel said.