Chương 4: Chapter 4 Hand Around Throat
Elena’s POV
“Back up.”
It came out rough. Not a request.
He didn’t move. His palms stayed flat on either side of my head, caging me into the pillow. Up close, his eyes weren’t the clean green I knew. They kept bleeding darker at the edges. Amber. Then green. Then amber again. Like something inside him was clawing for the wheel.
“Answer me,” he said. “The dishwasher. Why is he on you.”
“He pulled me out of an alley.” The words scraped my throat. “That’s why.”
“Try again.”
“That’s the answer.”
His nose almost touched my jaw. I felt him breathe me in. A low sound rolled out of his chest, and Tara flattened herself somewhere behind my ribs, whimpering.
“His name,” he said.
“Miller.”
“Miller.” The name came out flat and ugly. “Where.”
“Cramer’s. He washes dishes there. That’s all I know about him.”
“And yet his scent is in your hair.”
“Because he carried me.”
Marcus’s jaw locked.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them. I would not let this man pin me to a hospital bed and call me a liar. Not today.
“Step back,” I said. “Please.”
He didn’t. But he sat. The mattress dipped. His hands left the pillow and curled on his own knees, white at the knuckles.
A nurse slipped in behind him, eyes on the floor, and hung a new bag on the IV pole. She whispered something I didn’t catch.
“Burn it,” Marcus said.
“Sir?”
“Her clothes. In the bag on the chair. Burn them. All of it. Don’t let anyone touch them with bare hands.”
“Yes, sir.”
The nurse swept up the plastic bag of my torn things and left.
My stomach dropped.
“Those were mine,” I said.
“They reeked.”
“Of the man who kept me alive.”
“Of a man who is not me.”
Tara whined. I shut her out.
The door opened again. The doctor came back in with his clipboard, looked at Marcus, looked at me, and cleared his throat like he had swallowed glass.
“Miss Fairfax. How are you feeling.”
“Fine.”
“You are not fine.” He glanced at the chart. “I have to say, I am struggling here. Your intake showed a fractured skull, severe broken ribs, significant internal bruising, a fractured ankle, and a broken wrist. Your bloodwork says you are malnourished. Dehydrated. Your rank…” He hesitated. “Given your rank, I would expect slower healing. Not faster.”
“Faster?”
He flipped a page. Flipped it back.
“The swelling at your temple is already reducing. The ribs are knitting. I have never seen a low-pack shifter repair like this. I cannot explain it.”
Marcus didn’t look at the doctor. He looked at me.
And I felt it.
Somewhere under the bruises, under the throb in my head, something warm was moving. A thread, pulled tight. Pulling tighter every second he sat close.
I looked away first.
“How much,” I said.
The doctor blinked. “How much what.”
“The bill. The private room. The transfusion. All of it. How much do I owe.”
His pen stopped moving. “Miss Fairfax, perhaps we discuss that later—”
“Now.”
He gave me a number.
The room lurched. My good hand went cold around the sheet. I could work at the cafe every shift it had forever and not touch that number. My mother could scrub floors until her knees gave out and not touch it.
I sat up.
Pain exploded behind my eye. I didn’t care.
I pulled the IV tape off the back of my hand. The needle came out with a bead of blood. I peeled the monitor pads off my chest, one by one. The machine beside me went into a panic and screamed.
“Miss Fairfax—”
“I’m leaving.”
“You cannot—”
“Watch me.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Bare feet on cold tile. The hospital gown gaped at my back and I didn’t care about that either.
I stood.
My ankle buckled.
The floor rushed up.
He caught me.
One arm at my waist, one at my shoulder, and my whole body went through a wire.
Heat. Not fire. Something cleaner. It ran down the back of my neck, down my spine, down the long bone of my leg, and pooled where the ankle screamed. And the scream went quiet. Not gone. Quiet. Like somebody had turned a dial down.
I gasped.
He felt it too. I knew because his chest locked against my shoulder and he didn’t breathe for a long second.
“Put me down.”
He didn’t.
“Marcus. Put me down.”
He set me on the edge of the bed. His hands lingered at my elbow one beat too long. When he pulled away, the cold rushed back in and the ankle throbbed again, duller now, but there.
The doctor was staring at us both like we were a puzzle with a piece missing.
“I’m going home,” I said.
“Miss Fairfax, your ankle alone—”
“Is my problem.”
Marcus reached into his coat. Pulled something out. Laid it on the blanket beside my hand.
My father’s watch.
Silver. Worn leather strap. The glass was cracked in one corner, the way it had always been. My throat closed.
“Where,” I whispered.
“The man who pulled you out of the alley had it. He gave it to me.”
My fingers curled around it. Warm from his pocket. Heavier than I remembered.
I did not say thank you. I would not give him that.
I stood again, slower. Marcus did not touch me this time, but he stayed close enough that the thread between us stayed warm, and I hated how grateful my body was for it.
A nurse brought a pair of paper slippers and a cheap sweatshirt someone had donated to the ward. I put them on over the gown. I walked for the door on an ankle that shouldn’t have held me up and somehow did.
In the corridor, heels clicked fast on the tile.
“Marcus!”
Viviana.
Red dress. Red mouth. Mascara smudged at one eye, like she had cried in the car and fixed it badly.
“Marcus, I have been sitting in that parking lot all day, do you have any idea—”
I kept walking.
“—and you won’t answer my calls, what is wrong with you, what is so important in this building that you can’t—”
Her voice hit my back like gravel. I didn’t turn my head. I did not look at the fake werewolf in her painted shoes. Let her scream. Let her scream all the way down the hall.
I walked out into the gray afternoon with my father’s watch pressed hard in my palm.
The walk home took everything I had.
Our trailer sat crooked on its lot at the edge of pack lands. The step groaned under me. I pushed the door open and the smell of old coffee and laundry detergent almost made me cry.
I made it to the couch and went down on it like a felled tree.
From the kitchen, a dry voice. Tara’s cousin-ghost of a laugh, filtered through the bond.
“Full day, Elena.”
Tara. My Tara, soft and tired inside my own chest.
“Mm,” I managed.
I closed my eyes.
I don’t know how long I had them closed. Long enough for the ache to settle into my bones. Short enough that the door was still warm from my hand when it slammed open against the wall.
Boots. Expensive ones. On our cracked linoleum.
I sat up.
Marcus filled the doorway of our tiny living room. His tie was gone. His collar was open. His eyes were doing that thing again, green, amber, green, amber, and the amber was winning.
“Get up.”
“You don’t get to be here.”
“Get up, Elena.”
I got up. Slow. My ankle screamed. I ignored it.
He crossed the room in a few strides. His hand closed in the front of my hospital gown and he walked me backward until my shoulders hit the wall. The thin fabric bunched in his fist.
“How many,” he said.
“How many what.”
“How many have put their hands on you. The dishwasher. The boys in the alley. How many, Elena.”
“None of them touched me like that.”
“Liar.”
“I was in that alley,” I hissed, “because my mother works multiple jobs to pay your rent. The rent you jack up on our house because we are the lowest thing in your pack. I was taking a shortcut home from your packhouse. That’s it. That is the whole story.”
His eyes flickered. Something in his face cracked open for a fleeting moment.
Then it closed again.
He smiled.
It was the worst thing I had ever seen on a human mouth.
His hand slid up from the gown. Fingers at my collarbone. Then higher. Then around my throat.
He didn’t squeeze. Not yet. He just laid his palm there, warm and enormous, and let it settle, and watched my eyes.
I felt his thumb find my pulse.
My breath caught. Tara screamed inside me. The thread between us flared hot and horrible.
His fingers tightened. Slow. A little. A little more.
Marcus’s mouth curved in that thin, cold smile, his hand closing gently around my throat. He was savoring the flicker of fear in my eyes—I was already wondering if he was really going to kill me.
