Chapter 5: Secrets and Whispers
Elizabeth tried to finish cleaning and sorting out the healer’s rooms as best as she could. But even she knew she was distracted.
He was the Alpha. The one person with the immediate authority to have her removed from the pack. And she had treated him like her own personal assistant for the day. If she was honest, though, he had been an exceptional assistant.
If James hadn’t come along, she would be nowhere near done with the amount of work they’d accomplished today.
She glanced at the medicine shelves, and all the other equipment. Everything had been neatly labelled and stored; the shelves had been cleaned immaculately.
Her work had gotten considerably easier, and tomorrow would not be as daunting or tiring as these past two days had been.
Still, Elizabeth thought as she locked up, she really wished it hadn’t been the Alpha.
Seeing that everything was secure for the night, she began the long walk home. It wasn’t such a long distance, if she was honest with herself. She ran it in the morning easily. But at the end of the day, it always felt a bit long and difficult.
She wondered about her fiancé, like she did so often now. She wondered how much longer he would be, she wondered if he thought of her as often as she did him. She shouldn’t be in the Moirai; he wouldn’t come looking for her here, but she had to do something. She needed to live, and she was a wolf, she needed to be part of a pack, she needed an Alpha’s protection.
She heard the patrol wolves running as she walked. Like any wolf pack, they had to keep their territory safe, and the wolves that protected their boundaries were the first line of defense. Elizabeth sniffed the air, there were different wolves on guard tonight than the night she’d come in. She sniffed again, getting familiar with their scent.
Then she heard voices, and she blinked quickly, trying to think if it was the guard wolves.
“I’m losing control!” A woman half whispered, half shrieked.
Elizabeth didn’t recognize the voice, but she wouldn’t. She had only been in the new pack for two and a half days, and there was no way she had met everyone yet.
“I know,” A man shushed her, but his voice was as agitated as her own. “The memory is returning, too. I think. He seems drawn there, to her, no matter what I do.”
She didn’t recognize the man either. She wondered who the ‘her’ he was talking about. She briefly considered going closer to listen, then caught herself.
‘What am I thinking?’ Elizabeth asked herself. ‘Do I want to get driven off?’
Elizabeth kept walking. She shouldn’t be listening to this. She was almost sure she shouldn’t have even heard it. So she ducked her head, pretended she didn’t see the figures huddled under a room, and walked past.
“What are we going to do?” The woman asked again worriedly.
Her voice was less shrill, now. More of a normal tone. Elizabeth kept walking.
“I have a few plans moving forward,” the man whispered back.
And then Elizabeth was too far away from them to hear anything further, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was to create any more trouble by being where she shouldn’t or listening to things she shouldn’t.
She’d already spent her second day here ordering around her Alpha.
“Oh god,” Elizabeth moaned, as she opened her front door. She quickly closed it behind her and collapsed against the wooden frame.
What on earth had happened? She shook her head, trying to clear it. But she was exhausted by everything and covered in sweat from the days worked.
Elizabeth forced herself to the bathroom and stripped while she ran the shower. She didn’t take long; she didn’t have the energy to take a long shower, and quickly got out and wrapped a towel around herself.
She sorted the things she’d brought with her, and, half-asleep, prepared her things she would need for tomorrow. Then she dressed for bed and was asleep in moments.
“You’ve half-forgotten me,” the man in her dream accused. He wore a playful smile, but Elizabeth could sense the hurt in his voice.
“No,” Elizabeth promised, as she walked towards him. “I’m waiting for you, like you asked.”
She placed a hand over his chest, feeling his heart thrumming beneath his skin, the blood coursing through him. He was strong, stronger than she remembered. An Alpha’s strength. But that wasn’t right, Elizabeth shook her head. He wasn’t an Alpha.
“You can’t even see me properly,” the man said, pulling on his dark hair, one arm around her waist. “You don’t even remember what I look like. You’ve forgotten me.”
Elizabeth held his gaze, his eyes piercing into hers. What did he mean? Was he talking about her time she spent with her new Alpha today? Had that been a betrayal?
Or did he mean her coming here altogether? To the Moirai pack? But surely, he could understand, she’d had nowhere else to go. Just because she’d left the place he’d first found her in, that didn’t mean she’d left him.
Elizabeth shook her head and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you, Phillip,” Elizabeth promised him fiercely. She stood on tiptoe on his feet, pressing her face close against his, like she’d done so many often in their time spent together. “I am waiting for you, I promise.”
Phillip pulled her closer to him, almost lifting her off his feet, and she felt his familiar warmth.
“I know,” he whispered into her ear. “I know you’ve never stopped loving me. But I think you will still forget me, and when you see me again, you won’t know who I am.”
‘But you’re right here,’ Elizabeth thought. ‘You’re right in my arms.’ How could I not know that it was you?
“Elizabeth!” She woke to loud banging on her door, to several people screaming her name.
Healer training kicked in almost immediately, and she was awake within seconds. During training, she’d been woken very often, very easily and very early. She moved with wolf speed out of her bed, and was at her door in moments.
James stood on the other side, with another person to the left of him. But she focused on the wounded wolf they carried between them.
“He’s not healing,” James told her, desperately. “He was attacked while on guard tonight.”
“Bring him in,” Elizabeth moved out of the doorway, opening the door wider to let them all through. “Set him up on my bed. Tell me everything.”
James and the other man carried the injured wolf to her bed, and gently laid him down.
“We thought it was a feral rogue,” The other man spoke, “So we didn’t bother with it. But then the gash wouldn’t heal, and it got worse.”
Elizabeth moved to side of the bed, checking the deepest wound that looked like it was now days old, very much infected.
“It was a feral rogue,” Elizabeth answered, her eyes glowing brightly as she moved to her personal med bag and healing stash that she kept at her place.
Emergencies would be brought here; she was supposed to have set up a bed and work area at her place for those emergencies, but she hadn’t had the time yet. There had been more chores than she’d been expecting.
“But it was an Alpha,” Elizabeth told them, immediately applying a cleaning cloth and then salve to the wound.
James snarled, and everyone bowed their head slightly, even Elizabeth for a moment, before getting back to her patient. The other wolves held their heads low. An uninvited wolf, on another wolf’s territory was enough for a death sentence. An Alpha was a declaration of war.
“He was a rogue,” the other wolf spoke, turning to James, his head still bowed. “He must have been driven out of his territory, and the new Alpha had decided to spare his life. He was killed; I ripped his throat out myself. Your territory is unchallenged, your wolves still loyal to you, Alpha.”
Alpha wounds lasted long, they infected quickly, and they were meant to kill. The person’s suffering was only cut off by their death.
“Will he recover?” James asked, the snarl still in his voice.
“If he’d been brought to me immediately, I might have been able to save him,” Elizabeth said, tying a bandage around him. Even with that, she was being optimistic. An Alpha wound, even a rogue alpha without a pack or territory, was lethal.
Elizabeth shut her eyes, as a migraine took over her head. Her memory flashed in her head, something similar, another wolf lying injured in her bed. But how? And why now?
She held her head for a second, then finished tying the bandage.
“Now,” Elizabeth warned the Alpha. “We will have to wait.”