Wolf Eyes

Chapter 25

So I know this is really late and really short, but I'm gonna be really honest. This chapter was one of the hardest to write for me. Not necessarily because I didn't like it, but because for some reason I just couldn't figure out what to write. My mentality with this book lately is "oh my gosh, I need to edit this book so bad" but I'm trying to just finish and then go back to edit once it's done. Not to mention school's been pretty rough on me, what with midterms this week and me trying my best to get an A on my Physics exam, cause if I do I can get an xbox. 

Also, as you can see from the title of the book, I've entered this story into the Watty Awards! It would mean a lot to me if all of you could comment and votes and share this story as much as you can, cause this is the first time I've done something like this!

If I don't update before Christmas next week, Merry Christmas! (Or Happy Hannukah. Whichever one you celebrate)

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I was never awake, strictly speaking, but I was never asleep either. I saw everything. I heard everything. I felt everything. But I didn’t respond to anything. 

I saw the moment when my brother lunged into the room, eyes frantic before they landed on me and changed to horror. I saw him run over and skid to a stop in front of me, and felt his hands on my shoulders. I could hear him speaking but any words that he said my mind warped, whether it was on purpose or a side effect of the pain. His voice grew louder and he squeezed his hands, making my back arch as agony knifed through my arm. I felt his hands leave as he drew back and his incredibly light green eyes darting over my body before landing on my arm. I saw when he left and came back, this time with bandages in hand. I felt every twinge and prick of pain as he pulled the broken bone of my arm back into place and bound it in a sling, although I refused to scream. 

As soon as Joey left, promising me that he would be back in a few moments, the Alpha came in. This time, through my senseless haze, his eyes reminded me of Sebastian’s: bright blue, shining, and filled to the brim with different emotions. The only things lacking were the flashes of emerald green shot through the blue and those emotions were all hate and anger. 

He didn’t speak to me so much as he yelled, growling and snapping out each word like I was a rat that was only bringing the rest of the nest. He told me that I was no better than a weed, a useless addition to a bountiful garden that only served to annoy the gardener and get pulled up or killed off. 

If he did anything physically to me, I didn’t feel it. I could only feel him standing above me, talking down to me, beating my mind into submission. 

When I didn’t respond he angrily stormed off. I was able to get some sort of sick pleasure when I saw out of the corner of my eye that he slipped on the slick, vomit covered floor spot that had yet to be cleaned up. In that moment, Joey entered the room again and the Alpha screamed and cursed at him before shoving past. My brother stood, stunned for a second, before quickly cleaning up the floor and throwing a dirty rag outside the room. 

Joey came to my side next, crouching in front of me. When I didn’t react, he shifted to sit beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him but not so much that he was touching me.

And then, he talked.

He told me everything that was on his mind, not stopping. It was just a continuous stream of his thoughts. I was grateful for it. He understood that I wasn’t going to carry on a conversation with him, if I even could. 

He told me how when he woke up in the a bare room and thought it was empty only to look over and see a dead body lying on the opposite bed. He laughed when he recounted that he threw up at the sight of it and hid under the covers until someone came in to get him. It was a kind nurse, who took one look at him and the other body and understood the situation. After taking him out of the room to a private one, she sat him down and told him everything that had happened and the body he had seen wasn’t dead but another one that had been bitten and was making the transition.

He told me how the nurse recommended he move away from his home town and join a pack so that he wouldn’t disrupt his parents and sister, who thought he had died. Joey had agreed with the nurse, who left to arrange for a pack to take him and soon after the alpha had come to bring him back.

He told me the training that he had to go through in order to fully understand what he had become and how to live, describing the processes in detail. How Alpha Nicholas had required him to learn how to fight, hunt, and shift. 

He told me that after training and learning how to defend himself, he came back home to tell our parents that he was still alive. They were shocked, obviously, and convinced that he was a ghost until he explained what happened. He hadn’t wanted to tell me in an effort to protect me from the supernatural world. 

Some help that had been. 

Joey tried asking me questions about my own life throughout the years, but when I didn’t answer, he continued on. 

Eventually, as he talked, I found myself relaxing far more than I thought I could. He jumped slightly when my head suddenly rested on it before giving a small smile and slowly reaching over to twine his fingers through mine as he continued his stories. 

Sometimes I could see the menacing silhouette of the Alpha framed against the door of the room during the process, disgusted by the acts of care my brother was preforming. His mere presence made me want to curl into a ball and hide, trying to forget all the awful things he had done to me. 

But I wouldn’t allow myself to do that. Until Sebastian came here, I didn’t know what I would do, but I knew that I wouldn’t break. I wasn’t some porcelain doll for him to shatter and have Joey glue back together. I wasn’t a flower for him to crush. But I wasn’t a tree either. I wasn’t strong enough to resist him without being uprooted in the process. 

I wasn’t a tree, nor was I a flower. 

So, I had to be a weed. 

I would survive.