Defiant: Book 2 of the Forbidden Series

Chapter Three: A Bath

Van

Van leaned into Luca as he guided her down the hallway to the nearest bathroom. He did not fill the silence with unnecessary chatter, though she was certain he was brimming with questions, and later she would tell him how much she appreciated his restraint. After spending what felt like an eternity with nothing but the sound of her voice, every creak of the floorboards and whisper in the air overloaded her senses. She caught herself flinching and snapping her eyes shut in response, and it frightened her how comforting it felt to return to the darkness. Almost as if it was part of her.

"Sit here," Luca said, offering his arm for support as she lowered herself to the closed toilet seat. "I'll run your water."

She studied him while he fiddled with the knobs, making the pipes in the old house hiss and groan with the effort. His dark hair was longer, falling into his eyes as he lowered his hand into the frothy stream of water to test the temperature. Black stubble grew on his square jaw and over his full top lip. It lacked the patchiness most boys had when they grew their first beards- no doubt a benefit of his animal nature.

Van normally liked beards. Hailey once told her they were the male equivalent of contouring, and there was no denying she found the look attractive on the shifter. But she found herself wishing for the smooth lines of his clean face. The boyish tilt to his lips, and the round apples of his cheeks when he grinned.

They were all gone.

The boy she'd been falling for before drinking the potion had somehow disappeared and been replaced with a man. One whose almost naïve optimism had been replaced by a hardened cynicism that he couldn't hide with a kind smile as he turned to help her stand.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Just really excited about that bath," she replied. It wasn't a lie, but it also wasn't the answer to his question.

"Okay, well... I'll be, um, just outside the door," he spluttered, turning pink.

Van bit her bottom lip to suppress a laugh. Perhaps the boy wasn't gone completely. The door frame rattled as the door shut behind Luca, and she worked bony fingers into the waistband of the sweatpants she was wearing. They slid off her with little effort, and she caught herself staring at the protruding bones of her ankles and knees in dismay.

She'd never been a small girl. Bordering on petite- yes, but always in possession of generous curves, even as she built muscle during her training sessions with Trixie. Now, she was almost emaciated, and when she twisted to get a better look at herself in the mirror, she gasped.

Half healed sores and patches of red covered her backside. As she stared, some lightened to pink while the others shrank in size, her mixed-heritage as a Slayer and Protean doing its best to heal her. She couldn't imagine what she would have looked like if she'd been completely human.

She curled her fingers under her t-shirt and lifted, but getting out of her top proved a challenge. Panting and red-faced, she struggled to get it above her breasts, each time her arms screaming at her in protest. Determined, she jerked upward and cried out as a burning pain whisked down her spine and drove her to her knees.

"Van," Luca shouted, his fist banging on the door. "Should I come in there?"

"Just a second," she responded, hauling herself over the side of the tub and lowering herself into the blissfully hot water.

Her t-shirt billowed around her, and it was long enough to maintain a modicum of modesty as long as she didn't submerge herself completely. Still, it mattered little to her at this point. After weeks in a sickbed, she doubted she had much modesty left, and she really, really wanted her hair washed, which meant she had to ask for help.