The Hunted

Twenty-Four

Blake

God, she was in trouble. 

Not just because she'd woken up in the guest room in the Alphas' house with her ribs throbbing and her shoulder screaming in pain, but also because she'd spent half the night staring at the ceiling.  Wondering if it were possible for her to keep Red out of the war that Malachi was planning.  The war that Blake was supposed to find a way to open the door for so that the hunters could come into Sanguis Ridge with full force.

            As dawn glowed outside the window on her fourth day in the pack, Blake didn't have a clue how she'd ended up here with a werewolf on the couch in the other room.  A wolf that Blake didn't hate – despite everything.  Someone who mirrored her, a reflection of her pain and loss. 

            A man that had thrown himself in front of an Alpha to save her without even knowing her name.  A wolf that had taken on one of his packmates the day before to save her life again.

            Blake didn't open up easily to people and so spilling her darkest day to a man she barely knew should have been daunting.  Uncomfortable.  But telling Red had been like confessing her innermost thoughts to an old friend. 

            Hearing Red's story had been just as heartbreaking as retelling her own.  That alone had kept her up for a good few hours, picturing a dark-haired child with those eyes of forest green who had been neglected.  That was almost worse than what she'd been through.  At least her parents had loved her and done what they could to make sure that Blake and Josh survived that night.  Red's father was cold and cruel and had driven his son out into the world alone because Red's mother had been killed by hunters.

            For the life of her, Blake couldn't figure out how the fates had decided that a human and a werewolf, who'd each known so much pain at the hands of the other, were meant to be.  It made her doubt the bond Red claimed existed.  Forced her to wonder how much of it all was true.

            Yet she had seen the way that he watched her with those not-quite-human eyes.  Noticed that her wounds from yesterday seemed to pain him as well.  Even as she thought about the presence of those wounds, she began to feel the strain of them as she fully rose to consciousness.

            Blake slipped from the bed and reached for the pain meds on the bedside table.  She placed one pill into her hand and angled for the door, gritting her teeth as her stiff and aching body protested at the movement.  She was still wearing Lucy's clothes as she opened the door and entered into the main interior of the house.

            Red was where he promised he'd be – sleeping soundly on the couch in the main room; limbs sprawled and hanging off the end.  His dark brown hair was mussed up,  mouth hanging slightly open.  Behind his closed lids, his eyes fluttered.

            She couldn't help the smile that wormed its way onto her face.  Or the tenderness that graced her eyes. 

            Blake padded into the kitchen where she swallowed the pill down with a mouthful of water from the sink.  Then, she opened cupboards and the fridge, looking for some kind of breakfast meal that she could piece together for Red as thanks for what he'd done for her the night before.

            The only issue was that Blake was a terrible cook.  It was part of the reason she'd picked up a role as a waitress in Beare Lake.  More often than not, she brought home leftovers that Harold Burke – the head chef at the restaurant in town – had made during the day.  Other times, it was Josh who cooked.  Her brother, at least, knew how to make dishes that were edible. Most of the time, Blake's were not.