Aiden's POV
"Damn." Bayne breathed out. She was beautiful, and now with her wearing our marks she was officially ours, and officially our Luna. I smiled down at her thinking of our future together; her being the mother of Josh and my pups, a smile on her face with no impending war or threat. The perfect ending to the craziness of what we call our life.
"How do you feel?" Josh asked our beautiful mate. I couldn't stop smiling; she was officially clamed as ours and wore our marks to prove it. Bayne focused for a few seconds, then looked up at the both of us. I heard a loud smack before I felt it; I brought my hand up to my red check and rubbed it trying to get the stinging to subside. Then I heard another smack followed by Josh groaning.
"I guess we deserve that." Josh said under his breath.
"Damn right you do." Bayne huffed; I turned to her and my eyes widened. "What?" she asked me taking in my look of shock. I breathed out a chuckle and smiled down at her.
"You slapped us..." Josh beamed at the fact that our mate had slapped us. "Just this morning you couldn't make a fist with your hand and now..." Her eyes widened as she brought her hands up and examined them. Her hands were still pale, and shaking, but she was able to move them.
"It worked?" she questioned.
"It worked." I confirmed with a chuckle, "Can you move or feel or move anything else?" Bayne looked down towards her feet and frowned.
"No... just my hands." She sighed.
"Hey, it's okay, it will come back. Just give it time." Josh said.
"Ugh!" Bayne covered her eyes with her shaking hands and started rubbing her forehead.
"You got a headache?" I asked
"Yah..." she sighed and brought her hands down and folded them on her stomach. Josh stood up and walked over to Bayne's side and sat her up so he could get behind her. "What are you doing?"
"Helping." He sat down, one of his legs on each side of her body, on the bed with Bayne in his lap resting her head on his chest and started rubbing her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes and sighed as her head went forward. "Wow." Josh said astonished.
"What?" I asked concerned.
"The amount of knots she has. No wonder you're so uptight." He said jokingly. I just laughed and sat next to them. I reached out and grabbed her hands in mine, rubbing circles on the back of them with my thumbs. Bayne's shoulders relaxed a little more as Josh continued to work out the knots in them, and the best part was; she didn't push us away. I smiled as I looked at Bayne and her response to our actions, her breathing steadied, her guard came down, and I think I saw the corners of her mouth twitch upward.
"Knock, knock." I turned to see Zachary standing in the doorway. "I see the marking went well." He walked in and went to check some of her vitals. "How are you feeling now?" he asked Bayne.
"I can't move anything below my waist, how do you think I feel?" she was definitely not happy with Zachary.
"But you can move your hands?" he clarified.
"Why don't you come a little closer? I'll demonstrate." Bayne growled out. Josh and I laughed, but knew she was completely serious.
"Do you feel any pain?" Zachary asked, trying to be professional and not yell at his new Alpha Female.
"Actually, there's a major pain in my ass." She gritted out.
"Very funny, now answer the man's question." Aaron called coming into the room.
"No I don't have any pain." She sighed out.
"Well if, after 24 hours, there is no change in your vitals then maybe we can do something about that pain in your ass." Zachary told her, "I know once that happens the pain in my neck will go away." He said under his breath, but of course everyone in the room heard him. Josh and I laughed, Aaron shook his head and smiled, and Bayne glared at him as he walked out of the room.
"You have to admit, you haven't exactly been a great patient." Aaron said with a shrug.
"Ugh, I hate doctors." She said as she brought one of her hands up to her forehead and rubbed it.
"Why?" I asked.
"The doctors I grew up with were not the kind that gave you a sucker when you were done at their office. And I really only went to see them when I was..." she looked up at me then turned to look at Josh behind her. I was shaking with anger but tried to keep it from showing, and I knew Josh was doing the same thing. "... not able to heal on my own." I was completely taken by surprise, not only when she danced around what she was originally going to say, but also when Aaron started busting out laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" I growled out.
"The fact that she just changed her story to protect both of you," Aaron breathed out after calming down a little. "She never spares anyone's feelings. Hell, yesterday she would have blurted out the fact that she would be half dead before she was allowed to go see the doctor." Half dead? Josh and I both growled and held Bayne tighter.
"Aaron!" Bayne yelled out. "Learn when to keep your mouth SHUT!"
"I'm sorry, but this is new to me. I've never seen you like this. It brings out your humanity, shows you have a heart." He chuckled out.
"Get out." Bayne said in an annoyed flat voice.
"Whatever you say..." Aaron said as he walked out of the room. After Aaron was gone the three of us fell into a comfortable silence. We had moved so Josh was sitting with Bayne's head on his shoulder and I was sitting with her legs across my lap. I began thinking of what Aaron told us when she was in the coma.
"What was your life like before you were taken by the hunters?" I asked turning to look her in the eye. She had her eyes closed but I knew she was still awake.
"I don't really remember that much about it." She said with a shrug.
"What was your family like?" Josh asked. Bayne took a deep breath, as if trying to get her emotions under control.
"My mother was your typical mother, cared for everyone in the pack, and was always doing things for others. My father was... a hard man to please, but when you did make him happy his face would light up the room." She exhaled and crossed her arms over her chest, when she didn't continue I started to wonder about if she was going to talk about her sister.
"Aaron told us you had a sister, what was she like?" I asked, immediately her eyes shot open and she was looking at the ceiling with a lost look in her eye. She took a shaky breath in and blinked rapidly before diving into her story.
"Um... she..." I noticed her bottom lip starting to shake and knew how much her little sister meant to her. "She was an insurance policy. To make sure I didn't step out of line."
"But what was she like?" I asked, she stayed quiet and closed her eyes again.
"Please don't shut us out." Josh pleaded, we knew she was more or less trained to never show others that she cared, but she didn't need to do that with us. We were her mates, we wouldn't do anything to hurt her and we wouldn't let anyone else hurt her.
"Yvette was like a caged bird; beautiful on the inside and out, but all she wanted was to be free. After the first decade of being imprisoned, Yvette and I were as close as they let us. Everything I did was to insure she stayed safe, but she never blamed me for the bad things that happened to her." Bayne sighed, "She never asked for anything, as a matter of fact she told me to leave and forget about her."
"But you stayed, to make sure she was okay?" Josh clarified. Bayne nodded. "Can I ask what happened?"
"They would beat her for my mistakes, kept her in a cell, they wouldn't feed her for days, and if I stepped out of line they would threaten to torture her the way they tortured me. She would have never survived that." I watched as Josh hugged her, and smiled when she didn't shrug him off, "She never complained about anything, she was always somewhat happy to see me, and when she met her mate, she had the biggest smile I had ever seen spread across her face since we had been taken." She shuddered and shook her head. "When Sercko found out they were mates he put them in cells opposite each other, so they could see one another but not touch... then he would order punishments for one of them and make the other watch. He found joy in making them cry out for their mate, watching them reach desperately across the hall, trying to take the others hand. The sick bastard wasn't paying attention one day; he was too busy watching Yvette reach for Robert's hand as he choked the poor boy to death."
"And she followed soon after..." I said grimly, Bayne nodded and smiled up at the ceiling.
"She used to do this silly thing, whenever we were allowed to see each other, she would take my hand, palm up, and trace the lines on it... it felt like little spiders crawling all over my hand, but it was the most physical contact we were allowed." Bayne stared down at her palm and frowned.
"What?" Josh and I asked at the same time. She just shook her head and sighed.
"Just wishing for things that could never happen." After that we settled into a comfortable silence, every once in a while Zackary would show up and check her vitals, and he would always ask how she was doing and she would answer with "Same as the last time you asked" then he would walk out muttering something about being the worst patient he had ever had. We shifted positions once so that we could all lay down somehow, Josh had his shoulders on the pillow at the head of the bed and Bayne used his arm as her pillow while I wrapped my arms around her torso and rested my head on her stomach. Time passed without our knowledge and we soon found ourselves drifting off into dream land, with Bayne safely tucked into our sides.