Chapter 52
~Lexa’s POV~
I felt sick to my stomach, a gnawing feeling resonating from somewhere deep in my chest. I had been sick for days, something that my kind was never used to. I felt like an outcast here, laying alone in a desolate cinder block room. Having space was nice, but if given too much it could drive a woman mad. There was an old analog clock hanging above the clinic’s entryway, its chime the only signal of the passing of time. I tossed on my side, ignoring the feeling of pain spreading through my body. Weakness plagued me, making even the smallest of movements a painful task.
“Knock, knock?” Beau’s tentative voice rung out, his fist hitting the entry door with each word. I held back the groan that threatened to escape me at his presence. Beau was one of the few people that always managed to see through my façade, something he had quickly garnered from our high risk work together. The business we were into required a full understanding of your partner’s facial cues… their body language and when and if they were bluffing. Beauregard didn’t get where he was today by his good looks alone. Though they did help a little.
“Go away, Bowen.”
“Ouch. Wow, last name privileges… straight to business already, huh Ramsey? If this is what it’s going to be like every time I come and visit you in the hospital, remind me to just send you flowers next time.”
“This isn’t a hospital, Bowen,”
“It’s the principle, Lex. The principle. I talked to the Doc on the way in here. He says that whatever ails you is most likely psychological or magically induced. Nothing that should require you confined in this hell hole… I mean come on Lexa. There aren’t even any windows in this place. You need some sunlight. The lack of vitamin D in your system isn’t helping your system any.”
“I’ll just drink some extra orange juice. Now leave me be. I need sleep.”
“Vitamin D isn’t in orange juice Lexa. Vitamin C is… look at you. You’re so far gone that your getting your alphabet mixed up! Come on, I’m breaking you out of this prison. I’ll cover your butt while we commandeer you some pants, okay?” I chuckled at the thought. Leave it to Beau to say something like that. All I could say was that he’d seen one too many movies for my taste.
“Your logic Beau once again astounds me.” I huffed weakly, attempting to sit up, but falling back down onto the bed in the same motion. Worry flooded his eyes, but I shrugged off his attempts at helping me sit up again.
“Maybe we’d better give it another day or two? Maybe the insurance will cover it then anyway.”
“Hardy har har. Nice one Beau. Just help me get out of here, Beau. I’m sure once the sun hits my face again, I’ll be good as new.” I teased, suddenly wishing to be anywhere but here. The nauseating white walls of the clinic finally getting to me for than they were helping. Beau shot a calculating glance my way, seizing up both my façade and the truth that lay underneath.
“If you think it would help,” I nodded, most likely a little too enthusiastic for his tastes before he started breaking out into a fit of lighthearted laughter.
“Next time you want a jail break this bad, Lexi, just call. Desperation isn’t a great look on you.” I shot him a barely veiled glare and once again tried to get to my feet.
“Are you sure you want to do this Rams?”
“Call me Rams again and I’ll show you how sure I am about this Beauregard,” I grumbled, hating the nickname. Chuckling, Beau helped me to my feet. Angst spread through me as I willed myself to stay up. I wanted nothing more than to know what the hell was wrong with me, but lying in this hospital bed wasn’t going to bring me any closer to figuring out what was wrong with me.
“Ready for the jail break, Lex?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I forced my eyes away from Beau as I stood, gritting past the pain and making my first steps towards the door. Half way through my journey I felt my legs begin to buckle and then I was down. My hands grasped desperately at the ground around me as my legs twitched uncontrollably.
“God, Lex! Haven’t you been taking care of yourself at all?” Tears pricked my eyes, but I blinked passed them. Why did he have to say something like that to me? Him of all people.
“This really isn’t the time, Boss,” I said, venom dripping from every word. He was the last person I wanted to see me like this, the last person I wanted to judge me in this way. Our kind didn’t catch this kind of sickness. They didn’t get this kind of condition unless they had given up all hope on living, something generally experienced by wolves after the loss of their mate. I haven’t lost my mate though, not like Dominic. He hadn’t lost his mate the usual way our kind did, but that didn’t make his loss affect him any differently. We had all heard the pain in his call the night he had howled into the wind… the night he had made his pain known to the world. I just couldn’t understand why I was behaving this way. It was as if my body knew something I didn’t… as if it was mourning for something I couldn’t yet conceive.
“Let me-,” I shrugged out of Beau’s hold as I fought to my feet. I didn’t want him helping me… I didn’t want him supporting me in that way. In fact, I didn’t want anyone supporting me in that way. Not after- I wasn’t even going to let myself think of it.
“Just show me the way out of this hell hole,” even I could hear how strained and forced my voice sounded. I wish I was stronger.
“As you wish,” Beau brushed passed me, showing me the callousness of his ways. Normalcy had returned to all things Beau orientated. I stuffed the remaining sentiments to the back of my head as we trudged on, my weakened body struggling to keep pace with Beau’s long strides. The building was a mixture of old and new, the sickly white walls clashing with the cracks in the ceiling. It was a building that had been filled to the brim when Diegan Shadowswood was still Alpha. It pained me to say that many of the hospital beds had been filled with his hated Orphans… the ones that were still mistreated to this day it appeared. Or at least that was what I had been told when news about the darling Luna’s play thing reached my ears. Oh sweet Tabitha… some days I had hoped that stories like hers didn’t still exist in a place like this… now that the packs late Alpha was finally laid to rest.
“What are you doing out of bed? As a guest of this pack Mr. Bowen I would have assumed that you would have more courtesy than to bring a sickly woman out of her chambers at such an hour.” Dr. Heazle said, his voice a scratchy drawl. He had patchy white hair and sunken bleak eyes that seemed almost dead, their bluish grayness holding no light. Beau and I’s forms reflected back at us in Dr. Heazle’s old wire trimmed glasses, their outdated style, making them appear older than they actually were.
“He’s just helping me step outside for some air, Dr. Heazle,” I over-enunciated my words as I stepped in front of Beau, not liking the frail doctor in the slightest. He reminded me of an old world war two doctors, the ones that experimented on the ‘non-Arian’ youth.
“Air isn’t a cure for the kind of illness that someone like you suffers,”
“What are you talking about, Doctor?” This time Beau pushed me aside, his body tensing as if readying itself for an attack.
“Over the last few days I have come to the conclusion about the real troubles that have been ailing Ms. Ramsey. Surely you’ve picked up on your body’s signals have you not?”
“What is he talking about, Rams?”
“Nonsense is what he speaks,”
“Ah, spoken as a true nonbeliever I see. Or have you not put the puzzle pieces together yet? I suppose that makes sense, speaking as you here instead of hovering over your twin’s bed side.” I felt as if the air had been knocked out of me. Twin. But Axel was dead. What was he-
I should have known.
Axel Ramsey, or as he now liked to be called, Axton Lobdell. He was a member of the ZKL. He was also currently rotting in Crimson Cove penitentiary.
“My brother is one of the members of the ZKL,”
“I didn’t see that one coming,”
~☾~
“You seriously can’t expect me to believe that our prisoner is actually a former Pack member Lexa. How did you even come up with this conclusion?”
“You can thank that crack doctor you have working in the clinic… same one your father employed right? The one that neglected the needs of the orphans who had made it to the clinic’s doorsteps as per request of your late father?”
“Watch your tongue Lexa,” Casey growled out at me, pressing himself closer to me as he spoke. He hated whenever his father was brought up in conversations. I would be ashamed of my father too, if he had been caught doing the things that Casey’s father had. But my father never had the luxury of being caught doing any of those things. Instead he just ended up dead, and I ended up getting lost in a bottle of bourbon. I had become a heavy drinker after my parent’s passing, a party girl on my best days and a drunken alcoholic on my worst.
“If you don’t believe that Axton is Axel than just check his scar Casey,” Casey’s eyes widened. If Axton was who I said he was, he would have a very remarkable scar that wrapped around his hip bone courtesy of an ‘accident’ that Casey’s father had been responsible for. Axel and I had been blessed with a younger sister, Robyn, who our family had adopted from the orphanage years ago. When Robyn was old enough to tell us about the horrors of the Orphanage Axel had went on a rampage… one that was stopped by Diegan Shadowswood’s claw digging into Axel’s hip so deep that it was rumored to have scratched bone.
“I’ve put Feverfew on Robyn’s grave while you were away. I knew how much she liked the flowers, because they ‘smelled like oranges, but looked like daisies and helped her momma’s headaches.” Sometimes I forgot that Casey had taken my little sister under his wing. He knew everything that his father had done to her, and until Robyn’s last breath, it had seemed like he was trying to make up for his father’s mistakes.
“Thank you, Casey,” Casey nodded and then stepped aside, letting me enter my brother’s room. The prison cells were strange. They weren’t set up the general way one would expect, like the way the cells police officers used in their offices. Instead, each cell was individually quarantined, thick almost indestructible walling separating the cells from one another. It took nearly an entire minute for all of the locks that separated me from my brother to unhinge. The time passed for me slowly as my heart continued its painful beating with each passing second. My feet remained firmly planted on the floor, even when there was nothing separating me from him… from the man that I had once called my brother, my twin. He was a stranger to me now. He had killed his wolf. I didn’t even know that that was possible until Kuiford had rudely thrust that information into my face. For generations, werewolves had heard the rumors that it had been possible, that the hunters had come up with a solution to ‘purge a werewolf of its beastly self’. But up until now it had just been rumors. Now the facts were undeniable. How could we even begin to dispute them when the proof of their claims rested only a few mere feet away?
“I’m not taking visitors,”
“Twins have special privileges, Axel,” my brother shot up at my words, his eyes ranking me in incredulously as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“How is this possible? The last I heard you were slumming it with that crazy Alpha Dion,”
“Slumming it?”
“How else would you like me to coin it? Sleeping with the enemy? Becoming a psycho’s friends with benefits?” I cringed at my brother’s choice of words. I’m not sure which term I preferred better.
“You were sleeping with Dion?” Beau’s voice cut into the room like a knife, reminding me for the first time that this wasn’t the time for reconnecting. How my brother had found out about my sexual proclivities while he was away was beyond me though.
“Were you spying on me?” My brother cracked a small smile and then put his arms behind his back. Of course he would. He was my twin after all.
“Case, Beau… would you say an interrogation is in order for my dear brother here? Something about little old Freya if my memory serves, right?” I tore my eyes away from my brother, but not before I saw the flash of hurt reflected there. Axel had been gone for a long time, it was best that he started to remember that before he started getting any ideas about us. We were far from okay.
“What? Um… sure that should work. Did you want-,”
“I think it’s best if I sit this one out. Conflict of interest, you know?” It wasn’t a complete lie, but even I could hear the hollowness of my words. I didn’t want any part of this interrogation and they knew it.
“Yeah, I guess that would work. Hey do you mind checking up on Vesca? I think he’d like to check in with Othello again. Kaija’s probably had it out with him by now anyways.”
“Sure thing, Boss,” with a quick nod I was gone, and scot-free. Clearing my face of any emotion, I left the penitentiary. The second I was free of that place I let out a breath of relief. After a quick look around I shifted, not a human soul in sight.
Axel was alive. After all this time my twin brother was alive. How was this possible? How had he escaped the rogues that had killed our parents in cold blood? Our little sister? If I would have been in human form tears would have been streaming down my face. But instead my face remained dry. My paws had carried me to the place that I had truly wanted to go, but had been too afraid to actually plan on going to. My parent’s graves. Right next to my baby sisters… and my twin brothers.
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I hoped you all enjoyed this latest instalment! It took me longer to complete this chapter than most of my others, though I'm not entirely sure why. Please remember to comment, vote and fan if you enjoyed!
Peace and Chocolate,
~Kali