Chapter 4: Nobody Says No to Him

Freja's POV

I woke in a narrow infirmary bed wearing a gray hockey sweatshirt that was three sizes too big.

The back of it said KARRICK and a number nine.

My stitches had been redone by someone who knew what she was doing, and they pulled when I breathed.

I remembered the rink.

I remembered a man's hands, and his mouth on my throat, and then nothing.

I decided it had been the fever.

A girl with curly strawberry hair and a lanyard of keys burst through the curtain holding two paper cups.

"You're alive," she said. "Mom said you'd be at the gate at nine."

"At nine you weren't, and I almost called in a missing person."

"Tilly," I said.

My cousin put down the cups and hugged me very carefully, around the shoulders only.

"Nora," she corrected, in a whisper. "It's Nora. I practiced."

"Who found me?"

"The night nurse says the captain carried you in at four-thirty, covered in blood."

"He wouldn't leave until she kicked him out."

"Which captain?"

Tilly's eyes went round.

"There's one captain, Nora. Cade Karrick. The most feared Alpha at Thornfield."

"He has never carried anyone anywhere," she said. "Everybody here walks around him."

By noon I could stand.

Tilly walked me through the dining hall, pointing out tables with her fork.

She had given me a scarf for my neck, and she kept her cup close to hide the way I favored my back.

We had just sat down when the room changed.

Nobody shouted, and nobody looked up.

It was the opposite.

Four hundred students dropped their eyes to their trays at the same moment.

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