He Never Noticed I Stopped Talking, Until My Wolf Woke novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Friday

Conall waits while four of six fragments come out and her wolf stirs; she refuses Adelaide's tea and smells monkshood in the thermos.

Penny pulled into the hospital lot at six forty on Friday morning, and Conall's truck was already there.

He stood beside it in the cold with my good wool coat folded over his arm.

I hadn't told him which hospital. He had called three until one of them knew my name.

"Rowena," he said.

"You cancelled the ribbon."

"Bronwyn's cutting it." He held out the coat. "I'm not coming in the room. I know you don't want that. I just want to be in the building."

Penny looked at me over the roof of her car. She raised her eyebrows and left the decision to me.

I took the coat.

"The lobby," I said. "Not the hall, not the door, not the recovery room."

"The lobby," he said, and he almost smiled, and then didn't.

The surgeon was a tired woman in blue who had the scan up on her screen before I sat down.

She turned the monitor so I could see.

Six bright flecks sat in a line along the bone between my shoulder blades.

They were even and small, and not one of them was out of place.

"I'll be honest," she said. "I've seen a lot of shrapnel. It doesn't land like this."

"Can you take them all?"

"Four I can take safely. The last two are against the nerve. I'd rather do those in a second surgery, in about three weeks, when the swelling is down."

She clicked something, and the screen went dark.

"One more thing. No herbal teas, no supplements, nothing from a health store, for two weeks before and after. Some of them thin the blood and some of them fight the anesthesia."

"I haven't had anything today," I said.

"Good. And what do you take regularly?"

I opened my mouth to say nothing.

Then I thought of the cup at my place every Sunday morning.

"A tea," I said. "My mother-in-law makes it for the ache. Once a week."

"Skip it," the surgeon said. "Starting now."

They wheeled me down the hall, and the ceiling lights went by one at a time.

The last thing I saw before the mask came down was Penny's freckled face, saying, "I'll be right here."

I woke up in a gray room with a throat like sandpaper.

My back felt like someone had taken a hot spoon to it.

Penny was in the chair by the bed with her boots on the rail, and she sat up fast.

"Four out," she said. "They want the other two later. You did great. You snored."

"I did not."

"Like a chainsaw."

I laughed, and it hurt, and I laughed again anyway.

Then I turned my head and saw Conall against the far wall, still in his coat.

He was white around the mouth.

He had one hand pressed flat to the middle of his chest.

"You said the lobby," Penny told me. "He lasted about ninety minutes."

"Conall."

"When they put you under," he said, "my wolf went quiet. It's never done that. Then it started whining, and it kept whining until you woke up."

He spoke with the quiet shame of a confession.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've been married to you for five years, and I didn't know there was anything in your back."

I didn't tell him it was all right, because it wasn't.

I said, "Come here."

He crossed the room and stood by the bed without touching me.

I took his hand and laid it on the blanket over my knee, and left it there.

He stared at that hand.

The door opened, and Adelaide came in with a bag of oranges and a steel thermos under her arm.

"There's my girl," she said.

She kissed Penny on the cheek, and then Conall, and set the oranges on the tray.

"I made your tea fresh," she said, unscrewing the cap. "You'll feel it in your shoulder in no time."

The steam smelled green and bitter.

I thought of the surgeon's voice, and then I thought of my own, the one I'd used for a year to say nothing.

"No, thank you," I said.

Adelaide's hand stayed on the cap.

"Sweetheart, it's only..."

"The surgeon said nothing herbal for two weeks. I'm going to listen to her."

It was the first time in three years that I had said no to that cup.

Adelaide smiled at me.

She held the smile one moment longer than a smile should be held, and then she screwed the cap back on and said, "Of course. Doctors know best."

She left the thermos on the windowsill. She said she'd take it home later, and she never did.

They kept me until the evening, and Penny drove me back up the ridge in the dark with Conall's truck behind us the whole way.

I slept in the guest room at the lodge, on my stomach, with the door shut.

At two in the morning I woke up because I could smell something.

It wasn't the room. It was the kitchen, down the hall and around a corner, fifty feet away.

I knew the smell the way you know a word you've been told not to say.

Conall had picked up the thermos from the hospital windowsill on his way out and left it on the kitchen counter.

It sat there with the cap on tight, and I could smell what was inside it.

Green and bitter, and under that a sharp, metallic bite.

Monkshood.

Every child in the pack was taught that smell before they could read.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend