His Mate Hated Me, So I Went Home to the Humans, but His Wolf Followed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Hives

Joan lies swollen and breathless with the same hives the rosewater gives Calla.

Joan's face had swollen so much that her glasses no longer sat on her nose.

I stopped in her bedroom doorway with my first-aid bag in my hand.

Red welts covered her neck and the backs of her hands.

Her eyes were two slits, wet and puffed, and her breathing whistled.

"Joan," I said.

"There she is." She tried to smile and it pulled at her cheeks. "Come here, sweetheart."

I knelt beside the bed and took her wrist.

Her pulse was fast and thready.

I had seen hives like these once before, on my own forearms, the first week Delaney came to the pack house.

I had put it down to the soap.

"How long?" I asked.

"Since the dinner. Worse every day."

"Darian said you told him it's the oil."

"It starts when she walks in," Joan whispered. "The rosewater. I told them and nobody listened."

"What did the healer give you?"

"A tonic and a lecture about my age." She wheezed. "He says it's my heart. It isn't my heart, Calla. I'm fifty-eight, not dead."

Darian stood in the doorway behind me.

He had not come in.

He kept looking at Joan's hands as though they were something he had broken.

"Is she dying?" he asked.

"No," I said, and I hoped it was true. "Not today. Darian, open the window."

He crossed the room in two strides and shoved the sash up.

Cold air came in off the pines.

Joan's breathing eased by a notch, and I sat back on my heels.

"That's the same reaction I get around Delaney's rosewater," I said slowly. "Water in the eyes, welts on the hands, the throat closing a little."

"You react to a lot of things," Darian said. "You're human."

"I'm human, and I never reacted to anything in this house for ten years."

He opened his mouth and closed it.

I took a blood tube and a needle from my bag.

"I want a sample," I said. "Not for your healer. For a lab in town."

"Wolves don't use hospitals," Darian said.

"Joan can't use your healer."

Joan's hand closed on my sleeve with surprising strength.

"Do it," she said. "Do it, Calla."

I drew the blood with my hands shaking and taped the tube into the lining of my bag.

Then I stood up and looked around Joan's room.

On her nightstand sat a tray, a teapot, a cup and a saucer.

A folded napkin lay beside them, and a dish of the shortbread she always kept.

The tea was still warm.

"Who brings her tea?" I asked.

"The kitchen," Darian said. "Or Delaney's people. They've been helping. Delaney's father sent a blend for her nerves."

I didn't touch the cup.

I looked at it for a while, and then I wrapped the saucer in the napkin and put the whole thing in my bag too.

Darian watched me do it.

He did not ask why.

That was how I knew he was frightened.

In the hall outside, a woman's voice said, "So the guest is back."

Delaney stood at the top of the stairs in a cream sweater, with her auburn hair brushed over one shoulder.

The rosewater arrived a second before she did.

My eyes began to run at once.

"I came for Joan," I said.

"She isn't your aunt."

"She raised me."

"She is Darian's aunt." Delaney's chin came up. "And you've been in my chair, in my house, in my husband's..."

"Delaney," Darian said.

"What? Say it. She walked out of here, you chased her all night like a dog, and now she's back four days later with a bag of needles."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I looked at her more closely.

Her skin was grey under the powder, and a vein jumped in her throat.

She was holding the banister with both hands.

"When did you last sleep?" I said.

"Don't you pretend to care how I..."

She stopped.

Her face tightened, and she pressed her palm flat to her breastbone.

"It's starting again," she whispered.

"What is?" Darian said.

"The burning." Her knuckles whitened on the rail. "It happens every time you leave the room. An hour, maybe less. It feels as if somebody's holding a match inside my chest."

Darian took one step toward her and stopped.

I watched him stop.

I watched him decide to cross the last yard anyway.

Delaney sagged against his arm and breathed out.

The color came back into her face.

"That's the bond," she said to me, almost kindly, and there was real fear in it. "That's what a mate feels. You wouldn't know."

I thought about Joan's welts.

I thought about my own hands, and the cup in my bag.

"Does it hurt when you're with him?" I asked.

"No."

"Does it ever stop hurting? Even for an hour?"

"Only when he's close." She looked up at me. "Why are you asking me this?"

I didn't answer.

Below us, the front doors banged open and a deep, friendly voice rang through the hall.

"Where's my girl? Darian, my boy, I came as soon as I heard about Joan."

Delaney's whole face lit up.

"Papa," she said.

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