“Wake up, little alpha,” Jax growled, but his voice cracked. “Please love.”
The desperation in his voice dragged me out of unconsciousness, and I instantly took note of pain, everywhere.
Who would love my crazy ass? The thought had me hurtling back into consciousness.
Existence was a bitch.
“Please, please, please, Sadie,” he begged, and a wet cloth was gently dragged across my forehead.
“Um, I’m awake. Also, you’re obsessed with me.” My voice was a soft, harsh rasp, and I licked my cracked lips, desperate for moisture.
The cloth on my head stilled.
“Why aren’t your eyes open?”
With the force of the sun god, I dragged open my heavy lids. Bright light stabbed my corneas, and I immediately shut them. “Too bright.”
“SHE’S AWAKE!” Jax bellowed at the top of his lungs, and I winced. Then he dropped his voice and whispered in my ear, “I was so worried, love. Never scare me like that again.”
My heart melted.
He raised his voice again and bellowed, “EVERYONE SHE WOKE UP!”
Everyone was yelling recently; we really needed to work on effective communication.
There were loud banging noises and a mix of more shouting voices. Like I said, none of us had any voice control.
“Get out of my way,” Aran said, followed by a loud thunking noise.
Cobra hissed back at her, “She’s my kitten. I get to see her first.”
“Please, she’s still mad at you,” Aran said as the bed shook with what felt like two people wrestling atop me.
“Great, smother me to death,” I said dryly, as my sternum ached with pain. “Not that the voice in my head would just let me die,” I complained.
“What did you say?” Xerxes asked softly, his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel each of his cinnamon breaths across my face.
“Did she just say she wanted to die?” Ascher’s words were clipped.
There was a loud goat’s bleat and the crashing of what sounded like a fist going through a wall.
“Y’all need help,” I mumbled.
With my eyes closed, I slapped my hands at the two figures, who were still very much trying to crush me.
Lucinda cried, and small hands gripped my broken arm. “Sadie, please be okay. It was awful. We thought you were dead. You were all broken and bloody. And then the don stopped by and said we have to go to school. This realm is awful, and I told him you wouldn’t make us.”
I gritted through my teeth, “Lucinda, release my broken arm.”
The excruciating stabbing sensation disappeared, and I relaxed back into the comfortable bed.
“Also, yes, you’re going to school. I can’t believe you’d try to manipulate a pathetic, broken woman.”
Aran guffawed. “You ain’t no woman.”
“At least I have tits.”
“Oh please. Don’t act like you aren’t attracted to my male form.”
I chuckled, but the only problem was my ribs and lungs were definitely shattered, and a weird rattling noise sounded as I tried to exhale air.
“Did you really try to die?” Jinx asked curiously.
“Yeah, but the damn voice in my head wouldn’t let me,” I said honestly.
There was another crack as I assumed Ascher punched the wall, and the bed shook with the vibrations from Cobra’s hiss.
Jinx didn’t sound impressed. “Then why aren’t you dead?”
“Jinx!” Jess and Jala said at once.
“It’s rude to ask someone why they aren’t dead. We’ve talked about pretending to be normal,” Jess scolded her younger sister.
I waved my hands to dismiss Jess.
“Are you having an episode?” Aran asked. “Open your eyes, woman. It’s creeping me out.”
With extreme fortitude, I dragged open my crusty lids and moaned at the brightness.
When Aran finally came into focus, I was not surprised to find both her and Cobra on the bed, kneeling over me.
Cobra had his palm spread in her face and was shoving her head to the side, and Aran was jabbing her elbow into his back as they fought to position themselves over me.
I gave them an unamused glare.
“Holy sun god’s tit, for the love of the moon goddess, Sadie, close your eyes.” Aran’s blue eyes were wide, and she grimaced at me.
“What?”
Jax’s handsome face filled the room as he leaned over me and softly inspected my eyes. “You’ve popped most of the blood vessels in both your eyes.”
“Sexy.” I licked my lips, and the big man grimaced.
“Why did you want to die, little alpha?” he whispered, his thumbs trailing softly across my forehead.
Apparently, being beaten within a centimeter of existence made a girl uncharacteristically honest.
“The pain was like a hundred out of ten, and I’ve caused your pack so much pain and suffering. It would be easier for everyone if I wasn’t around.”
His slate-gray eyes began to glow.
Jax tilted his head back and let out an ungodly roar that shook the room. The girls screamed, and even Aran scurried back in self-preservation.
It sounded very self-sacrificing when I’d said it, but I felt bad at the shattered expression on his face. It hadn’t been that deep; it just hurt like a bitch.
I reached up, grabbed his chin, and gently tugged it downward. “Let me finish.”
He stopped growling and took ragged breaths, like he was desperately trying to calm himself.
I wet my lips, and my voice steadied as the rattling noise in my chest grew faint.
“It was mostly just because of the pain. But the voice in my head showed me a postapocalyptic world from the past, where a massive army battled against shifters. Also, apparently I’m her ‘champion,’ and she said something about me having to lead battles and kneel at her feet.”
Jax’s jaw dropped.
He narrowed his eyes like he couldn’t decide if I was pulling his leg.
“I’m not kidding.”
Something in my expression must have convinced him, because Jax whirled around, grabbed the upholstered chair beside the bed, and chucked it across the room, through the wall.
“Wait, so, sis, you’re supposed to lead a war?” Lucinda asked quietly. She wrung her hands in her lap and looked up at me with familiar ruby eyes.
“Apparently,” I mumbled.
Her expression changed to one of awe. “That is so cool. I always knew you were a warrior.”
Jess and Jala were wearing similar expressions and instantly started whispering to each other.
Even Jinx looked impressed.
Aran glared at me and used Cobra’s stunned shock to push past him and straddle me. “Are you sure?”
I smirked at her. “Yep. Don’t be jealous that the girls think I’m cooler than you now.”
She narrowed her eyes but shook her head with disgust. That was exactly what she was pissed off about.
I knew her so well.
Cobra came to his senses and shoved Aran off the bed.
“Thisss issss not funny.” Shadow snakes writhed across his flesh as he bunched the covers in his fists and shook with anger.
“Why is no one else panicking?” Ascher asked softly. He stood beside the bed and was staring down at me with glowing amber eyes and a horrified expression.
Jax roared again and punched the wall.
Xerxes, who had been standing silently in the corner, pulled out his knives and stabbed one into the wall as hard as he could.
A soft omega whine sounded as he trembled, like he was falling apart.
I pursed my lips and did what had to be done. “Okay, all men get out of the room.”
Cobra stopped hissing and turned his head to stare at me like, well, like a creepy snake, and asked, “What?”
“Out. We need to have some girl talk.”
Cobra sputtered, “You just woke up from a two-day coma. What do you mean, you need girl talk? What the fuck could you possibly talk about?”
Surprisingly, it was Lucinda who patted the jeweled alpha on his shoulder. “Sis just needs to talk to us. It’s okay, you guys can wait outside.”
Xerxes spoke from the far corner, “I don’t know. We can’t leave her again.”
Lucinda smiled at the omega and shook her head. “She just wants us for a second. I promise you’ll be with her soon.” Her calming voice did something to the omega, and he nodded at her.
Even more surprising was Cobra’s response. “Don’t let her hurt herself.”
“You know I won’t.”
Cobra grumbled but nodded at Lucinda and climbed off the bed, and the other men followed him out the door.
I gaped at my little sis, and she answered my unspoken question with a shrug. “While you were passed out, I played a lot of cards with Cobra and Xerxes. Aran and Ascher were busy strategizing how to kill the people who hurt you, and Jax was hanging with his sisters. Cobra and Xerxes are both all bluster, no bite.”
I choked on a small chunk of my flesh that hadn’t healed and was still clogging my throat.
Cobra and Xerxes were literally all bite.
“So, why did you want them to leave?” Lucinda asked as she smiled at me like I was beautiful and not a troll that resembled roadkill.
“Um.” A wave of self-consciousness passed over me. Lucinda was my sister and Aran my bestie, but I’d technically still just met Jax’s sisters, and I didn’t know how they all felt about me.
I whispered, my voice barely legible, “Could we cuddle?”
At once, five girls and a ferret climbed into the bed and surrounded me in a massive hug. I didn’t even mind that my broken bones were being pulverized into smithereens.
I didn’t know who started it—I was 100 percent sure it wasn’t Aran and 99 percent sure it was me—but someone broke into a massive sob.
Abruptly, four of us were crying uncontrollably and holding one another.
Through blubbery cries, I noted that Aran and Jinx were dry-eyed and glaring at all of us like we’d lost our minds. Still, they hugged us and looked at each other in horror.
“I don’t want to die and leave you guys. I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“You can’t leave us with Aran,” voices wailed back, and we all cried harder at the thought of them being stuck with Aran.
After twenty minutes of wailing, Aran climbed out of the pile. “I’m going to get the guys.” As she walked away, she itched at her back, and I made a mental note to ask if she had gotten some type of rash.
Jala cried harder. “Thank the sun god she’s gone. I woke up to her choking out Jess, and she threatened to scalp me if I interfered.”
“There, there.” I dried her tears and squeezed her gently with my still-very-broken arm. “She does it to all of us. It’s how she says, ‘I love you.’”
“Really?” Jess narrowed her watery eyes, clearly unconvinced.
“I have no idea, but that’s what I tell myself.”
We all cried harder.
That was how the guys found us. They stared at the pile of sobbing teens atop my broken self and wisely chose to not say anything.
They weren’t idiots.
Instead, they sighed heavily and slid down the wall. The four of them sat on the ground and waited patiently.
I meant to talk to them about our random, intense sex marathon, but after a good hour of crying my heart out, I felt remarkably better and snuggled into a deep, healing sleep.
