Free Web NovelChapter 10: Aftermath
James’s POV
The first thing he registered was the sound.
Low and rhythmic and relentless, like something was using the inside of his skull as a practice space. He kept his eyes shut and tried to breathe and waited for his brain to come back online enough to tell him where he was.
The smell was his room. That part was clear.
He opened his eyes. The light from the window hit him like a personal attack and he closed them again immediately, teeth clenched. He reached sideways without looking, found the water bottle on his nightstand from memory, and drank half of it in four long pulls.
Okay. Better. Marginally.
He sat up slowly and put his feet on the floor and held his head in both hands and let the room decide whether it was going to stay still or not. It mostly stayed still. Progress.
He’d gone to the club. He remembered that. He remembered the card room and the drinks and the specific quality of the hangover that only came from wolf-grade alcohol, which hit harder and lasted longer and left you feeling like something that had been wrung out and hung up still wet.
He remembered Maya and the wall near the bathroom hallway and the conversation he’d had with himself at the bar afterward.
He remembered coming home and not much else.
There was a knock at his door. Quiet, careful, the knock of someone who was hoping he was awake rather than risking waking him. He didn’t answer with a link because the idea of opening a mental channel right now made his head hurt worse just thinking about it.
"Come in," he said, at a volume he immediately regretted.
The door opened a crack. A young male omega, one of the newer ones, peered around it with the expression of someone who had drawn the short straw on this particular errand.
"Alpha." He bowed his head. "Beta Juda wanted to know if you were up. He has the morning debrief when you’re ready."
James looked at the light coming through the curtains. The angle of it was wrong. Way too high for morning. freёwebnovel.com
"What time is it?"
The omega hesitated. "It’s, ah. It’s just past two, Alpha."
Two in the afternoon.
James closed his eyes for a second. "Tell the Beta we’ll push the debrief to tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Alpha." The omega started to pull the door closed, then stopped. "There’s also, um. There’s food in the kitchen. If you wanted something. The afternoon prep started early today so." He trailed off, clearly unsure how to end the sentence.
"Thank you," James said. "Close the door."
He sat on the edge of his bed for another few minutes. The drumline in his head was still going but it had downgraded from full percussion to something more like a persistent background hum. His stomach had opinions. Loud ones.
He’d missed training. He hadn’t missed training since his last rut cycle, eighteen months ago. Juda was too professional to say anything directly but James could read the shape of the concern in that knock, in the careful timing of the check-in. The pack noticed. The pack always noticed.
He stood up. Stripped. Stood under the hottest shower he could tolerate until his muscles unclenched and his head started to feel like something attached to his body again rather than a separate problem being carried around on top of it.
He got dressed and went downstairs.
Trishelle’s POV
She heard him on the stairs before she saw him.
She was in the kitchen working through the afternoon prep, moving on about four hours of broken sleep and the particular grim energy of someone who is too tired to be angry properly but hasn’t forgotten the reasons why she should be.
Last night had been a lot.
She’d been in her second hour of actual sleep when the knock on the basement door had come. Juda, the Beta, standing at the top of the stairs with his mouth pressed into a line that meant this wasn’t a request.
"The Alpha needs assistance," was all he’d said.
She’d found out what that meant when she reached the main hallway and nearly walked into Richard half-carrying James through the front door. James had been limp, heavy, barely keeping his feet under him, mumbling something she couldn’t make out. He’d smelled like a brewery had sponsored him.
Then he’d been sick on the hallway rug.
Richard had laughed. The Beta had grimaced. Trishelle had stood there in her sleep clothes at one in the morning looking at the mess and understood, with the resigned clarity of someone who had been here before in various forms, that this was going to be her problem.
She’d rolled the rug and dragged it outside. Cleaned the floor. Found the spare rug from the storage closet and wrestled it into place. Gone back to the kitchen to prepare a light broth for if and when he woke up, per Juda’s instruction, then cleaned up from that, then gone back to bed at three fifteen.
At four thirty one of the pregnant wolves had a craving. Pasta from scratch.
She’d finally gotten back to sleep at quarter to six. Her alarm had gone off at six.
So yes. She had feelings about this morning. She was managing them, because managing them was the only option available, but they were there.
She was in the garden with her basket when she heard the back door and felt the familiar pull between her shoulder blades that meant she already knew who it was before she looked.
She went inside because the afternoon prep needed finishing, not because of anything else, and she was halfway to the sink when she realized he was already in the kitchen.
He was standing at the open pantry cupboard with bread and a tin of something in his hands, looking faintly bewildered, like a person who had just encountered a room they didn’t usually operate in. He hadn’t heard her come in.
She stopped.
He turned.
She stood there for a second with her basket and her garden dirt and her four hours of broken sleep and looked at him. He looked worse than she expected, pale under his usual color, the shadows under his eyes deep and dark. The blond hair was still slightly damp from a shower. He was wearing a plain grey shirt and jeans and looked, for the first time in her memory, like he had been through something that had gotten the better of him.
And then he smiled. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
It was small, barely there, more like his face had just relaxed than an actual smile. But it was aimed at her.
She shut her mouth, which had apparently been open, and looked at the tin in his hands instead.
He looked down at it like he’d forgotten he was holding it. "I, uh." He stopped. Tried again. "I woke up and lunch was already over so I was just going to make something."
She looked at him for another moment. The anger was still there. Four hours of sleep and the hallway rug and pasta from scratch at two in the morning, it was still all there.
But he looked genuinely rough, and he was standing in his own kitchen holding bread like he’d never made a sandwich in his life, and something about the combination of it short-circuited whatever she’d been about to feel.
She set her basket on the counter without looking at him.
"Alpha," she said, keeping her voice level and her face turned away because she wasn’t entirely sure what was on it right now. "Sit down. I’ll make you something proper."
She went to the sink to wash her hands. Dried them. Took a breath with her back still to him.
Then she opened the fridge and started pulling out what she needed for a broth, the same one she’d made at two in the morning that she’d bet anything nobody had actually remembered to bring him.
She didn’t look at him again right away. She needed another minute before she trusted her face.
Behind her, she heard the stool scrape against the kitchen floor as he sat down.
He was quiet. So was she.
The kitchen was just the kitchen, the familiar sounds of water running and vegetables hitting the board, and it was fine. It was completely fine.
She chopped the carrots and told herself that very firmly.
