Revolting

Some time later, Caydence came back with a tray of food. If she noticed I had been crying, she didn't ask. She probably thought I was just in pain, or upset about the situation with Nolan. I was now able to shuffle to the bathroom by myself, using a walker like an old lady. Every step down on that left hip was torture. The doctor had explained that there was internal bruising and a lot of soft tissue damage, and that it could take many weeks before it started to feel normal. Once in the bathroom, I was able to really examine the injuries to my face and neck. I looked... hideous. There was a half-moon shaped bruise that wrapped from the corner of one eye, under my cheekbone and back up toward my ear, and my eye was slightly swollen. But my neck was far, far worse. When I lifted my chin, it was all streaked with ugly red and purple. On one side you could clearly count the four circles that would have been finger prints. On top of that I was very pale, and I had a terrible case of hospital-bed-head. Caydence kindly helped me brush it out and pull it back out of my face before she tried to offer me food.

"Mum," I shook my head. "I'm really not hungry."

Caydence twisted her hands in her lap. "Nina... I'm so sorry for this. I knew that Nolan might not be a good husband to you, but I never thought that he would actually hurt you like this."

"Its okay," I said calmly, "Its not your fault."

"But it is, in a way. The arranged marriage was my idea." Her eyes were downcast, as she picked at her nails. "Your father-in-law Bernhard, he was pretty wild in his youth too... but once we married, he seemed to come to his senses and grow up. We hoped the same thing would happen for Nolan. We still hope that. Its only been a few days, Nina. Please forgive him, and give him a little more time." "Forgive him?? He tried to kill me!"

She winced, but continued to defend him. "He was drunk, thats all. His reasoning was impaired..."

I stared at her incredulously. I opened my mouth to say something, and then closed it again. What I was thinking didn't need to be said out-loud. I was thinking, perhaps Nolan was the way he was because in her kindness and misplaced good- intentions, she had never actually held him accountable for his bad behavior. "Being drunk is not an excuse." I said instead. I had no intentions of forgiving him.

Over the next few days I had a steady stream of visitors. Daisy came and sat with me as often as she could escape from her duties in the kitchen. William also popped in several times during the day, doing his best to cheer me up. He sent funny videos and memes to my phone, and we argued and bickered about silly things. Some of the young people from my training class surprised me by popping in to wish me well, as well as Kelly from the kitchen and some of the kitchen and nursery staff. There was an army of get-well cards pinned to the bulletin board in the room. Only the family knew the real cause of my injuries. The rest of the pack was told I had accidentally fallen down the stairs. Many of their sympathetic gazes lingered on my neck, I bet most of them were wondering how one accidentally strangles oneself while falling down the stairs. Shane came in every day, although he kept a distance, and spoke to me politely from the door. But the one person who did NOT visit was Nolan. He showed no remorse, and had no intentions of apologizing for his brutality.

On the fourth day, the doctor finally discharged me, with a long list of special instructions. "Once you have dislocated your hip once, it will always be prone to coming out of the joint. Especially in the first few weeks, you need to protect that joint. He had a print out of stretches and exercises I should be doing as I progressed in recovery, and he handed me a bag of pills. I quickly read the labels. A pain reliever. A muscle relaxant. And pre-natal vitamins. I appreciated the fact that the prenatal vitamins had been discretely labeled. I was given a pair of under arm crutches, just to take some of the weight off of the hip when I walked. At least I no longer had to worry about who saw me limping now.

If life had been boring before, it was absolutely miserable now. For the first few days I stayed in my room, doing little more than going back and forth to the bathroom. Daisy brought my meals on trays. My emotions were scattered all over the place. Sometimes I was angry. I wanted to march across the hall and pound on Nolan's door with a baseball bat. Sometimes I admit I lapsed into self-pity. I spent a lot of time pondering why my life has to suck so bad. Every morning when I had to pop that prenatal vitamin, I felt fear and anxiety creep up and threaten to swallow me. Sometimes I was over-come with depression. I was engulfed in such a heavy sadness, I thought I would get lost in it forever. And sometimes, very secretly, I thought about Shane. Now that was a deeply complicated issue. How could I feel a mate-pull with two different men? And of all the men in the world, why did it have to be for my husband AND his beta? When I thought about Nolan, I felt cold and indifferent. But when I thought about Shane...

Although the doctor had told me to take it easy and stay on bed-rest for a week, eventually I got so bored and restless, I had to go out. I used my crutches to hobble around the manor. When I felt like I was mentally strong enough to face Nolan, I went down and took my meals at the family table. Nolan, however did not make an appearance. Instead William took his brother's seat so he could chat with me while we ate. It also gave me the opportunity to sit across the table from Shane. I'm ashamed to say that just being physically near him made me feel good. I felt stronger, just basking in his presence. He was cool and polite and avoided my eyes, and I did the same. But when I thought he wasn't looking, I stared at him. And when he thought I wasn't paying attention, I also felt his eyes on me. It was a very dangerous little dance between us, and I worried that someone else might notice.

He might be able to tolerate you now, I thought to myself, but when he finds out your pregnant with Nolan's child...

I sighed. I spent time in the nursery, playing with the babies. We found things that I could do from a sitting position in a chair. We played with play dough, and dressed up dolls. We drew roads and a town on poster board and drove toy cars around our town. They couldn't climb up in my lap, so they all competed to come lean against me. "You are so natural with them," Jennifer, one of the nursery workers sighed, "They all love you. You are going to be a wonderful mother." Her innocent observation made my heart ache. I'd always wanted to be a mother, someday. But not now, not like this.

Eventually I screwed up my courage and hobbled out to the training field on my crutches. I couldn't participate, but I wanted to observe. If it hadn't been for the little bit of instruction I'd already received in the most basic of martial arts, I might not have lived through Nolan's attack. So I sat on the bench and watched my classmates go through the rigors of their morning instruction. I admired the way that Shane taught his students. He moved among them, correcting form here, demonstrating something new there, divvying out praise and criticism in equal measure. His message was always the same. "You are doing good, but I know you can do better." I loved the way he pushed people. I loved the way he had pushed me, without regard for my disability. I tried my best to actually learn something as I sat there watching, but my fellow students were advanced far beyond my skill level.

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When class was over, Shane approached me warily. I smiled at him. "Hello Shane."

"Hi Nina. How are you feeling?" It pleased me that he called me by name, and not by my title. He shifted awkwardly and seemed reluctant to get too close to me.

"A little better every day," I said truthfully. I fiddled with the crutches that I had balanced between my knees. "I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?"

"Of course, what is it?"

"Can you show me how you taped up my knees, and teach me to do it myself?"

He considered it, tipping his head and glancing down at my legs. "It might be a little hard for you to do it yourself, but we could try." He finally conceded. "I didn't bring the tape down with me today, I wasn't expecting you. If you want to come back to the pack house with me?"

"Great!" I was really pleased. If I could do the wrapping myself every morning, I thought I would be much more stable on my feet. And I'm not going to lie... I was also really looking forward to a little private attention from Shane, even if it was just focused on my messed up legs. He shortened his long-legged stride to walk beside me, as I poked along with the crutches. I still stepped down with my bad hip, but I shifted some of my weight to my arms with the crutches, taking some of the weight load off the injured joint. I felt his eyes on me as we walked, but I thought he was probably examining me like a physical therapist, watching how I moved, seeing all my weaknesses. We took the elevator up to the fourth floor, and I followed him down a different wing to his bedroom.

Was it weird to be going into another man's bedroom? He looked a little uncomfortable as he opened the door and stood aside to let me in. His room was sparsely furnished and still had the impersonal look of a guest room. I suppose he had only occupied the space for a few days, since Nolan had chosen and announced his seconds. It did not suprise me at all that it was very neat and organized. "Please sit down," he said, motioning to one of the straight back chairs that was pulled up to a small table. I perched on the chair as he went into the bathroom and rummaged in his cabinets for the special elastic tape he used on my knees. He set two rolls on the table next to me, and knelt in front of me. I knew I was in deep trouble when the mere sight of him kneeling in front of my legs practically turned me into jelly. He took a deep breath, "Okay. Look here. Do you see how your knee cap is sort of crooked, and moving to the outside?" He touched my knees and I had the urge to close my eyes. Warmth and tingling spread from his hands, up my thighs. I tried to force myself to focus on what he was saying. "So we want to use the tape to straighten it, and push it back toward the middle." He demonstrated how to lay the tape around my kneecap. "And then... your knees hyper-extend... meaning they bend backwards. So we want to support these tendons here, to stop it from doing that." He wrapped the tape around behind my knee. "And then on this side, we want to give extra support to the meniscus... so we bring the tape up the inside... like this." He finished by tearing the tape with his teeth, and smoothing the loose end against the skin of my inner thigh. His warm hand on my inner thigh was the most arousing feeling I'd ever experienced.

"Oh." Was all I could say, wide eyed.

"Why don't you try on the other side?"

I gulped... if having his hands on my knees was already enough to make me hot, his hands on my hands, with both of us touching my legs was even worse. All I could think was I was a strange and sick girl to get turned on by the process of taping up my damaged legs. He leaned in closer to survey my work. It wasn't as pretty or clean as the side he had done, but he nodded his head in approval. "I think, with a little practice, you should be able to do it yourself." I didn't want to do it myself, I thought, a little dreamily. If I did it myself, I wouldn't have an excuse to have his hand resting so warm and gentle against my thigh. I almost believed I was the only one who was feeling this weird attraction, but when I followed his hand, up his muscular arm, and into his handsome face, I saw his dark eyes were staring intensely at my lips. Reflexively, I licked at my lips.

His hands rubbed gently along my thighs, and he leaned forward slowly. He was giving me plenty of time to back out and refuse, if I didn't want what he was offering. Still kneeling on the floor in front of me, he cradled my neck in one of his big hands, his thumb stroking gently over the bruised flesh. Although there was a little niggling voice in the back of my head that was warning me that this was wrong, this was dangerously wrong, it felt incredibly right. I leaned forward until our lips met.

My first kiss from Nolan had been rough, demanding, domineering. Kissing Shane was like a whole different universe. He was so gentle, so sensual. He tasted my lips, slanting his mouth across mine, delicately nibbling on my lower lip. I felt myself melting into him. I wished it would go on forever, I wished it would progress to something more sensual. (Although sex was on the list of prohibited activities for my healing hip.) Before I could totally humiliate myself, he pulled away with a sigh. He leaned his forehead against mine and whispered, a little breathlessly, "He doesn't deserve you."