Skinned

I felt manic, both rage and bloodlust free from any rational—human constraints, and it was the most dangerous kind of freedom that I suddenly found myself immersed into.

Raw, untethered power ran hot within my core, and I could vaguely feel the strong brush of the wind and the smell of earth promising me boundless freedom.

It was exhilarating.

Fierce, yet so foreign for the likes of me.

And whatever feeling that was currently conquering my conscience, was not mine to possess.

It was someone else’s.

Gradually, the familiar feeling of chase began to creep into my conscience, my heart drumming in sync with every stretch of my limbs as I ran fast, and wild, and hungry.

It wasn’t long before I felt the jump and heard the loud snarl ring into my head.

And I jolted awake from my bed with a gasp when I heard the harsh clamp of teeth that I could have sworn left a taste in my mouth.

I was sweaty and out of breath, like I had pushed my limits in a harsh session of training. Disoriented, I let my eyes scan my surroundings and frowned when I noticed that I turned my bed into a complete mess, with sheets and pillows torn open from my extended claws.

I dragged my hand against the ruined white sheets, annoyed with the unintended damage that I had left on the bed.

I took a moment to collect myself and wiped the beads of sweat dotting my face before standing up to get ready and pay Heath a visit at the hospital.

Once I stepped out of my den, I was greeted by the clear blue sky and the bright, burning sun. With summer close to its peak, the weather stayed constantly sunny and the breeze turned a lot more warm, and it was a known season loaded with different awaited celebrations that brings almost every member of the pack together.

Yet, this time, I didn’t think they’d have the time to prepare for such things given the pack’s current circumstance.

They would be too busy doing damage control after losing two consecutive alphas.

The walk to the infirmary had been quiet, almost therapeutic, but as I neared my destination, the sound of someone’s pained screaming slowly became audible to my ears.

I stopped as soon as I realized that the sound belonged to Heath, and I could already see Reed sitting on the front porch with his elbows rested on his knees and his hands clasped tightly together.

“Reed?” I called out as I briskly walked over to the clinic.

I noticed the way his throat bobbed as soon as he knew that he had to acknowledge me and fill me in with his brother’s situation, his cerulean eyes met the ground and his features alone gave me the idea that he was dreading to answer questions that begged to know more about Heath’s circumstance.

I flinched when someone suddenly exited the infirmary, and it took me a split second to realize that it was Azeil with his neck still tightly bandaged. Maxon was next to appear from behind him.

I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and I was quick to notice that a lot had changed in his features.

What Azeil had been before was completely gone, replaced by a male with a sickly pale complexion, sunken cheeks, and rugged features that told everyone of his downfall.

All the strength and purpose that he carried in his posture had completely laid waste, as if he had fully abandoned a part of himself—left in a ditch where even he couldn’t find for himself.

Aziel, a former alpha once trusted by the majority of the pack, had turned into an embodiment of grief.

And to werewolves, grief is the cruelest enemy.

I knew how such a thing could break you, and I gritted my teeth when I could hear clearly my father’s words, his voice a mix of grief and pain:

“If you lose your title, your pack, and you lose your mate, you fucking pray—beg the Moon that grief doesn’t make you lose yourself.”

“Take them after bed and the morning you wake up. I also added another one for the pain,” Maxon briefly told Azeil and held out a small brown bag, “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

Taking the bag from Maxon’s hand whom immediately barged back into the infirmary to tend to his other patient, Azeil turned to make his leave but came to an abrupt stop when he finally saw me standing just below the front steps of the infirmary.

As if I had flipped the switch somewhere inside of him, his features shifted from one that looked lost into one that completely gave out his animosity,

and it was all directed at me.

Reed was quick to react by standing between me and Azeil, and he raised a cautious hand up at Azeil to stop him from anything that he was itching to do to me.

“Go home, Azeil,” Reed told him slowly.

“And you’re still taking her side? After Celeste, you’re still sticking up to this bitch?” Azeil snarled, but despite the venom in his words, his eyes quickly glazed over, like the mere mention of his other half’s name was enough of a torture to him.

“I just don’t want any trouble,” Reed said.

Azeil let out a bitter laugh, and he looked as if he was trying hard not to let the despair from reaching his face.

“She’s just here to see Heath, you need to go home,” Reed told him, and when Azeil didn’t respond, Reed looked at me over his should and jerked his head to the entrance of the infirmary, signaling me to walk inside with him.

Reed allowed me to go first, and I walked around Azeil and up to the front steps without sparing him a glance, unable to find enough strength to look at him straight in the eyes when I knew that I was the one who left the look of loss in them.

“A waste, that’s what you fucking are, Valerie, you hear me?” Azeil snarled. I stopped dead on my tracks with shoulders tensed, breath catching as his words felt like it was a hard fist to my throat.

Reed clamped his hand on my arm, his eyes worried as he tried to gauge my reaction.

“You, Valerie?,” Azeil paused, “You’re just a product of a father’s rage, and a dead mother’s failure.”

I felt sick to my stomach, my hands shaking, and Reed tried to gather the my remaining wits by urging me to look at him.

“Don’t listen to him, let’s just go inside—“

I tugged my arm away from Reed’s solid grip and turned on my heel, and before I knew it, I had Azeil beneath me with a hand pinning him to the ground by his neck and the other landing him senseless punches that could add up to his medications.

“You should’ve stayed paralyzed on your fucking bed,” I spat, my voice taking on a deeper tone as I let out a snarl.

“Valerie!” Reed shouted, and he grabbed my first midair, halting me from landing another punch as Azeil turned his head to spit out the blood in his mouth, “Stop this and let’s just go. Heath’s inside, this isn’t the time.”

“Go on, Valerie,” Azeil choked out, “Fucking kill me like you killed Celeste. We both know it’s the only thing you’ve ever been good at.”

I shoved Azeil deeper into the ground with my hand on his neck, and I fought back the tears threatening to spill as I watched his hollow eyes, “Fuck you.”

“Come on,” Reed pleaded, and he pulled me up on my feet and off of Azeil before forcing me inside the infirmary.

We stopped at the lobby, from there Reed gave me a moment to gather myself, and I could already hear Heath’s muffled sounds of agony from the end of the hallway.

“What’s happening to him?” I questioned Reed, my eyes glued to the door to Heath’s room.

“Maxon had been looking for the bullet lodged somewhere in Heath’s leg, but we… we found out that the bullet shot into Heath dissolved into his tissue,” Reed paused for a moment as the sorrow in his expression appeared for a split second before going back to the same troubled look, “Whatever it is, it’s rapidly killing Heath—it’s killing the human in him, all except for his wolf. Max said, by the end of it, he’ll—There wouldn’t be any human left in him to keep the wolf tamed.”

“I need to see him,” I said and attempted to walk around him, but Reed immediately latched his hand onto my arm, halting me from seeing his brother.

“You don’t want to see him,” Reed told me, “That’s not Heath right now.”

“Let me go,” I snarled, my threat completely catching him off guard, and I took it as a chance to tug my arm out of his grip before making my way into the hallway with Reed calling me out from behind.

I strode inside Heath’s room, and immediately halted by the doorway when I saw him writhing against the hospital bed, my hand coming up to silence my cry as I witnessed his body ceaselessly morph between human and wolf.

Maxon was off to the side of the room, filling up a syringe with something that I was quick to recognize as morphine.

Blood and sweat stained the white sheets of Heath’s bed. There was dark blood running down his nose, canines ascending and descending as did his bones snapping back and forth between human and wild. The blood vessels around the whites of his eyes had disrupted, and it left an ugly crimson red to crowd around the clearness of his cerulean irises.

The constant back and forth shift was too much that it was already wearing his body down, and it had gone to the point where large darkened bruises were close to covering the entirety of his ribs and shoulders.

The morbidity alone drew me into horror, and my back hit the wall as I watched Heath under the unending torment of the poison in his system.

He was in so much pain that he didn’t even sense me entering the room.

I caught sight of his shoulder swiftly snapping into a different place, its sound a painful ring to my ears, and I flinched as soon as he released another cry of pain from the shift that was beyond his control, the struggled growl of his wolf forcing its way up to his throat in a short call for release.

“Fuck! M-make it stop! Make it stop!” Heath cried, his back arching of the bed as his wolf pushed him to release a hostile snarl.

“You gotta stay still, Heath,” Maxon gritted out, his hand flying to Heath’s arm as he tried to pin it into place in order to give him the morphine.

All I could do was watch, frozen on the same spot, before Reed stepped in to drag me out of the room.

“He’s in so much pain, Reed, I—” I sobbed out, my knees threatening to give out as Reed kept me on my feet by keeping his hold on my shoulders.

“I know, Valerie,” Reed let out a pained breath, his features cringing at the sound of his brother’s cries, “I can’t—we can’t do much for him at this point, the best we can do right now is to give what we can.”

I looked back at Heath from outside the room, seeing him toss and turning on the bed in complete agony while Maxon tried to give him the shot of morphine, and the colors on my face completely drained out as I it dawned on me that vampires had finally come up with a weapon that put them at a greater advantage—something that turned our very nature against ourselves.

They could sever the skin from wild, creating a single-minded killer of teeth and claw,

And Heath was slowly turning into one.