It doesn’t take long for the white ceiling to grow tiresome to look at. Still, I hesitate to move any part of my body. If I moved and found myself in whatever passed for the afterlife I might scream in frustration. Then again, I didn’t know if I would mentally survive if I moved and found myself completely alone – abandoned.

  Even as I lay there, staring up into the distance, I realize I don’t really have a choice. I could move now or I could move later. Either way, I was going to have to move. With a deep, raspy sigh, I get started.

  First comes my fingers and toes. Judging by the sound of fabric scratching as it slides against itself, each moves without issue. Which is good as it means that I don’t have any nerve damage. As long as I am alive anyway. If I am dead…well we can figure out all that if it comes to it.

  Next comes my tail and ears. Sure, they are not needed for getting out of bed but at this point, I had gotten used to them. If they couldn’t move, or were damaged in any way, I would have to demand a healer fix them. Plus, they served as a good distraction and helped me push the inevitable back.

  Something fluffy and soft slid against my inner thigh as a pair of objects shifted a bit of my hair. Happy about the results of my experimentation so far, I moved onto my arms. My right arm lifted into view and I froze at the sight.

  The skin was covered in a mixture of yellow and brown splotches. Between each, a multitude of half-healed scratches created almost an uneven crosshatch pattern. As I lifted my other arm, I found that it looked no better.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath as I lowered the two limbs back to the bed. The fact that they were so damaged had to be a good thing. After all, the dead didn’t bruise. Or at least not what passed for a soul or whatever.

  With that in mind, I used my arms and tried to sit up. My chest instantly protested the movement. It went from feeling like there was nothing wrong to feeling like someone was stabbing my chest over and over again. The resulting cry of pain was enough to alert someone that I was awake because a rush of footsteps alerted me to multiple people racing toward me.

  What I had to assume was the door exploded inward as a rather sizable group shoved their way into the room. “Oh thank god!” Ginger’s voice cried out from the group.

  “About time.” Pendragon huffed. It almost sounded as if he was annoyed at me for sleeping too long or something.

  “DOCTOR!” Yelled someone else. Someone that I didn’t recognize as whoever it was raced back out of the room.

  As they raced away it almost sounded as if people were pushed to the side so that someone could get further into the room. A moment later, a woman hovered over me. Her pink hair contrasted with her dark skin and long pointed ears. Her focused gaze flicked over my body as she started to check over what she could see.

  Judging by her subtle frown, she wasn’t happy with whatever she saw. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, she ripped the blanket off my body. While I could feel a bit of fabric covering my chest and upper legs, the material had to be paper thin given how little it blocked my skin from the cooler air.

  Not knowing what was going on, I batted at the woman's arms before she could do something to me. A pair of arms grabbed mine, pulling them away from hers. I didn’t bother to see who it was holding my arms, I simply watched as the woman hovered her hands over the center of my chest. My eyes widened in fear as a red-tinged silvery glow suffused the air around her.

  As if the glow was some sort of liquid, it dripped toward my chest. My cries came out raspy and crackly. Everyone ignored me as they let her continue her work. The dripping liquid pooled on the fabric as it tried to seep through.

  Just as I felt the first tinges of liquid on my skin over my heart, a pair of men came bursting into the room. “What in the FUCK is going on?” Came a rough voice I found I had missed over the last few days.

  “ZHOU!” Another voice yelled at the same moment. Both men caught everyone's attention as they entered. Thankfully the glow around the woman dimmed and the liquid stopped dripping toward me as her head turned to look at the second speaker. “What are you doing?!”

  “I am simply checking the status of the patient.” She sounded so sure of herself. Hell, for all I knew, that was what she was doing but it wasn’t like she had tried to communicate with me once. You would think that one would at least ask how a patient was feeling before performing any sort of test.

  “By torturing her?” He asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Xander as he pushed past the speaker and into the quickly crowding room. Waves of anger rolled off him as he stalked toward my bed. Unsure if he was angry at me or my captors, I let out a soft whimper. His eyes snapped back and forth, from the nurse to me, over and over.

  When he stopped, he was practically nose-to-nose with the nurse. I don’t know what I expected him to do but his growled “Get out.” was not it. The nurse, knowing that she was likely in trouble, let whatever she was doing vanish as she raced past him and out the door. As his eyes met mine, the hardness I saw softened fractionally. That softness vanished as his gaze lifted to the people holding my wrists.

  As one, my arms were released. “It isn’t what it looks like.” Ginger managed to get out before Xander interrupted her. “I said, get out!” Both Ginger and Pendragon raced out of the room.

  “Call for me when you are ready to have your injuries checked on.” The doctor said before he too turned and left the room. While I heard the latch snick shut, my focus was entirely on the man hovering over my bed. Neither of us spoke. We simply stared at one another, both waiting for the other to ask a question.

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  What felt like an eternity later, I was the one to finally break the silence that filled the room. “What happened?”

  “You nearly died is what happened.” He grit out.

  “Kind of figured that.” Hell, I was fairly sure that I had died. Score one for luck. Or was it bad luck considering that I had been in the room in the first place? Was there a hidden luck stat or something? Because if there was then I really wanted to know what mine was. I mean, come on, who was unlucky enough to get noticed by a demon that shouldn’t be in the area not to mention being so close to an oracle dying not once but twice? I wonder how she is doing.

  His voice broke me from my wandering thoughts. “What were you thinking hanging out with the oracles while they were being targeted?”

  I shrugged, “I needed to get away from Liam and just ended up there.”

  “You ended up in a secured part of the building.” His tone combined with his skeptical gaze told me what he thought about that.

  My hands rose unbidden. “Hey, how was I to know that the building could change its layout in real-time?” His eyebrows lifted at that. “Not to mention one of them threatened to drag me into the room.” As his eyes narrowed, I chose to shut up.

  “They threatened you?” Of course that was what he chose to focus on.

  “To drag me into the room,” I spoke slowly to make sure that he understood that my being hurt was in no way their fault. They had been hurt enough already, no need to send Xander after them. “Given how loud my stomach was, I don’t blame them.”

  He actually blinked at that before sputtering out “You ended up in a room full of oracles because you were hungry?” The way he said it had me nearly laughing because it sounded absurd, even to me. As I nodded, he relaxed. Everything around me grew brighter as shadows seemed to shrink, as if the world itself was relaxing with him.

  “So how many survived?” I asked even though I was afraid of what I would hear. Still, I had to know.

  “Only you survived.” His gaze grew cold as he continued. “There are a few councilors calling for you to be tortured for information given that you were somewhere you shouldn’t have been and were the only survivor.”

  I sighed as that reaction was to be expected. I didn’t even blame them for assuming the worst about me. Hell, I would think the same thing if I were in their shoes. Seeing no way around it, I got to the point. “So when will I be questioned?”

  “You won't be,” Liam spoke as he opened the door.

  As Xander spun to face the intruder, the edges of the room darkened. “What are you doing here wolf?” The way he spat the word wolf made it almost sound like an insult.

  Liam held his hands up in surrender. “I come in peace.”

  “If you don’t want to leave in pieces, I suggest you leave.” Xander’s words caused a conflicted look to cross Liam’s face. Almost as though he did not want to be there but thought that he had no choice.

  The posturing between the two continued for a few minutes. I wanted to think that Xander wouldn’t actually do anything to the man for simply standing there but then I noticed his muscles start to bunch as if he was getting ready to leap at the man. Seeing this, I spoke up. “What do you need Liam?”

  “I needed to check on my…” he started only to get interrupted by Xander’s growled words. “She isn’t your anything.” Liam shrugged as he continued, acting as if he wasn’t inturrupted at all. “Charge.”

  “And how much longer will I be under your thumb?” I asked, debating if it would be better to try and convince him to leave me alone, at least for now, or to leave the city entirely given how people kept dying. Which wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t suddenly finding myself near the scenes of the crime. Okay, so twice isn't a pattern, but I didn’t want to assume that I was safe either, especially when my gut kept saying that this was just the beginning.

  “Depends,” he said as he took a step forward. That was probably the dumbest thing the man could have done in that moment. Xander flung his arms out as all hell broke loose.

  While I knew that Xander was powerful, I didn’t realize just how powerful. Shadows were insubstantial. Sure, I knew that they were capable of doing damage but I had not seen one person doing anything along the lines of causing the small shadows across the room to grow and take the place over.

  My vision turned from color and full of light to pure black and white. I had a feeling that I was only able to see anything at all because Xander permitted me to do so. Liam, on the other hand, was suspended mid-air. Shadows wrapped around his wrists, biceps, across his chest, his throat, his waist, and multiple places on his legs.

  Liam’s muscles bulged as he struggled to escape but Xander wasn’t having it. Thin shadows grew out from each of those wrapped around him. If not for the faint trickles of gray trickling down from the points, I wouldn’t have given them a second glance. Liam’s struggles continued, albeit less frantic and haphazard. After all, some of those needle points were only a bad move away from cutting into his carotid.

  “You better be careful about what you say next, wolf.” I thought Xander’s voice had been cold before but the voice he used now was one of cold fury. The very sound of it caused the fur on my tail to stand on end.

  “It depends,” Liam started before taking a second to swallow. “On if you shifted during the incident or not.”

  Really! They were calling it an incident! People died. Call it a fucking murder. Hell, it should be considered a mass murder, especially considering the door had been somehow locked. And how was it that not a single one of them knew that it had been coming? What good was an Oracle that couldn’t see their own murder?

  As my heart started to thrum with anger and annoyance at everything, I forced myself to take a mental step back. It wasn’t like he had anything to do with what happened, at least I hoped he didn’t. If he did, well Xander might have to wait for the fucker to respawn before he could do anything to him.

  And again, my heart rate started to climb at the idea that he would do such a thing and what I would do to him if and when I found out. I had to force my mind back on track and answer the man lest Xander just kill him for being a nuisance. With a shake of my head, I spoke, “I did not shift once since you last saw me do so.”

  Liam stopped struggling and relaxed in relief making me wonder what he would have had to say if I had said I had shifted. Whatever it was would probably have gotten him killed. Wait, no, it definitely would have gotten him killed. “Good, good. Then I simply ask for you to check in once in a while and to come to some of the pack runs.” Liam’s eyes flicked from me to Xander as he quickly added. “Feel free to bring Xander with you if you want.”

  His words surprised me. From what Ginger had said, the group seemed to be very controlling over who could and could not come. To the point that no one that could not shift seemed welcome. Yet here the Alpha was welcoming a non-shifter. Wonder if he would keep that invitation open even after Xander released him.

  I wasn’t the only one that seemed surprised either as Xander didn’t release his hold over the man for a dozen seconds. Well, that or Xander was simply making a point. Actually, the more I thought about it, Xander was definitely making a point. So much stress that I did not need given the clear state of my body. Maybe I should fake sleeping so that people would just leave me alone long enough to figure out what I was going to do.