Page 31 of Tangled Fates

One of the healers that looked absolutely wasted away crooked her finger. I wasted no time in pulling her out of the way before I dropped to my knees, and I drew in a deep breath.

“Oh, my Goooood,” Pride groaned.

I took his hand in mine. “We’ve got you. Just try to relax.”

He squeezed my hand, and it killed me how weak his grip was. “Dean.”

“I’m right here, Pride.”

“Dean, you can’t. It’s too—too much damage.”

“Don’t give up on us now,” another healer said.

“We’re ready when you are,” the healer that I had changed positions with said.

One of the very helpful pieces of magic that we had at our disposal was the exchange of weight to healing. That was how our healers operated. In our pack, if someone was heavier set than the rest, then they were almost recruited into the legions of healers that kept watch on our pack twenty-four-seven. All they had to do was make a psychic connection with the wounded, and their excess weight could be transferred in the form of energy from one body to another, effectively speeding up our already expedited healing process.

It kept a great deal of us from the brink of death in situations such as the one we had found ourselves in.

“All right, Pride,” I said as I sat back on my haunches, “I’ll try not to pick through your more nasty thoughts.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” he choked out.

“Is she coming back? Raven? I heard that she took off,” someone whispered in my ear.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus. “Have faith in her. I know she’ll make the right decision to lead this pack. She just needs time to digest everything.”

“Well, can you tell her to hurry the fuck up?” Pride growled.

I barked with laughter. “Yeah, I’m sure that would go over well with Colin’s daughter.”

His head flopped back down against the floor. “Point taken.”

“Now,” I said as I tried to refocus my mind again, “shut up so I can help you out.”

As my mind melded with his, I allowed my thoughts to wander. I knew I was taking a risk telling the pack that she’d pick us over her life back in Los Angeles, but they needed something to believe in. They needed something to look forward to. We had been through too much, lost too much, and had compromised even more just to keep ourselves alive.

We all needed hope.

And I wasn’t going to take that away from them just because Raven didn’t know how to control herself yet.

Is it true?

Pride’s voice echoed off the corners of my mind, and I opened my eyes.

“Cut it out, man. Rest,” I said.

But he continued reaching out to me. Shut up and tell me the truth. At least give me that.

The energy exchange alone had stunted my thought processes. Be truthful about what?

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. But I heard someone talking about how Raven just left with her human mother and never looked back on this place. Is that true? Did she really know about us, and just not care?

Sometimes, I fucking hated our group-think bullshit. It’s hard for her. To her, it feels like the whole pack rejected her. We have to give her time.

Kind of looks like she’s rejecting us.

Give her more credit than that.

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