Page 16 of Rejected By the Alpha King

Saul came and sat next to me. Immediately, I stiffened. “Jax has asked me to look at your injuries. I will not touch you without permission,” he said kindly.

Knowing that Jax was watching, I stretched out my leg and rolled up the leg of my green cargo pants. “It has gotten better.”

“May I?”

I nodded, and he gently pressed two fingers to my ankle and then to my knee. “It’s still holding heat. Have you been taking any anti-inflammatories for it?”

“The Fanged Smile is a bar, not a pharmacy.”

“I have some with me now. Will you take it?”

Shaking my head, I gently pulled my leg away. “Better save it for later. We have a hard journey in front of us.”

“Very well. I have an inflatable pillow. If you elevate the leg when we stop, it should hurt less.” He dug around in his bag until he found what he was looking for. After blowing it up, he handed it to me. Leaning back against the tree, I propped my leg up.

“What is that?”

Too late I realized that when I adjusted, the hem of my shirt had risen up. Hastily, I reached for it. “Nothing.”

“That is not nothing. I’m to treat all your injuries, Anna. Not just your leg. We are relying on you to keep us alive. Let me see it.”

At his hard voice, I sat back up and lifted my shirt. “I don’t know that there’s anything you can do. Most of it has healed.”

What he’d seen was the burn Danny inflicted less than a week ago. There were a few more matching, but older and healed. He probed at it gently. “This had a blister?”

“Yeah. It popped the other night.” When I’d tried to escape, but I didn’t say that.

“It needs to be bandaged. Did the manager do that to you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I won’t mourn his death quite as much.”

“Wait, what? Danny is dead? When?” In surprise, I jerked my leg under me and hissed in pain. Saul tutted and gently straightened my leg and propped it on the pillow. Not used to the gentle touch, I tried not to shudder.

“Yes, Danny is deceased.” The healer pulled out a bandage from his bag and motioned me to sit-up. “Carefully, now.”

“How did Danny die?”

“I’m not privy to the details.”

“Do you know when he died?”

“Three nights ago.” Saul sprayed my burn with something cold and started to wrap the bandage around my midriff. When he touched my naked skin, I shoved his hands away.

Pausing, he lifted an eyebrow. “You may do it yourself.”

Grateful that he wasn’t going to ask any more questions, I slapped the bandage on myself and pulled my shirt down. My mind whirled. Danny died that night he’d chased me into the woods.

What the hell had happened? Was Jax going to blame it on me? That was two managers of The Fanged Smile that had died.

“Did you ever come into the restaurant? You look familiar.”

“No, although it is probably because you may have met my twin sister. We looked alike.”

A face rose in my mind, and I closed my eyes. She’d been half-dead when my father had dragged her to the settlement four years ago. I’d always assumed she’d been the reason Jax came to the camp and killed my father, but no one ever said anything. Part of me worried that she’d died nameless.

And I’d never done anything about it.

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