Page 7 of Knot All That Glitters: Part 2

Soft, slim fingers squeeze mine gently. “Haven, babe?”

Ren. That’s Ren’s voice. I groan as my eyelids flutter again, my head aching even in the low light. The grip on my hand tightens, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. “Haven?”

My eyes ache, throb, but I make them move off the ceiling and down to where my friend is staring at me, hunched over my bed, blond hair escaping her tight bun, dark circles under her brown, green and blue eyes. “Ren,” my voice is raspier than ever. I swallow, lick my lips and try again. “Ren.” That’s not any better.

“Wait,” she says, straightening in her chair, and carefully disentangling her fingers from mine before reaching for a plastic cup with a straw poking out of it. “They said I could give you this if you woke up. They’ve been keeping you hydrated with IVs, but your mouth probably feels like a chicken died in it.”

I snort at the image, though it’s not far off. My mouth feels like it’s full of feathers and tastes like I haven’t brushed my teeth in months. The straw taps against my lips. “Drink.”

I do, and holy shit, nothing has ever felt as good as the cool water slipping over my tongue and down my parched throat. I suck it down too quickly, the straw making that rattling, bubbling sound when there’s no liquid left and Florence pulls the cup from my mouth. “More?” I ask hopefully.

My best friend shakes her head. “We don’t want to overwhelm your stomach. Or at least that’s what the doctors told me.” Her words have me looking around again, taking in the hospital bed, the needles sticking out of my arm, the machines next to the bed monitoring my heart rate and blood pressure. I have scratches all over my arms, and low in my stomach aches painfully, between my legs throbs uncomfortably.

A sense of foreboding creeps over me.

I lick my lips and find them cracked and dry. “What-what happened, Ren?”

She grips my hand with both of hers again, bends to press a kiss to my knuckles and then says quietly, “you don’t remember?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“You called me crying and in pain, told me the Calloway pack are a bunch of assholes, that you never wanted to see again, and then begged me to find them so you could fuck them, because you needed them.” I frown as she speaks, not remembering any part of it. “It didn’t take much for me to realize you—Haven, you were in heat, wandering around the city, alone.”

My free hand moves, pressing over my low belly as horror strikes hard and fast. “Was I-” I can’t bring myself to say it, to ask if I was raped while out of my mind on hormones. Would it have been rape if I was begging for it? Would the alphas who did it be given a pass? Not held accountable?

But Florence is shaking her head, thumbs making circles on my skin. “No. No. Once I realized what was happening, I had you tell me where you were, and told you to find a safe place to lock yourself in.”

“And I did?”

She nods, looking wrecked, horrified, haunted. “It took me hours to find you. Too fucking long. You were in a walk-in freezer, Haven. One that didn’t have power, but… you literally locked yourself in. You wouldn’t have been able to get out if I hadn’t-” she chokes off the words, tears filling and falling from her eyes. “Jesus, you could have died!”

I hate seeing Ren upset. She’s my sunshine girl, my bright spark in an otherwise very dark life. So I tsk and use my grip on her hand to tug her onto the bed with me. Well, I don’t really tug her so much as urge her. She doesn’t hesitate to curl up nextto me, wrapping me up in her arms and I do the same to her, settling into her citrus and hibiscus scent, letting to calm me down like it always does.

“They put you in a coma to have you sleep through the rest of your heat. You weren’t aware enough to approve a relief team, so it was the only option.”

I shift so I’m on my side, facing her. “That’s good. It’s what I would have wanted had I been able to say it.”

She nods and presses her forehead into mine. “I know. No matter how much you begged for dick, I knew you wouldn’t actually want to have sex with someone you didn’t care about.”

“Thank you.”

She scoffs. “Don’t thank me for that, babe. I would expect you to do the same fucking thing for me if our roles were reversed.”

She reaches up to smooth my hair back from my face, and it’s then that I notice the bandages on her arms. “You’re hurt?”

She gives me a smile and nods. “Yeah, you didn’t like me too much when you were in the throes of your heat, and then you liked me a little too much.”

I furrow my brow, trying to make my fuzzy mind understand. “So I attacked and hurt you and then tried to have sex with you? Jesus. How are you still here?”

She laughs. “Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. You’re in much worse shape. So I can deal.”

I know to her it’s really not that big of a deal. I wasn’t myself, but I still feel guilty for hurting her and embarrassed for apparently trying to fuck her. My cheeks heat. But Ren just wraps me up tighter. “Don’t sweat it, babe. Everything is fine.”

“Not everything.” She freezes for a moment and the strokes a hand up and down my spine, soothing me.

“No, I suppose not everything.” She waits for a moment. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. “Not right now. Is there a bathroom I can use? A shower? I feel… really gross.”

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