Page 68 of Her Eternal Mate

While all this happened, I wrestled with a tough decision. I had Morgan and the others plant TNT in the headquarters. The way I saw it, there was only one end to this madness.

I stood sentry atop the water tower, watching the pack clear the area until it no longer resembled a battlefield. I personally buried Blair myself after emptying an entire magazine of hollow point bullets in him just to make sure that he was dead for good.

And then, at daybreak, when all was said and done, with the pack standing behind me, I pushed the button on the detonator. Together, we watched as fire and explosions erupted and consumed Blair’s lair, incinerating all the dead bodies that lay within, leveling the entire place to the ground, and destroying all of Blair’s research.

As difficult as it was for me to believe, it was finally over.

Chapter 32

Will

I woke up to the grueling sensation of stiffness and pain. It was not new pain, the likes of which I had woken up to countless times before. This pain, through its minute throbbing and faint presence in my body, said something else that it was on the mend and was going to go away anytime now.

Even though I could turn my head around and squint at the outline of things near me, I was still not sure that I had truly woken up. There was something euphoric about the sensations that were coursing through my body, something that suggested that I wasn’t entirely sober.

The drip that was attached to my forearm confirmed my suspicion. Painkillers for a werewolf? That was new. I could barely read the words on the drip. Ketamine. Things were that bad, huh?

“Ugh!” was the first word that came out of my mouth as a result of trying to get up and failing to do so. My back was so sore that it felt like I had soldering irons wedged right next to my spinal cord. My throat was dry, and the insides of my fingernails itched terribly.

“What day is it?” I asked, realizing that my voice did not sound like mine. It sounded like a stranger’s, hoarse, hollow, and thin.

The last thing that I remembered was seeing Blair’s head lying at my feet. Then, I probably fainted due to my injuries or blood loss, but there was one distinct sliver of light amidst all the darkness that had followed. A deafening explosion had woken me up briefly. I remembered it very clearly. It felt like the world was ending, but when I sat up, I found myself in the commune’s clinic, with both Maliha and Vincent sitting next to me. They shook their heads somberly and told me that it was all okay.

I took their word for it and fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

“What day is it?” I asked again, this time more frantically since no one had answered me the first time, suggesting that I was alone and probably had been for a long time now.

Suddenly, a very warm and familiar voice rose from my immediate right, and I noticed that someone had been sitting there in the bedside chair all the time. I just hadn’t noticed them. Just as I had failed to notice all the flowers, balloons, cards, and sweets people had left me on the bedside table. Dozens of “Get Well Soon!” cards were lined neatly there in an anal-retentive way that I had long since learned was Alexis’s.

“It has been a week, my love,” Alexis said, stirring from her chair. She came into my view as she circled the bed and stood beside me. She reached out and held my hand gently.

“A week? What happened to me? Did we win?”

“Rest, Will. Rest. There’s nothing more important for you than rest. Do not let your heart worry about anything. We won, fair and square. Blair’s dead. His headquarters are blown to kingdom come, and all his soldiers along with it,” Alexis said.

From the visible confusion on my face, Alexis understood that I needed more than what I’d just been told.

“Is everyone okay? Vince, Maliha, Morgan, John, and all the rest? Is Fiddler’s Green all right?”

“When I exploded that place, some of the pack members sent word to the fire department, giving them the impression that a gas leak had caused the place to blow up. Seeing as how the place was so dilapidated, the police, the Feds, they all bought that story. That place has been sealed ever since. The mayor has zero clue as to what happened,” she said, rubbing my hand.

“Water,” I whispered.

“Oh, right, how stupid of me,” she said, getting up to pour me a glass of water. “Look at me. My mate has come out of a coma, and the first thing I do is overload him with information instead of asking if he needs water.”

“You’re just excited to see me alive, aren’t you?” I grinned at her. She blushed as she handed me the glass.

I gulped it all down in one quick motion and handed her the glass. My throat was parched. I needed more. Now that I was beginning to notice my body’s needs, I realized that not only was I ravenous, but I was also quite frail. Each joint hurt as I moved my hand.

“Everyone from the pack is okay. All of us were extremely worried about what would happen to you, but the doc kept reassuring us that you’d wake up soon. And now,” Alexis said, her eyes welling up with tears. It was such a rare sight to see her tear up that I was at a loss for what to do. “And now, you’re okay. Everything bad is behind us. Oh, God!”

I reached forward and hugged her, and my eyes closed, my body feeling her body, my arms around her waist, my head against her hair. She hurriedly stifled a sob and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. Those are tears of relief. Even the strongest of us are susceptible to joy and the many different forms it takes,” I said, wiping away one solitary tear from my eye. It was beyond my control. And since when was shedding a tear over joy a bad thing?

“What worried me most was how your injuries were not healing. All these wounds, these bruises, they weren’t sealing up. For three days, the blood kept pouring out of them. We tried everything. All the balms, all the folk wisdom, but nothing happened. It was petrifying to see you bleed out like this. But on the fourth day, you just miraculously started slowly healing yourself up. It baffled everyone, including the doctor,” Alexis said.

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