Page 27

Della

Sleep was impossible.

Every time I rolled onto my back, I would jerk awake in agony.

As I sit on the floor with my back to the balcony and my legs crossed, I sift through the bag of medication that Everleigh brought me, which I’ve spent the last few days ignoring.

Minutes later, I’m struggling to apply the ointment to my back and kicking myself because if I’d been applying the damn thing from the start, I wouldn’t be in agony.

A knock sounds on my door.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Levi says.

“With food?”

“No.”

Frowning at the door, I get up to find out what this is about.

He’s standing just outside, dressed in black sweatpants and a dark gray T-shirt. His feet are bare.

“Just came to check if you needed help.”

“I’m good.” I start to close the door.

“Your sister said you had meds to take.”

“So?”

“That included an ointment for your back.”

I’m not sure if the feeling rising in me is shame, anger, or embarrassment. “I’ve got it.”

I thought I had crept up to my room unnoticed. At the top of the stairs, I dropped my comforter. Bending to pick it up was a painful mistake. I must have looked like an old woman hobbling back to my room.

Now I wonder if Levi heard me creeping up the stairs and saw me struggle. Why else would he be making this offer?

As I wait for him to leave, my eyes stray to his neck tattoos. A campfire and a fat beetle vie for space on his olive skin. I have a million questions about those tattoos, but right now, I want him gone.

He retreats.

I’m closing the door when he grips the hem of his T-shirt, pulls it up and over his head, and turns around.

I forget about closing the door.

Fine grooves trace over his back. I count dozens of them, years old but resembling mine. I caught a glimpse of my back in the bathroom mirror while changing, and I was so angry and disgusted that I vowed never to look again.

I screamed and begged for the alpha to stop hurting me.

Those scars remind me of my weakness. And of my shame.

“The one on the bottom is where it got so badly infected, I couldn’t lie on my back for five days. The ointment is important.” When he twists around to look at me, his expression is unreadable. “I can help with that.”

I close the door and take five steps toward the tube of ointment I left on the floor beside my bed, and I stop when something hits me.

He didn’t want to show me. He only did it so I would accept his help.

I walk back to the door and open it, leaning out of my room. He’s pulled his shirt back on and is halfway down the hallway. “You can’t talk about this to anyone.”

He stops and twists to face me. “I won’t say a word.”

I take a step to the side and hold my door open.

When I’ve made up my mind to do something, I follow through. So, I hand him the ointment and turn my back to him, wincing as I pull off my shirt. It sticks slightly, as if it’s been bleeding and clung to the cotton of my shirt.

“Let me wash my hands first,” he says. “I don’t want to get these infected.”

I nod as I listen to his steps move away. Water starts up in the bathroom, and I pull my shirt off the rest of the way, holding the material to my breasts. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to stifle my shame.

Ignoring those wounds means it’s easier to pretend nothing happened to me. Showing someone those scars means it did happen. It means I’m scarred, maybe forever, by what those alphas did to me because I was too weak to fight back.

“Can I…”

I jump, startled by the warm air on my exposed neck when he speaks. He’s quiet. I didn’t know he was there until now.

“Can you what?” I stare at my bare toes, cheeks hot, wishing this moment over.

“Your hair. I need to move it.”

Letting go of my shirt means flashing him my boobs, so I nod. “Sure.”

He sweeps my auburn hair over my shoulder, the ends brushing the top of my arm.

I suck in a breath and continue to hold it as Levi applies the cooling ointment to the hot wounds on my back.

He doesn’t say a word and I couldn’t be more relieved.

I neither want nor need his pity.

“How long do you have to apply the ointment?” he asks.

“Three days, the instructions said. I guess if it’s infected, I keep doing it. There’s another tube in the bag.”

His hand falls away. “I’m done.”

I move to put my shirt back on.

“You should leave it off for a while. Let it sink in.”

Good idea.

I turn around with my shirt clamped to my chest, and look at Levi, though it’s really fucking hard to meet his gaze. “Thanks.”

He passes the tube of ointment back to me. “Let me know when you need to reapply it.”

I nod my head, and he walks away.

In our world, alphas are the heroes. They are the biggest of the big. The fearless. The ones in power who control everything. So why does this alpha have scars like that on his back?

Just before he leaves, I call after him, “Who did it?”

He stops, his back to me, and my eyes linger on his T-shirt as I remember those marks crisscrossing his skin. “My uncle.”

“Why?”

He twists the door open. “Because he could.”

And he walks out, leaving me alone with a million and one questions.

I’m still standing there several minutes later when Vincent calls up the stairs, “Miss Jackson, we had a deal.”

Carefully slipping my shirt over my head, I hiss when the material settles over my tender skin. Then I go downstairs to eat breakfast with the man who will help me find the three alphas who hurt me so badly that they’re going to die for it.

The next day, I go to Levi, walking down the hallway and stopping outside a closed door where the faint sounds of groaning bleed through the white wood.

If I hadn’t heard metal chinking periodically, those groans would have made me believe he was up to something else entirely in there.

Once, the thought would have excited me. The old Della would have cracked a joke about busy hands, but this new Della is tired from not getting enough sleep on the living room floor, and alphas make her warier than they used to.

I stand there, knuckles raised to knock.

I’ve just had my shower, and it makes sense to apply the ointment now before I go down to breakfast and start this arrangement with Vincent.

But he’s busy.

I turn to walk away, and he calls out, “Come in!”

I hesitate for a beat, then twist the door open.

His room is identical to mine: all white, a low wood bed, a large window revealing a cloudless blue sky, and closed doors likely leading to a bathroom and closet. All that’s missing is the glass wall overlooking a forest.

I got the room with the view. He has a literal gym on one corner.

He’s sitting on a bench rack, legs wide apart, and as I walk in, he thumps the weight down and sits up.

He’s wearing black boxers. Nothing else. The scars on his back aren’t the only ones he has. Small, circular burns mark his muscular thighs, and he has fine scars that appear paler against his olive skin.

He has other tattoos. The artwork that wraps around his left leg from his ankle to mid-thigh is so dense and intricate that I need to be closer to investigate.

Only when I lift my head to meet his gaze do I realize he was so still, letting me study him.

“You want to stand or lie down for this? I’ll be over here lifting so you can have my bed for however long you need it.”

I don’t want to lie down, but my back felt so much better the longer I let the cream do its thing. And I have to go downstairs to meet Vincent, so it makes sense we do it here and then I go down right after.

“Is your bed clean? Because if it’s nasty?—”

“It’s clean,” he interrupts.

“Okay.” I lie down on my front and order myself to relax. He won’t hurt me. If he hurts me, then I’ll kill him. Easy.

“Give me a sec. Need to wash my hands.”

I get a face full of sharp citrus and warm amber. It soothes me as I wait, breathing it deep.

He will not hurt you. Stop being so damn wired up.

I tense when the mattress dips. After a brief pause, I swallow my sigh of relief when he smears the ointment onto my back.

“It looks a little better today.”

“It doesn’t hurt so much.” I pause. “I wasn’t putting it on before.”

“Thought as much.”

And that’s it.

I twist my head around. “You’re not going to call me an idiot for letting my back get infected?”

He shrugs, his attention on my back. “I did the same thing.” He glances up at me. “I’m done.”

“Thanks.”

He hands me the tube of ointment and crosses over to an open door. Water briefly runs, then he walks past me and over to the bench rack, lying back down on it.

He wraps his fingers around the metal bar, takes in a deep breath, releases it, and pushes up.

And as the ointment soothes the angry wounds on my back, I watch him lifting weights that probably weigh ten or twenty of me, wishing I had his strength a few days ago.