Page 11 of Witchblood

Only he had. Felix.

I wasn’t sure if the pain I felt from that reminder was his or mine. The singing went on and I continued to mix the tea, reciting the recipe from memory. It was a delicate balance. Too much orange would over power the lavender, and mint was such a strong herb that it had to be prepared just the right way. I feltApaat my back. He’d sat there so often it should have been familiar. In a dream, the position shouldn’t have bothered me at all, only it did. His presence made me uneasy, and I had to keep looking back at him, though he hadn’t moved at all.

I could feel the sadness radiating from him, which made me more determined to finish the tea. I never seemed to have the right amount of ingredients.

That was how I knew it was a dream. Frustration. The song a happy one, instead ofApa’swoeful sadness. And the singing voice was female. Which was odd, as female werewolves were few.

I had to struggle to pull myself to consciousness. My brain clinging to the dream and sleep. My grogginess was likely due in part to the healing concussion, and part to the lavender. Odd how it smelled like the English lavender I’d grown. It was a common enough plant, rather than the rare red Spanish lavender I’d experimented with, but it was also the most potent. This didn’t have the underlying scent of chemicals like most of the stuff mass produced for public consumption. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said it came from my garden back home, which just added to the vivid dream.

I opened my eyes and there was a young girl sitting in the chair, which had been pulled up beside the bed. She was maybe twelve or thirteen, with a dark batch of curls cropped short on her head and narrow, dark-rimmed, glasses framing her blue eyes. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a cat pictured on it. The shirt said “Cat’s rule, Dog’s drool.” She sat with one foot tucked beneath her, the other swinging in the large chair, and played a game on her phone.

She looked my way and smiled. “Hello. Are you hungry? Dad said I was supposed to call for food if you’re hungry.” Dad? She didn’t smell of werewolf. Not that a child as young as her would have survived the transition. And most wolves didn’t tell their families what they were unless they were wolves themselves. I frowned at her trying to make sense of her presence.

“There are clothes for you there.” She pointed to the nightstand beside the bed. A stack of clothes sat neatly folded. “But dad says you’re supposed to eat first and he’ll help you dress. He also said you’re supposed to be careful of your stitches. He doesn’t want you to break them.”

“Who’s dad?” I asked, pushing myself up, and careful to cover myself with the blankets as I was still only wearing the T-shirt.

She glanced at me. “Liam? Big, bad, alpha werewolf who is as beautiful as a movie star? My friends all talk about how handsome he is, so it’s not just daddy worship. I know you’ve met him. He’s been really growly about you. He gets that way when he takes a new wolf into his pack. Says it’s an alpha thing. But he’s growly about me too, all the time.” She gave me a wide smile. “I’m Korissa.”

Liam’s daughter. Of course he was married. Probably had a half dozen kids. I knew he wasn’t as young as he looked. I sighed, fantasy bubble bursting into shards of emotional glass. “I’m not a wolf.”

“Nope. Me neither. But hey, we’ve all got troubles.” Her smile was infectious. “I don’t think I could be a werewolf. They’re kind of assholes.”

I agreed. “Your dad let you talk that way?”

She gave me a flash of teeth that I knew she’d learned from the wolves, like daring me to tell him. “As long as I keep my grades up, he mostly leaves me alone.”

Mostly. I wondered what that mostly entailed. “I’m Sebastian,” I gave her my name. Had Liam put her on guard because he knew I’d be less likely to bolt out of here when confronted with a child? Alphas were manipulative bastards, and I didn’t think this one was any different.

“I am a little hungry,” I acknowledged, planning to head into the bathroom when she got up.

She nodded and hopped out of the chair like her legs were springs. “Let me shout out for food.”

I frowned at her, pulled the shirt down as far as I could, thinking her father probably wouldn’t want a girl her age seeing a man naked, and slinked out of bed and into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, irritated that it had no lock, but thankful I wasn’t quite so dizzy. I even got to pee all by myself. I washed my hands and stared in the mirror. A lot of the bruising had faded, but half of my face was still splotched with gold, green, and purple blotches. I examined my scalp, having to lean over the counter to get close enough. I looked for anything that proved the wolf had nailed me with his claws, but there were no scars or even healing scratches, just bruises.

The door opened, and I froze, glancing in the mirror to see who was coming in. It wasn’t Korissa, for which I was thankful because leaning over the counter caused the shirt to ride up a bit, probably giving an inappropriate view of my dangly bits from the back and maybe even a butt cheek. It was Liam. He had the stack of clothes in his hands, stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. He barely looked at me, just waited.

“I can dress myself.”

“Hmm.”

I wanted to smack him for that sound. It wasn’t dismissive, but just one notch above a grunt of acknowledgment. “Not fair sending the kid. Her mom will be pissed you had her sitting next to a naked man’s bed.”

“You weren’t naked, and her mother lives in southern Florida. Korissa sees her twice a year. They don’t get along well as Elaine only cares for money, status, and the next boy toy she can manipulate. Korissa has been around werewolves her whole life. She’s seen a naked man or two and doesn’t care. I don’t care as long as none of those men, werewolf or otherwise, disrespect her.” He finally looked at me, eyes roving over me in a nonchalant, assessing way that I almost took for indifference, but his gaze lingered on my backside, which I knew was still covered but only barely.

I stepped away from the counter and tugged the shirt back down. “Can I get dressed?” I reached for the clothes. He gripped them tighter for a minute before finally stretching them out to me. “You’re not as subtle as you think, you know,” I told him. “You need to be careful around your wolves. Wolves hate us queers. You’re just asking to be challenged.” I was baiting him, almost begging him to attack, so I had a reason to run. It was stupid. There was no way I’d get by him, out of the bathroom, out of the locked room and out of whatever stronghold he’d created for his family and his wolves. Other wolves would linger around his house even if he hadn’t been harboring a stranger. Likely, because I was there, half the pack would be on rounds to protect their territory and their alpha. But I needed justification to run. He’d been nice to me, which made me distrustful, and indebted to him all at once. Fucking Felix.

Instead of attacking, Liam looked amused. “Queers?” The word sounded odd coming from him. Like it wasn’t something he ever said.

I took the stack of clothes from him, shuffled through them, thankful they’d brought me underwear and tugged them on while carefully keeping the T-shirt as low as possible. “Men who like men for fucking. Pansies? Faggots? Pillow biters? I’m sure you’ve heard of us. Where are you from anyway?” I was sort of getting the impression he wasn’t American borne, but what did I know? People accused me of not being American all the time because my skin was brown, when in fact I was half Native and more American than most of the continent. My mother was a beautiful, caramel skinned, black women from New Orleans. Like Korissa’s mother apparently was, my mother also had little interest in raising a child. I don’t know why she’d had me at all. She’d visited sometimes for holidays. Always bringing me small gifts that she liked more than anything I ever found useful. She made up stories sometimes about my father, or her family. I wasn’t sure if any of it were true. But as a child I’d clung to those stories. Until I realized just how different from the wolves I really was.

“Pillow biters,” Liam said, highly amused.

“I think that’s English, but am not sure. I was never much for school. Got my GED instead of graduating. Never went to college.” Just studied on my own.

“Yet your alchemy skills are whispered about across the globe,” Liam said, shutting me up. People talked about me? My skills? Not just the unwantedwitchbornthe Volkov had been saddled with? “Don’t put the pants on yet,” he told me, stopping me as I dug out the pair of soft sweats he’d provided. “I want to look at your stitches.”

“You have medical training?” I asked him. Again, unlikely. ThoughApa’ssecond son, Jayson, was a medical doctor. It was rare in wolves since being exposed to someone who was wounded and bleeding could try the restraint of even the most powerful werewolf. Most of them didn’t really need medical help anyway as their hyperactive metabolism would heal just about anything shy of decapitation.