With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(153)

Naturally, she knew he’d find someone else eventually.

She just didn’t know how much it’d hurt and when she’d thoroughly processed it, lying and crying in their bed, how dead she felt and how surprised she was that feeling dead hurt worse.

She also didn’t know the depths of that pain and her torture were not even close to being plumbed until he made her admit she loved him.

God, it was too humiliating to even contemplate.

She admitted she loved him!

Which, because evidently she was weak, weak, weak, was all she could contemplate while lying in bed that morning.

“I’m sure Callum and I will be fine,” she lied again to Regan who gave her a look like she knew Sonia was lying but she let it go.

She stayed while Sonia ate and then gave Sonia pain pills because the stitches at her back were, by then, killing her and the pills made Sonia drowsy.

Therefore, Sonia slept.

She woke in Callum’s arms.

Or, more precisely, with her head and hand resting on his stomach, his shoulders were against the headboard, his long legs stretched out straight in front of him and his arm was around her shoulders with his fingers drawing lazy circles on her skin.

“You awake, honey?” he asked.

She clenched her jaw at the empty endearment.

“Yes,” she answered.

“How are you feeling?”

Like garbage, through and through, she thought but did not say out loud.

“It hurts.” And that wasn’t a lie. It was just an understatement.

“Poor baby,” he murmured and he was lucky she was wounded or she’d have attacked even though he could rip her to shreds with his claws and his teeth.

“Regan said you had a nice visit,” he told her.

“We did,” Sonia affirmed.

His hand squeezed her shoulder with approval.

She again fought the urge to tear her stitches out of her back by attacking him.

“Do you feel like moving around?” he asked. “I’ll help you in the bath.”

She did not think so.

“Are you telling me I stink?” she snapped irately.

He chuckled before he said (false) fondly, “You never stink, my little one.”

She’d had enough and therefore started to pull away from him saying, “I should move around. I don’t want to get stiff.”

She didn’t get very far before his hands went under her arms and he pulled her gently up to rest on his chest with their faces close.

She put her hands on his chest and pushed back but his arm slid around her lower waist and he held her still.

When she stopped moving, his other hand went behind her head, grasping her hair in one big fist, pulling it over her shoulder and twisting it again and again until it formed a long twine. Then he wrapped it around his palm at the side of her neck.

He watched his hand doing this as if enthralled.

“Callum,” she called and reminded him, “I was going to move around.”

His eyes came to hers and he announced, “You’re still pissed.”

Oh, he was right about that.

Apparently she could be something with Callum but “pissed” was all she was ever going to be.

“Can I have a day to get used to the fact my mate is a werewolf?” she asked caustically and then went on, “Or is that asking too much?”

He grinned at her (the arrogant bastard!).

Then he used her hair to pull her face to his and he touched his lips to hers.

Looking into her eyes, still grinning, he granted, “You can have a day.”

Now, that was when she would have attacked if she could have attacked.

But he simply marked her hair at her good temple with his (that particular business finally explained by him being half-wolf), let her go, moved away and left the room.

She washed as best she could, dressed and decided to hang out in their room because she couldn’t face anyone.

Leah came up with a tray of food in the late afternoon.

At that moment Sonia was grateful for Leah. It was good to be around her kind, for one, even if that made her a bad person for thinking it. For another, she liked Leah. Leah was funny and sweet and a little bit crazy and Sonia could be herself around her because, obviously, Leah was used to a life filled with vampires and such.

While Sonia ate, Leah talked, telling her wild stories of vampire concubines and captivating stories of places called Feasts and terrifying stories of something called The Sentence. All of this sharing how she’d fallen in love with Lucien.

The story had taken over an hour to tell and Sonia, long since having cleaned her plate, stared at her new friend when she was done talking.

“As you can see,” Leah concluded, “I’m safe, healthy and happy and Lucien is…” she smiled a sweet, eloquent smile before finishing, “happy too.”

“And I’m happy for you,” Sonia replied softly, meaning every word.

Leah grinned at her. “If you embrace it, Sonny, you’ll be happy too and, I promise, it’ll be beyond your wildest dreams.”

That was doubtful.

Sonia had had her “wildest dreams”. She knew how good it could be and it was not that.

“I don’t have much choice but to embrace it,” Sonia told her. “It’s destiny.”

“I know. Mine was too and destiny is my best friend,” Leah declared on a giggle.