Chapter 177. Nesting
Maisie
The first morning, I thought I was dying.
I barely made it halfway out of Soren’s bed before my stomach revolted.
The sink caught the first splash of puke. My eyes watered as I retched, sobbing. Soren’s fingers delved into my hair, pulling it back from my face as I emptied out my stomach until there was nothing left to bring up except bile.
My ribs ached from retching. My vision blurred. Every muscle in my body cramped so violently that my legs gave out and I ended up curled on the floor, forehead pressed against the cold marble, shaking hard enough my teeth clattered.
Soren scooped me up.
"It’s okay," he murmured, carrying me back to bed as I moaned in pain. "I’ve got you."
"I’m going to die, aren’t I..."
The words dissolved into another violent gag.
Soren barely managed to lean me over a bucket before I was sick again.
Goddess.
It hurt. Everything hurt. My stomach. My head. My back. My eyes. Even my skin ached.
When the spasms finally stopped, I collapsed sideways against his chest, drenched in sweat and trembling so violently I couldn’t seem to stop. I passed out that way, wading in and out of consciousness. When I woke again much later, it was to multiple voices around me.
"Should it be this severe?" Jericho asked, and just hearing the strain in his voice made guilt curl inside me. He sounded troubled. "She can’t keep anything down."
"It will pass when her body acclimatizes to it," I heard someone else say. It sounded suspiciously like Memah. But the week wasn’t over. Had they summoned her here?
I tried to speak, but another cramp twisted through me and I reached blindly for the bucket.
Mercer’s hand was already there, holding it steady while Quinlan gathered my hair away from my face. "Let it all out, sweetheart."
By the time my stomach finally stopped rebelling, tears were streaming freely down my cheeks.
Someone else was rubbing my feet. Jericho, probably. My feet felt swollen.
There was an angry growl from Soren that I didn’t quite catch, but Memah said, "If you stop the treatment now, this will only happen again when she re-starts it. And it might be worse. Give it a couple of days, Your Highness. It will wear off."
The days blurred after that.
Morning. Bucket. Pain. Sweat. Shivering. Sleep.
Repeat.
Sometimes I woke with my head in Jericho’s lap. Sometimes Soren carried me to the bath because I was too weak to stand. Sometimes Quinlan talked in French for an hour straight because he noticed the sound of his voice got me to fall asleep faster. Sometimes Mercer simply held me while I shook.
I lost track of which day it was.
Then, somewhere between one miserable sunrise and the next, I noticed something else.
The silence in my head.
I had gotten so used to tuning my Lycan out that I didn’t notice it at first. The lack of scathing remarks about how I was all ass and tits with no sense. Or how I should have group sex more often, for therapeutic reasons. Or eating annoying people like Cole and Ryder. Or oudated recipes of apple pies and green milkshakes.
Nothing.
But it had to be because I was so exhausted.
Memah had said the tonic was forcing my body into a state it wasn’t meant to reach naturally. Maybe it was doing the same thing to my Lycan.
If I was barely awake enough to keep my eyes open, perhaps she wasn’t either.
I promised myself I’d worry if she was still quiet once the treatment settled.
Then I promptly fell asleep.
***
On the fifth morning, Memah was proven right.
I woke earliest and found that the nausea was mostly gone, and while my body still felt tender, the bone-deep aches had disappeared. For the first time in days, I found my way to the kitchen and I even made toasts and eggs for everyone. Well, admitted, I burned the toasts, but that was only because I was craving burned toasts.
It was a little hard to explain that bit to everyone, but they ate it anyway. Without complaint, if I may add, all four of them watching me with varying degrees of suspicion, relief and disbelief.
They insisted I rested back home, but I was tired of being bedridden and insisted on heading to school.
By the time we pulled into the academy, I was... cheerful.
I had survived.
I wasn’t dying after all. I was fine. Perfect, actually. It was a wonderful day to be alive. Everything was colorful and beautiful and--
We walked past a group of third-years standing in the school’s hallway, laughing. One of the girls, a pretty raven haired beauty with lovely green eyes, glanced up. She smiled, catching her teeth between her bottom lip and twirled her hair around her finger as she watched Soren.
Her eyes drifted down the broad line of his back, skimming over where his fingers were entwined with mine--completely disregarding me--and lingered on his ass. "He could totally ruin my life and I’d say thank you and send him flowers." Her eyes lowered to his crotch and she whispered to her friend, "You think it curves?"
These were normal remarks every girl made in school about my mates on a regular day and I tended to ignore them.
It was the disadvantage of being married to men who looked like smoking hot greek gods. Everyone was either talking about fucking them or just eye-fucking them. And that wasn’t even to speak of the girls who were bold enough to actually proposition them. If I was going to pick a fight over it, I would be fighting with more than half of the student body.
And I wasn’t ever going to be caught dead fighting because of that. Especially when I knew they didn’t care about anyone else but me.
Today, however, I couldn’t stand it.
Fire exploded beneath my ribs. It raced through my veins with terrifying speed until it settled somewhere primitive inside me.
Mine. Mine. He was mine. Who the hell did she think she was, looking at him in the first place? I was going to tear out her lashes--
The thought wasn’t mine. It couldn’t have been.
The girl’s laugh grated against my ears.
Something inside me snapped and I wasn’t thinking anymore. All I knew was that I needed to shut her mouth permanently. And maybe her eyes too.
My fingers flexed. Claws punched through my fingertips with enough force to sting.
A startled gasp rippled through the hallway.
The girl finally looked away from Soren’s ass enough to notice me. Our eyes met and she cried out in fear because I was now inches away from her.
Good.
Good? Goddess, no. I didn’t want her afraid of me.
So why did the sight satisfy something inside me?
"Maisie," someone called my name but it sounded so far away against the words resounding in my skull.
Destroy the threat. Rip out her throat.
A strong hand grabbed my wrist and wrenched me back. "May!" Quinlan snapped, finally getting through to me. "What are you doing?"