# Chapter 7: The Bandage

Kael took the ribbon from under my mattress himself.

He didn't say a word. He just walked into my room, lifted the mattress with one hand like it weighed nothing, and took out the sock with the ribbon and the note inside. He looked at the red writing for a long time. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket.

"Stay in the house," he said. "Lock your door. Don't open it for anyone."

"Where are you going?"

"To see her."

He meant the grave.

He was gone all afternoon. I sat in my room and tried to read a book, but I read the same page eleven times and didn't understand any of it. Every time I heard footsteps in the hall, I jumped.

When he came back, the sun was going down. I heard his door open and close. I waited. Then I heard a soft knock on the bathroom door between our rooms.

I unlocked it and opened it a little.

He looked tired. There was dirt on his boots.

"Well?" I whispered.

"Nothing," he said. "The grave is fine. The ground is flat. The grass is growing. Nobody has touched it in five years."

A cold shiver ran down my back.

"Then how?"

"I don't know." He rubbed his face with his hand. "But I'm going to find out. And until I do, you're not walking anywhere alone. Not in the woods, not in the town, not even in this house. Do you understand?"

"Kael, I can take care of myself."

"*Sienna.*"

He said my name like a prayer and a warning at the same time.

"Okay," I whispered. "Okay."

He nodded. Then he shut the bathroom door, and I heard him lock it from his side.

I stood there for a long time with my hand on the cold wood.

---

Day three.

I wanted to show him I was fine. I wanted to show him I wasn't scared of red notes or bloody ribbons or anything else. So I trained harder than ever.

Today it was the obstacle course. Kael had built it himself, behind the field. There were walls to climb, ropes to swing on, logs to balance across, and a long muddy pit with barbed wire over the top that you had to crawl under on your belly.

The other guards ran it in four minutes.

My first time, I ran it in eleven.

My second time, nine.

"Again," Kael said.

My third time, I was fast. I was really fast. I climbed the wall like a squirrel. I swung on the rope and landed on my feet. I ran across the log without slipping once. I could see the finish line. The other guards were even watching and some of them were shouting for me to go, go, go.

Then I jumped down from the last wall.

My bad ankle hit the ground first.

There was no pop this time. There was just a horrible, sick *crunch*, and then pain, so much white pain that the whole world went silent.

I didn't even feel myself fall. One second I was flying, and the next second I was lying in the cold mud, looking up at the gray sky, and I couldn't breathe.

Someone was shouting my name.

Then Kael was there. He was kneeling beside me in the mud, and his face was right above mine, and he looked so scared.

"Don't move," he said. "Sienna, look at me. Don't move."

"I'm fine," I said, and my voice came out like a squeak. "I'm totally fine. I just need a minute."

"You're not fine." He looked down at my ankle, and his face went dark. "Your ankle is twice its size."

"It's always twice its size."

"Stop joking."

"I joke when I'm in pain," I said, and then a wave of hurt rolled through me and I had to close my eyes and bite my lip.

I felt his arms go under me. One under my back, one under my knees.

"What are you doing?" I gasped.

"Carrying you."

"In front of everyone?"

"I don't care about everyone."

He lifted me up out of the mud like I was a feather. I put my arms around his neck because I didn't know what else to do with them. He was warm, so warm, even through his wet T-shirt. I could hear his heart beating fast against my cheek.

The other guards were staring. Some of them had their mouths open.

Kael walked right past them like they weren't even there.

---

He didn't take me to the healer. He took me up the hill to the big house, through the front door, up three floors of stairs, and into his own bedroom.

"Kael," I said, "this is your room."

"It's closer."

"It is *not* closer. My room is right next door."

He didn't answer. He set me down on the edge of his big bed, very gently, the way you'd put down a baby bird.

I looked around. I couldn't help it. I had been wondering what his room looked like.

It was simple. Dark wood, gray walls, big windows. There were books everywhere, piles and piles of them, on the desk and the floor and the windowsill. An old guitar leaned against the wall. On his bedside table, there was a photo in a silver frame. It showed a beautiful woman with dark hair and kind gray eyes, smiling and holding a little boy on her lap.

"Is that your mom?" I asked softly.

Kael was kneeling in front of me now, untying my muddy boot. He glanced up at the photo, then back down.

"Yes."

"She's beautiful. You have her eyes."

He didn't say anything. He pulled my boot off very slowly, but it still hurt so much that I made a little sound. He stopped.

"Sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay."

He peeled off my sock. My ankle was purple and black and very, very fat. It looked like a balloon somebody had painted badly.

Kael let out a long, slow breath.

"Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?"

"Because you would have made me stop."

"*Yes.* I would have."

"And then I would have lost the deal."

He looked up at me. His face was so close. His gray eyes were angry and soft at the same time.

"Is the deal worth breaking your leg?"

"For my mom?" I said. "Yes."

He shook his head slowly. Then he got up, went into the bathroom, and came back with ice wrapped in a towel and a roll of bandage.

He sat on the floor in front of me and lifted my foot onto his knee. He put the ice on my ankle, and I hissed at the cold. He held it there with one hand, and with the other hand, very softly, he rubbed small circles on the top of my foot with his thumb.

I don't think he even knew he was doing it.

I forgot about the pain. I forgot about everything. I just watched him. The great, cold Alpha Kael Thorne, sitting on his bedroom floor with mud on his face, holding my ugly foot like it was something precious.

"Your mom," I said quietly. "What happened to her?"

His thumb stopped moving.

"She died when I was ten," he said. "Car accident. On the mountain road. Her car went off the edge in the rain."

"I'm so sorry."

"My dad was destroyed. He didn't come out of his room for a month." Kael looked at the photo. "He's all I have left. Him and Rhys."

I thought about Garrett's warm smile and his kind wrinkled face. And I thought about the strange hungry look I saw in his eyes, just for a second, at dinner.

I didn't say anything.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Kael said.

The door opened, and an older woman walked in carrying a black medical bag. It was Dr. Marsh, the pack healer. She was thin and serious, with her white hair pulled back tight. Behind her, carrying another bag and looking very worried, was Tessa.

Tessa saw me sitting on Kael's bed. Then she saw Kael sitting on the floor holding my foot. Her eyes went wide behind her glasses, and she mouthed one word at me.

*DETAILS.*

I gave her a look.

Dr. Marsh looked at my ankle. She pressed it in a few places, and I almost screamed. She moved it left and right. Then she nodded.

"Not broken," she said. "Badly twisted. She needs rest. Two days at least. No training."

"Two days?" I said. "But the deal…"

"The deal can wait," Kael said.

"No, it can't."

"Sienna."

"You said seven days. You never said anything about pausing."

Kael opened his mouth to argue, but Dr. Marsh interrupted. She was taking something out of her black bag.

It was a needle and a little glass tube.

My whole body went cold.

"I'll need a blood sample," she said.

"Why?" I asked fast. Too fast.

"Standard. To check for infection. And frankly," she looked at me over her glasses, "I've been curious about you for years, Miss Vale. A girl with no wolf and no scent. I'd like to know why."

She reached for my arm.

*Never let anyone take your blood,* Mom had said. *Not a healer. Not a doctor. Not anyone. Promise me.*

I pulled my arm back.

"No," I said.

Dr. Marsh blinked. "Excuse me?"

"No. Thank you. I don't want you to take my blood."

"It's just a small sample, dear. It won't hurt."

"I said no."

The room went quiet. Tessa was staring at me. Dr. Marsh was staring at me. And Kael, slowly, was staring at me too.

"I'm scared of needles," I lied. My voice was shaking, and for once, I didn't have to fake it. "Really scared. Please. I'm sorry."

Dr. Marsh frowned like she didn't believe me at all.

But Kael stood up. He stood between me and her, tall and calm.

"She said no," he said. "That's the end of it."

Dr. Marsh looked at him for a long moment. Then she put the needle back in her bag with a sharp *snap*.

"As you wish, Alpha." She walked to the door. "Ice and rest. And change the bandage on her knee. It's soaked through."

She left. Tessa squeezed my hand quickly on her way out, and whispered, "*Call me,*" and then she was gone too.

Kael didn't ask me why. He didn't say anything about the blood. He just sat down on the floor again, and he gently pulled the old, dirty bandage off my knee from yesterday. It was brown with mud and red with my blood.

He wrapped a fresh one around my knee. Then he picked up the old one, walked out into the hallway, and threw it in the little trash basket by the stairs.

"Stay here," he said when he came back. "I'll get you some food."

He left again.

I sat on his bed for a minute, alone in his room. It was too quiet. And I was starting to feel silly, sitting on the Alpha's bed like I belonged there.

So I got up. Slowly, carefully, I hopped on one foot to his door. I just wanted to go back to my own room, where it was safe and normal.

I opened the door a little and looked out into the long dark hallway.

And I froze.

Someone was standing at the end of the hall, by the stairs, by the little trash basket.

It was Garrett.

He was bending down. He reached into the trash and pulled out my bloody bandage, very slowly, with two fingers.

He lifted it to his face. He closed his eyes and smelled it, long and deep.

Then he smiled, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

"Hello again, little one," he whispered.