Waking the Dead

POV: James

The first thing I noticed was the drums. A full fucking kit, pounding away right behind my eyeballs, like some asshole had set up a goddamn marching band in my skull and told them to go to town.

Somebody kidnap me? Is this what a hangover feels like after getting snatched?

I cracked one eye open and immediately wished I hadn't. Light speared straight through my brain, cranked the drum solo up to eleven, and my stomach rolled hard enough to make me gag. I slammed the eye shut and focused on breathing through the wave of nausea, but the air smelled wrong for a kidnapping. It smelled like my own room, like stale laundry and the candle I'd forgotten to blow out last night.

Real thorough of these kidnappers to redecorate with my dirty sheets.

I shot upright on that thought, and instantly regretted that too. The room did a fucking tilt-a-whirl, steadied, then tilted again, and for one long second I seriously considered just lying back down and letting whatever this was finish me off.

My skull felt like it had been traded out for a cement mixer. My tongue felt like I'd been licking a shag carpet. My throat was bone dry, cracked, begging for anything wet. I fumbled for the water bottle on my nightstand, knocking over a pen and what looked like last week's mail, and drained half the bottle in one go. It helped more than I expected, though the relief came with a fresh stab of guilt I couldn't quite place yet.

Feet on the floor, head in my hands, I sat there and tried to drag last night back into focus.

Come on, you idiot. What did you do this time.

Pieces came back slow, arriving in no order and offering zero comfort. Each one landed with the same sickening weight in my gut, and none of them made me feel one bit better about the man staring back at me from the inside of my own eyelids.

-----

Frustration came first. Trishelle had lodged herself in my head like a fucking shard of glass, and somewhere between my third drink and my fourth monumentally stupid decision, I'd come up with a plan: maybe some human girl could scratch the itch she'd left behind. Worth a shot, right?

The bouncer, another wolf, waved me straight through without a second look. The second I stepped inside, women started drifting my way like they'd caught my scent on the wind. I should've felt good about that. I didn't feel a damn thing.

A few of them were shifters. I shooed them off fast, their smell turning my stomach the same way every she-wolf back home had started to lately. Didn't matter how pretty they were, how willing. Something in me just recoiled, a knee-jerk reaction my brain was too slow to stop.

Guess that curse follows me off pack land too. Fucking fantastic.

Three human girls stuck around, drawn in by whatever charm I had left in the tank. Two of them looked nothing like Trishelle, which should have made things easier. Should have let me breathe. It didn't. The third one, I couldn't look away from her, not because she looked like anyone, just something about her, a tilt of the head, a way of laughing, that made me think this might actually work.

It didn't.

Drinks flowed. Hands wandered. The girls got handsy with me and with each other, giggling, pressing close, a tangle of mouths and skin and heat, and my body simply refused to cooperate. Nothing happened. Absolutely fucking nothing. I sat there feeling like a stranger in my own skin, humiliation curdling low in my gut right alongside the cheap whiskey.

Great. Just great. Even drunk and desperate, my own damn body knows exactly whose name it wants to moan.

I covered for it the only way I knew how: ordering round after round, keeping my hands busy and theirs away from anywhere that would expose the problem, claiming I just wanted to watch. Worked well enough. The drunker they got, the less interested they were in me specifically, which suited me fine, even if some small, bruised part of me hated how easy it was to become fucking invisible. I made my exit under the excuse of grabbing more drinks and ended up alone on a stool at the end of the bar, nursing something strong and hating myself a little more with every sip.

The bartender, either taking pity on me or reading the room perfectly, leaned in at some point and suggested I head to the back room for a game of poker instead. I didn't argue.

Anything to get away from that smell. The whole floor reeked of sweat and cheap perfume and raw want, and it had been making me sick for the better part of an hour, a low, persistent nausea I couldn't shake. I agreed without much thought and let myself get led to the back, grateful for the excuse to disappear.

Alcohol didn't usually hit wolves the way it hit humans. Our bodies burned through it too fast for any real buzz. But there were ways around that, if a wolf wanted the actual high instead of just the taste. The club, part werewolf owned, kept a private stock for exactly that purpose, tucked away for the nights when forgetting mattered more than fitting in.

I needed it. Badly. Needed it to shut up the lustful, useless thoughts of a certain Omega for even an hour. Needed to stop chasing the memory of her voice, her scent, the way she'd looked at me right before everything went to shit in my head.

I worked through the entire selection.

Twice.