Moon, Bitten

Chapter Thirty-One

Ronan towered over the bed, his eyes fastened intensely to the rise and fall of Kate's chest as she slept. His eyes averted to Adeline sitting at her bedside, applying more salve to some of the lesser scrapes visible to the eye.

He was grateful when the sedative had taken effect, allowing Kate a moment's reprieve from the physical - and emotional pain.

His jaw tightened as he crossed his arms against his chest, his gaze drawing once more over Kate. He would give anything to ease her suffering, anything to alleviate that woeful gleam that frequented her green eyes. She had been battered and bruised till left bereft of life. How much more could his little woman withstand?

He was Alpha of the Black Mountain pack. He could govern and command countless others, but in this he felt entirely helpless, incapable of aiding the one that needed him most. How could he possibly ease the grief that plagued her? Had she not suffered enough cruelty and hardship at the hands of others?

That latter thought brought a far more pressing concern to mind. The fates had gifted him with a beautiful, courageous mortal as his mate, but her mortality could very well be her ruin. If she remained a human, he would indispensably subject her to a life of carnage and violence. She would always be vulnerable to his enemies.

You could always turn her. Micah's words from earlier replayed on his brain and he would have shoved it to the deepest recesses of his thoughts only he hesitated, turning it over with deep consideration.

Mortals were not meant to survive the bite of a werewolf, and if they had, he had yet to hear of it. The transitioning of one human to loup-garou was excruciating and tortuous on that of a mortal's flesh and bones - and sound mind. The pain was absolutely grueling, especially to one as fragile as Kate.

Even if she survived the bite and its impending transition, who's to say she would accept it? Had she not fought all this time to achieve her freedom? She had escaped one cage only to be offered another? For that was all he could offer her. She would be enslaved to the moon, forever bound to a beast.

No matter his desires, his desperation to keep her forever at his side, he could not, would not bound her to this lasting life of pain.

"Well?" he demanded of the elder, his face darkening with a glower.

Adeline's weathered hands paused in their gentle ministrations, but she remained facing away from him as she muttered with graveness, "There isn't much more to be done."

A cold sweat took hold of Ronan and he stiffened beneath the dim light of the room, "I'll not accept that." He growled resolutely.

The elder's shoulders sagged with an exhaled breath as she shifted to her feet to pin him with those dark, timeless eyes. "Ronan, perhaps you - "