Convalesce (Book 2 in the Wolfen Brethren Series)

Hope is a Cruel Mistress

1 Week Later

The days were dragging. Time moving forward at a slow crawl. Lazy days of nothingness was all Jana knew because anything else, the thought of anything else other than existing was hard for her. Too hard.

She tried to do more than exist, to not dismiss the doctor who she now knew as Jene. The head healer had personally taken her case as his own, he was starting to become optimistic. He said that he had noticed change in her blood work, not anything too drastic but he hoped that with time her body would accept Simeon's blood cells.

He hoped that if her body accepted the blood cells and stopped killing them they could eventually begin healing the scarring. He didn't believe it would heal completely but the scarring would be minimised because of Simeon's genetics.

He hoped...

That damn word that Jana had long discarded. Hope got her nowhere. All it did was fill her stomach with butterflies that made her feel light and excited, to only find out that the feeling wasn't butterflies but maggots. Wriggly corpse disintegrating, flesh decomposing maggots.

Hope was a cruel mistress, it did more harm than it ever did good. Her soul was rotting on the inside and no kind words or loving hands could stop the inevitable. They could slow it down, prolong the eventual decaying of her heart, mind and soul but she knew that they couldn't stop it. How could they when she had long embraced it.

She wanted to be numb, anything but this. It wasn't working though, not with Simeon. He was making her feel, even when he had no idea what was wrong he was there, making her feel all these things. He made her feel safe, protected... Loved, but then he made her nervous, scared.

He was the paradox of her life, Simeon had the ability to make her want to be in his arms but run away from them at the same time. All with that stare of his. Dark brown eyes filled with so much pain, worry and determination.

She saw determination in his eyes when he stomped into the healers tent, the flap flying and smacking against the side creating a clapping sound. Her eyes as wide as saucers, lashes barely moving, air hardly escaping through her lips as she just stared. He was on a war path.

Grabbing a chair by the door, he carried it to the bed and slammed it down right by her side. His arms folding over his wide chest. Blonde locks tied back in a bun highlighted how chiselled his jaw was, though the sharpness was swallowed by the growing beard. The slightly darker hairs made him look scruffy, unkempt. He clearly wasn't sleeping well and the dark circles under his eyes were a clear indication, if his un-groomed state wasn't.

He sat there for 10 whole minutes, just watching her with that unnerving glare, her fingers playing with her sheets as she tried to look away. He sat in silence, no words or any indication that he wanted to talk. He was making her uncomfortable and he knew it, it was what he intended.

And then he spoke, words of fire full of conviction and strength "I will sit by your side for as long as it takes you tell me what the doctor said."

"You have won Jene's undying loyalty and so he has yet to say anything, which is just as well because I want to hear the words come from you." His jaw ticking in annoyance, eyes blazing and nostrils flaring. He was slouched lazily in his chair as if he could spend the rest of his life there and if she were to go by his words then he would.