CAGED

Chapter 3

I woke up feeling fuzzy - my mind was fuddled and warm, but so was my skin, tingling with sparks against the soft, heavy blanket. Maybe I was dead and this was heaven; my blanket never felt this amazing - I hadn't gotten a new one since my mom died.

Something warm and moist lapped at my face indiscriminately, creating ticklish trails across my nose, cheeks, and forehead. Outstretching my hands and giggling slightly, I began working on opening my eyes, but bright, sterile light quickly overexposed my underprepared pupils, making me wince.

Sluggishly, I tried again, albeit more slowly, and was welcomed with the discovery that my blanket wasn't really a blanket at all - it was a gigantic monster wolf snuggled against my side, patiently licking my outstretched fingers as they lay dormant.

Despite the haze clouding my mind, I knew immediately that this wolf was my shifted mate. Emotions poured in torrentially, though watery and confused with the doped up state I was in. The wolf whimpered, breaking the methodical beeps of the monitors wired to me like some sort of cybernetic web I was stuck in.

The wolf's fur was darker than any night in New York had ever been, out of place in the artificially bright room that practically screamed white. His whimper caught me off guard, vulnerable but deeply piercing, inadvertently causing a surge of sympathy to surface in my turbulent sea of emotions. The wolf's pointy ears flattened against his head and he averted his gaze, unable to look me in the eye.

Automatically, I reached for the back of his head, reassuring him by scratching gently behind his ears. A rumble rattled through my bones as the wolf purred his content and arched his massive, fuzzy skull against my hand.

It was my turn, however, to turn my head away. I couldn't accept this wolf, despite his adorable puppy-like demeanor - he was the side that should have felt the pull of his mate, and it was he who must have ignored it as he mated with slut after slut. People just didn't date people other than their mates - dating was reserved for your mate. I'd never met an alpha who hadn't waited for their mate, as hot-headed and impulsive as they were.

He must have resented me, objected to the goddess' choice and took things into his own hands - I couldn't bear thinking about it. He'd hated the very idea of me up until an outside magical force had gripped his soul - that wasn't how I wanted to fall in love. Just this once, this one time, I wanted things to go how they should - I wanted to be cherished properly, mating was my only dream. Unfortunately for me, my mate didn't really want me - it was all fake magical hocus.

A tear rolled down my cheek, slowly, like the way my life had fallen apart. How could the goddess be so cruel? I had accepted my lot in life and waited faithfully for the goddess' promise through all my suffering, and was rewarded with a mate who'd never wanted me.

Gently, the powerful predator lowered his head to lick my tears, interspersing his puppy kisses with bouts of patient nuzzling. I knew that eventually a doctor would come in, the monitors would have alerted them to my waking - maybe then I could clear my head and think, once the doctor had kicked my mate off the bed to look me over, but for now I allowed myself to enjoy the moment with my oversized puppy.

I liked Dr. Rothfeld. He was a mellow beta who went out of his way to be less intimidating, which went a long way while I was preoccupied with the emotional whirlwind that was my mate. I wasn't even ready to open my own emotional baggage, much less sort through it.

Fortunately, the normality of the hospital was strange enough to me to distract me from my own thoughts. After my last few years, the act of laying in a hospital bed alone was enough to set me off-kilter. I felt like a foreigner just to be among the real world, not the strange, hellish fever dream I'd been living since my mom died.

But maybe that's what I was destined for. I wasn't the kind of person who woke up in a hospital bed with his mate. He didn't really want me, deep down, without a magic pull forcing his hand, and I needed to remember that. I couldn't allow my guard to go down, the only thing that could come of it was heartbreak. Jace was just as fake as the hospital was.

Somehow, the pain in my body almost didn't matter, as if it wasn't even mine. On the other hand, my mental anguish ached - I guess that morphine doesn't do much for the pain inside that my flesh could never hope to match.