Chapter 17 Chasing Healing

Quinn Shalom...

Finally, Saul was teaching me how to be a wolf. Running through the trees looking for a place to hide, I bounded up a creek, trying to hide my scent. I stopped, my nose twitching as I tried to figure out what I was smelling. Forest, moss, birds, the lake, and something tart and metallic; rabbit blood. I loped in that direction, my wolf was excited for the hunt with our game of hide and seek forgotten.

Richard's Raver was sitting by a small boulder, surrounded by sunlight. I crept up slowly; watching him staring at the water as he slowly chewed the fresh kill. The lake was large, and I knew the hydroelectric plant was at the far end. I had seen this place in photographs in one of Julia's many photo albums. My wolf approached stealthily, but a crack of a dry leaf made him turn his head. Tears were dripping down his snout and my wolf whined, as she licked them. He rumbled in greeting, holding out half a rabbit. My wolf gingerly took the hindquarters. We ate quietly together.

His claws raked down my coffee-colored back. Saul kept teasing me that I dyed my wolf with my one and only addiction. Most of the Monarch Mountain Ravers and wolves were lighter colored, except Richard, and his cousins. His Raver had a deep rusty red fur with coppery orange highlights that made it look like it was burning in the sunlight. Richard felt so sad in this place. On the large cedar next to the small boulder, I could read his and Julia's initials carved into the wood in rough strokes long ago. There was a scar on the wood that was fresher. It was made by claws after a day last year. The date that changed both our worlds.

He saw me looking at it and whined. Trembling, he shifted. He groaned and thrashed in pain. I watched as his giant Raver shrank into his wolf, which was larger than any I had ever seen, even bigger than Jake's silver wolf. My wolf licked his trying to comfort it. Skin replaced fur and I knelt next to him, running my hand along his back, trying to comfort and encourage him. It isn't the first time he made it this far, but he kept pushing, trying to reach his human body.

"It's okay, you can make it. Focus on your flesh, you're almost there. You can do it Richard, I know you can." I murmured a constant stream of encouragements.

It seemed like a long time before he was lying on the stony shore in his skin.

I held his hand, pushing matted auburn curls off his sweaty forehead, "You did it. Omigawd, Richard!" I laughed in shock. I didn't even care that we were both naked.

He swallowed several times. His voice was ragged from being unused and had a deep timbre, "Only here."

"Why here?" I thought I knew but I asked anyway.

"Our spot... Met... here." He stammered out an explanation.

"Can you hold it, stay in your skin and we'll walk back?" I asked.

"Can't." He shook his head, "Don't want be skin... Hurts there... Killed her there... Am beast, m-monst... monster." His sentences were broken, like language was hard for him now.

"You're not a monster, Richard. You were sick, just like everyone else. I want you to try when we get home. I know Jake and Saul will be very happy for you."

"Not work there. I try... Only wolf and beast come. Secret... keep?"

"Okay, I won't tell yet. We'll keep trying; I promise I won't give up on you. I want your skin to hold Justice." It broke my heart that this giant mountain of a man was so broken by something that was out of his control.

"I try. You try. Not g-give up. N-not. Die." His words caught me off guard. His dirty fingers with their broken nails try to wipe away the tears I didn't mean to share.

"I'm just so tired of hurting," I confessed.

"Promise I t-try. Promise you t-t-try?" Richard started shaking so hard it was more like he was convulsing than shifting. After several minutes, his wolf rose unsteadily, looking at me through pained eyes. He whimpered.

"Alright, Richard, I promise, I'll try too."

He gave me a wolfy grin then his bear-sized wolf leaped onto the top of the boulder and jumped off into the lake, dousing me in freezing water. It was so cold I couldn't even shriek.

"Oh, I hate you, Smokey bear," I growled at him playfully then fur replaced skin.

My wolf leaped into the water and onto his back, trying her best to push him under. We played in the mountain lake for a long time before heading back down. At his house, Saul and Jake were so happy that Richard had his wolf back for more than a few minutes. I don't tell them that he got to his skin. It was a moment he shared with me in the only place he could. I vowed I wouldn't give up on him or any of the Ravers.

VvvvvV

I felt like I was trapped in my nightmare like I was once trapped in a mental institution.

I am running down the pale grey halls of Elmhurst, a 'hospital' for young people with mental problems, but it is more like a prison turned brothel. I was put here when someone murdered my Aunt Judith. My bare feet slap the cold floors, it sounds like clapping instead of a teenage girl running in terror. Something is chasing me, something worse than any of the 'guests' I ever had visit me in my room after hours. I can hear it howling and breathing as it hunts me.

Every slate colored door is locked, every dirty window is barred. The florescent light bleaching the world as I beat on the unbreakable glass that surround the nurses' station until my hands are bloody, screaming for them to help me. But the orderlies who drugg us and sell our bodies, just laugh as they push a little cup of pale blue pills through the slot. I can hear its claws clicking on the marble floors as it gets closer, and I run down the gray hallways. Its breath is on my neck and I scream...

Something was touching my neck, breathing on me. Warm and damp, it dragged across the place where I was bitten on the Revelation Night. I fought my way out of the covers, landed hard on the floor and scrambled into the corner of a quaint bedroom, trying to remember where I was. I covered my mouth with my hands to smother the sobs. I could hear something large breathing in the darkness of my room. A giant silver wolf came around the corner of my bed, moving slowly toward me, half-growling, half-whimpering as I cringed against the walls.

"Please d-don't h-h-hurt m-me-ee," I stammered in a desperate whisper, closing my eyes as tight as I could.

Please be a dream, please be a dream, please be a dream, I chanted in my mind.

My hands were clenched around my knees so hard it felt like I was going to break my own ribs as I curled into a ball. It licked the tears from my cheeks, its nose pushing my face upward. Whimpering had me peeking at it, I looked into stormy blue eyes surrounded with silver fur, and then everything went dark. I think I fainted.

Can a person faint in a dream?

VvvvvV

(trigger warning)

I woke up with Jake's wolf on the floor between my bed and J.J.'s crib. I was so exhausted after running in my nightmares all night. I felt like the time I ran my first and only marathon for charity. I didn't think I had anything left in me to break, but I guess I was wrong. It watched me as I cautiously picked up my son and scooted against the wall. Growling, it moved between me and the door, so I scurried back onto my bed, clutching my son against my chest. J.J. started grunting and rubbing his face against me, in search of his breakfast. As I fed him, my mind screamed at Saul to wake up. I still wasn't very good at using the packlink, but I couldn't make sounds come out of my throat. Will was the first one there, then Saul, and then every Raver was staring in the window.

"Goddess Dammit Jake! You're scaring her again, get out!" Nicolea yelled at him. The Fae had no fear of the thing that stalked my nightmares.

Saul was trying to edge around Jake's wolf along the wall. Jake snarled a growling threat at them, and I couldn't help the terrified sob that escaped. I could feel those eyes that haunt my dreams staring at me as my tears drip on our hungry child. I was never this afraid of Joshua or the other Ravers. I couldn't make myself look up as I heard his bones shifting. I could feel them communicating or whatever they do through their family link.

Saul murmured to Nic, "He wants a few minutes with her."

Nic hissed, "I don't care what he wants, he's traumatizing her."

I could only nod my head in agreement with her. I felt too tired and terrified to speak, especially to Jake.

"Please, Dr Trinity, I need to speak with my mate about her nightmares," Jake sounded like he was begging.

I looked up and was caught in those eyes, they were so sad, so filled with regret, and something like helplessness. Sighing heavily, I whispered, "It's okay, Nic. I'll talk to him."

The fae huffed and stomped away down the hall, slamming her bedroom door. Saul and Will backed out as Jake pulled the shade down on the Ravers peering in. Jake sat on the end of the bed as far from me as he could. He was wearing shorts, but my wolf was still leering at his sculpted form. If it weren't for his scars, he could be an underwear model; I made myself look down at my son. For several minutes, he stared at me while I stared at our child, we don't look at each other, as J.J. made little grunting noises while he ate. Our baby boy was growing fast, as a wolf pup should.

"Was that... were those... Your nightmares, was that what happened at Elmhurst?" He finally asked so softly.

He saw! The thought mortified me.

"Stay out of my head. You have no right to read my mind, Jacob." My anger bloomed against him.

"I wasn't reading your mind, you dream loud. It's the bond, I can feel your pain, see pieces of your nightmares. Quinn, I read Troy's notes on you. That dream wasn't in them. What else did they do to you there?" His voice was so level and calm, but his hands shook slightly, like he was angry and trying to hide it.

"It was a long time ago. You have no right to pry into my life," I growled.

"I can, and I will," he snapped. "I can't ignore your pain because I am a wolf, your wolf. You are my mate and I can't bear it that you are suffering, or that you once suffered."

"Jacob, just leave me alone." I hadn't realized he was moving closer toward me until his hand rested on my ankle. I sat frozen as his fingers traced the scars his teeth made that night; the tiny flower tattoo, just missed by his bite.

His voice had a brokenness to it, it sounded like my soul felt. "Just tell me what to do, Quinn. Tell me how to help you. I watch you with the Ravers and you're so brave, then you sleep and dream of... of things that make me want to hunt down and kill everyone who ever hurt you. But I would have to start with myself, and I can't. I can't kill myself because it would leave you and Justice unprotected. I am sorry if that makes me a coward. I know you hate me, but please Quinn, just tell me what I can give..."

"I don't hate you, Jacob," I interrupted, "I hate that night and hate what happened to me, to you, to everyone, but I don't hate you. I know you're a good person that a really bad thing happened to, just like I was. I... I am sorry I am so afraid, sorry I have nightmares. If you read Ken's notes, you know some of what happened when I was institutionalized, but I never told him everything. He looked so horrified when I started to tell him, that I glossed over a lot of it. You don't know... You don't want to know, you couldn't handle it..."

"Let me decide what I can and can't handle."

I took several slow breaths. My mind refused to stop thinking about all the nights we were given pills to make us compliant as I talked about how my roommate sacrificed herself so three of us could escape. How one killed herself by running in front of a semitruck, rather than let them take her back. How the other died after her baby was born, throwing herself off a cliff near her home, and her father and cousins making me take them back to Elmhurst Hospital, so they could burn it to the ground. "We traveled from Alaska straight through. It was so cold in the far north, I vowed never to go back. They snuck onto the grounds, awhile later, the hospital went up in flames but from a tree on the hill over the Elmhurst grounds, I watched them surrounded and murdered. I was the only one to make it out alive that time too," I remembered bitterly. "I got on a bus and never stopped moving until I met Kenneth." Suddenly thoughts about my nightmare last night, about one of the many nights I refused to take the pills. I fought and was chased through the halls until almost sunrise. Toyed with, my name echoing off the walls in taunting tones, before I was assaulted and beaten, then dragged and left bleeding on my bed.

"That happened more than once?" Jake's whispered question seemed as much in my thoughts as breathed out. I realized that somehow, he was in my mind with me, remembering. I hadn't realized he was holding me.

"Get OUT! Of my head!" I shouted verbally and mentally, struggling to get out of his arms, but he just tightened his grip.

"Be still," he growled, it vibrated by body, and my wolf made my body obey.

His teeth dug into my flesh. I couldn't even scream. The mark on my neck throbbed painfully as my mind sifted through all those horrid nights before I escaped Elmhurst, then they shifted to that night; The Revelation night when my nightmares started again. He was looking at my memories and I couldn't stop him. The memories were rushing through my mind like the high tide on a full moon. I couldn't stop them, I couldn't stop him.

I was laughing with Miles about hackers, wolves and sparkly parasites being Molly's imaginary boyfriends as we had hot chocolate. My blushing daughter huffed that we were meanies. Then Kenneth rushed in, followed by a mad wolf. He died while I dragged our daughter to safety. I could still hear her chanting all the names of the colors of red as I knelt in my husband's blood after killing the wolf that killed the only man I had trusted and loved.

I feel the cold wind. Miles and I dragging Molly through the snow and trying to dig the drift away from the door of the tornado shelter. A howl, and then two dirty brown and tan wolves jumped the fence. I killed one and Miles the other. Two silver wolves followed, they shifted into the things of nightmares then one tore my son in half. I shot one as the other charged me, knocking my pistol away. It was after Molly, I sliced its face with the blade, and screamed at her to run. Crushing my ankle, dragging me toward it. It rubbed its arousal on me, and I knew what they were going to do to us. I knew there was one bullet left as I slashed the bigger one's hand with Miles' sword, breaking it then it backhanded me. Crawling desperately to my pistol, I shoot my daughter before they can start hurt her.

My wolf lashed out, trying to free us, and our teeth sank into Jake's flesh, he gasped in pain as his images from that night flood into my mind and his anguish wrapped my soul like a snake constricting a mouse. Everything he felt and saw right up to the point, he found me and after...

Shaking so hard, it felt like I was convulsing, I begged, "Please, stop. Please. I don't want to see anymore."

I felt him licking my neck. His breath ragged as his grip loosened. I could feel his emotions; his pain almost matched my own as our blood soaked my shirt. I didn't understand how I could feel him like this, it was something to do with the mate bond. Saul said it was stronger, but I was horrified by the power of it.

Why did you bite him back? I don't want this, I accused my wolf who whimpered.

"Quinn." Stormy gray-blue eyes held mine, leaking rivers of tears down his cheeks, and I couldn't look away as he whispered brokenly, "I'm so sorry."

"Me too." I choked out.

Somehow, I managed to get out of his arms and off the bed, like I was going to lay J.J. down but instead I shut myself in the bathroom. Sinking to the floor, with my back against the door, I realized I was still holding our son. J.J. was cooing happily in my arms thinking he was about to get a bath after breakfast.

"Quinn, I'm sorry but I needed to know. I didn't mean for you to see that... Please forgive me," Jake begged through the wood.

"You liked it... Part of you liked what you did to me," Accusing him, I knew he was kneeling on the other side of the door. I could feel him there and inside me.

"No, Quinn. I..."

"Don't call me Quinn anymore." Screaming because I tell him this at least once a week.

"Of course, Shalom, I promise I'll never call you Quinn again," he murmured aloud, but through our flailing bond I heard his mind whisper.

Anything for you, my love.

I wished he didn't love me because I don't know if I will ever be able to love him back. I hated him, and I pitied him, but I also blamed him for what his monster did. I don't know how to begin to forgive him, but for J.J.'s sake, I had to find a way.