Pretty Poison Read Free Page B

force-feeding, though. He nudged the eggs with his fork. Squaring his shoulders, he screwed up his nerve to ask for his leg brace. “I can’t walk without it,” he said, pausing to consider how to condense the dry terms in a way someone unfamiliar with his medical history would understand. “My knees hyper-extend. Mostly the right leg, but also the left. I wish I could control that, but I can’t. I could dislocate the joints, tear muscles and tendons. Unless you want to carry me to the bathroom every time I have to pee or watch me crawl—”
    “Eat.” The beta crossed his arms over his chest.
    That wasn’t a “no” exactly. To show his good will, Noah forked more fluffy eggs into his mouth. “I need my medicines, too,” he said after he’d consumed the bite. “Pins stabilize my hips. The white lines running down my legs? Those are scars from my surgeries. Dr. Phares said I might be able to walk without pins, plates, and bars strengthening my bones once I’m fully grown, but not yet.”
    “You’re twenty years old.”
    “Exactly.” Noah nodded. “I’m small, even by human standards. Dr. Phares wants to give me another year to see if I hit a growth spurt delayed by the accident.”
    “Shifters mature by sixteen.” The beta scowled at him. “You’re short and too skinny, but you’re an adult.”
    Frowning, Noah shoveled another heaping mound of scrambled eggs he didn’t want into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “Listen, I’m not like you. Not like other shifters.”
    “But you are a shifter.” The beta glowered. “A stubborn one who needs to shift.”
    That was what he was afraid of and the last thing he should do. “My doctors adapted to my physiology. After I stopped therapeutic shifting to try to heal the damage, we worked around using bars and plates as much as we could, but I have a few left in me. Anything foreign to our bodies disappears during a shift, though. So I can’t shift, okay?”
    Eventually, Noah stopped trying. He dutifully ate as much of his breakfast as he could stand. Only then did the beta move, walking to the bed to collect the still half-filled plate. “I won’t make trouble. I’ll do whatever he wants, I swear. Just please...tell me what’s happening? Why is he holding me prisoner?”
    “You aren’t a prisoner. You were rescued,” the beta said, but when he left with the dirty dishes, Noah heard the lock click.
    * * *
    The shifters brought more food when Noah’s stomach told him it must be time for lunch, and with the heaping platter of fried chicken, they brought his forearm crutches. If he was careful, he could cross the fifteen feet to the bathroom without destroying his knee. Again, he dutifully ate under the watchful gaze of the beta assigned to him. He asked for his meds, true fear edging his polite if fervent requests. When his anxiety for his family spiked and his nerve broke, he begged the tight-lipped stranger to tell him what he’d done wrong. Hadn’t Noah complied exactly with what the city shifters had demanded of him? The countless other questions he couldn’t and wouldn’t ask ate at him. Why had he been jailed instead of taken to the alpha’s bed? Was he on trial? Had the pack finally decided to punish him for dealing with humans? Or worse, had they judged him too injured to survive, much less fulfill his duties as the alpha’s mate?
    Nothing.
    No response.
    His guard at dinner at least gave him some glimmer of what he faced. When he asked for his meds, the beta flinched. And sneered. “Poison.” That was all he said. One word: poison . Technically, the shifter was correct. Noah knew it. His family knew it. His medical team knew it. The only substance that would prevent a shift long-term was aconitum—wolfsbane—and since Noah couldn’t control his shifting, he’d been on the drug for years.
    And he’d been without it too long.
    Noah sensed the turmoil building inside his mind, the stirring of the wolf fighting to break free.