Five years before, I’d had my one and only seizure involving impaired awareness. Usually, my seizures were tonic-clonic and I stayed awake the whole time. My muscles would stiffen and jerk, and I might start laughing, or not be able to speak.
But I stayed awake.
That episode five years ago had been right before I graduated with my master’s degree. I’d barely been sleeping, my thesis still lacked fifteen pages and a coherent conclusion, I’d had too much to drink, and I’d gotten off the phone with my father, who’d told me he’d be giving my commencement a pass because some family friend or other had invited him and Blake golfing for the weekend.
I never knew how long it lasted; probably not more than a minute or two. But it felt like hours had passed when I came around, sprawled on the floor next to the couch in my student apartment, my mouth cottony with carpet dust. I didn’t have any injuries, which wasn’t too surprising given my neurologist’s predictions about the types of seizures I’d be prone to. I’d just collapsed and stayed there without moving around.
But the mental fog, the complete inability to figure out where the hell I was and what was going on, had been worse than bruises or a bitten tongue would’ve been.
That and the crippling terror. It felt like I was dying, and it took an endless, agonizing minute, maybe, for that to fade and for something approximating reality and understanding of what had happened to set in.
This time wasn’t all that different at first.
Lying down, having trouble breathing, my body a throbbing mess of awfulness. Dry mouth. Thoughts moving like molasses, slow and dark and oozing through my mental fingers when I tried to grab onto them.
And the fear. The fear that I’d die like this, that…and then I remembered the last time, the memory seeping in through a crack in my confusion.
Not dying. Had a seizure. It didn’t help the chaos in my brain, but at least I didn’t need to panic.
Physical sensations came back while I waited for my brain and my mouth to reboot. I’d been so cold and aching and lonely in a deeply visceral way last time, desperate for the anchor of another living being.
But not this time. This part was different.
To a werewolf raised in a properly loving family and pack, the scent of an alpha meant safety, protection, all being right with the world. The knowledge that whatever had gone wrong, someone was in the process of fixing it. Friends of mine who’d had that kind of upbringing had told me all about it, and it’d made sense to me on a bone-deep, instinctual level, deep in the part of me thatwanted. But I’d also found it hard to relate to. Alpha scents and the similar, but much more subtle, feeling of their enhanced shifter magic wrapping around me set me on edge. It meant my father. It meant Blake. It meant criticism and scorn and bracing myself for another figurative blow.
For the first time in my life, I scented and sensed an alpha without freezing up, going on the defensive.
Warm and fresh all at once, like the hint of a cool sea breeze tendriling through the heat of a summer’s day. This alpha had a little dash of citrus in his scent, grapefruit maybe. And something else, something darker and sharper and hot like a spark off of steel.
His magic enclosed and sheltered me. Strength radiated from him, absorbing into my chilled, stiff muscles.
Getting my eyes open took some serious effort. I didn’t know who was there, only that maybe I’d figure it out if I could see him.
After a few blinks, a harsh-featured man with messy dark hair and beautiful eyes wavered into focus. I knew his name. IknewI knew his name. But it wouldn’t quite come. So frustrating. My head fit perfectly tucked onto his shoulder, and his arm around my ribs felt strong enough to hold me forever. He lay next to me on my bed, on his side with the rest of his body held a respectable distance away. He wasn’t crowding me, and I kind of wished he would.
“Do you know where you are?” His voice matched his scent and feel and heat, all dark and rumbly and soothing. “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
I did know where I was: home, in my own bed. The seizure must’ve happened here, unless he’d moved me to make me more comfortable. The words wouldn’t come, though. I managed to nod. The day of the week? My lips moved, trying to tell him I wasn’t quite sure but I knew it was a weekday, and my brain wasn’t broken, just…temporarily stalled out. No sound emerged.
“Huh,” he said. “I read online that you’re supposed to ask questions like that after someone has a seizure. But I also read that some seizures make you unable to talk. So it seems kind of dumb to me.” He shrugged, my head rising and falling with the gesture. “Whatever. We’ll wait a little bit. If you still can’t talk, and you’re confused, then we’ll figure out where to go from there. Your pack must have a doctor or a shaman or someone who’s in the know about the Hensley’s thing.”
A quick, sharp spike of panic lanced through me. Why the hell washein the know about the Hensley’s thing? I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. I couldn’t tell anyone, because…Dimitri. This was Dimitri, and the relief of remembering canceled out the anxiety about him knowing my secret. More came back with the name, though: the mating plan, the shopping trip, coming home.
Having a seizure while trying to finger my ass open to let him fuck me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and I’d have been shaking with humiliation if I’d had the energy. That weird sound…yeah, that was me, some kind of groan/whimper hybrid that totally failed to express my true feelings.
“Don’t,” Dimitri said. “See, this is why I needed to know this could happen. I read up on it so I could be prepared. There’s nothing to be upset about.”
Nothing to be upset about?He wasn’t the one in the midst of suffering the most agonizing embarrassment of his life!
“Brook. Look at me.” Dimitri didn’t say it unkindly, but I could’ve gotten up and danced a jig sooner than ignore the alpha command in his voice.
When I fluttered my eyes open, he’d leaned down over me, his face close enough for me to make out every detail. God, he had such nice eyes, even with the furrow of a frown between them. Those little bits of green were so damn pretty.
Pretty didn’t seem like quite the right word to describe Dimitri, though. More like the opposite.
He’d called me pretty. Bet he didn’t think that now.
