Chapter 3

Beth’s POV.

"Beth!" I hear Joe’s voice rip through the air, his cold Alpha tone making my wolf whine and my knees buckle. I shakily turn away from the stove, where my fourteenth batch of cookies are baking, and look towards the hallway.

"Answer me, girl!" He growls, storming in through the kitchen’s open door, his eyes black and his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles are white. He’s pissed, and, as usual, he’s going to take his anger out on me.

"Y-yes, Alpha?" I stammer out, head bowed and not daring to meet his gaze. My eyes drift back to his hands, and I flinch at the memory of all the pain those large hands have caused.

"One of the stupid pups broke Grace’s arm," he snarls, getting even angrier as he says it. "Set it for her before it heals wrong. She’s in your room."

With that, he storms off, probably to go beat up whoever hurt his precious mate, Grace. She’s a bit ditzy, to be blatantly honest. She’s never fought for herself a day in her life – and she’s never cooked a meal, either. She’s failing most of her classes, but she has this strange quirk to her.

In addition to being super-model-gorgeous, with her long, straight blonde hair and almond shaped green eyes, she has a knack when it comes to caring for others. And I don’t mean that she can handle feeding a kid – well, she can, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

She has this thing about her, almost like an aura, that is welcoming and kind. She smiles at everyone –including me, but only when Joe isn’t around – and you can’t help but feel loved. She is warm to everyone, and keeps a steady, comfortable conversation going when other packs visit that doesn’t seem forced. She’s even civil to me –which never ceases to surprise me. She doesn’t engage in conversation with me or keep her mate from hurting me, but she doesn’t injure me herself.

In short, Grace is a people person. While Joe is the strategy and tactics part of our pack, Grace is the hospitable one that makes sure all of the packs that visit are cared for and comfortable. She’s not going to be a brilliant Alpha female, but she could certainly be worse. And Joe knows it.

Sighing, I pull out the stack of cookies from the oven and set it on the counter to cool, before heading out into the hallway. I know that Joe will be immensely pissed if he gets back to Grace before I do, so I rush to grab the first aid supplies out of a closet along the hall.

After grabbing a few fabric wraps and a thick towel, I head off up the stairs. I’m shaking and cold again, but I try my best to ignore it, knowing that Grace has to be my first priority.

I reach my room as quickly as I can, and walk in, finding Grace sitting cross-legged on my bed and cradling her arm.

"Grace," I whisper, bowing my head in acknowledgement and drawing her pretty green eyes away from the floor and to my eyes.

"Oh, Beth. My arm…" She trails off uncertainly, clearly embarrassed. "I thought I’d help train the pups today. And I guess I underestimated them," She whispers, laughing awkwardly at the end.

Not surprising, I silently muse. As I’ve said, she’s never fought a day in her life, and I’m pretty sure that she’d be way too cocky and confident for her own good. She’d probably think that being mated to an Alpha gave her automatic fighting superpowers.

It totally doesn’t, though, in case you didn’t get my sarcasm. But hey, Grace is definitely not the smartest person in the world.

I only shrug in response, timidly sitting down in front of her on my mattress. "I can’t fight to save my life, so don’t worry about it. Those pups are stronger than they look."

Of course, the only reason that I’m so pathetic in the defense department is because I’ve never been allowed to train with the other wolves, and both Grace and I know it. We fall into an awkward silence, and I begin unrolling the large fabric wraps. There are a few reasons that I’m not allowed to train; one being that the pack, especially Joe, like to keep me weak. I’m easy to manipulate because I can’t defend myself.

The second reason is that they simply don’t trust me. After what my dad did, all of those years ago, none of the Ewing family can be trusted. And, seeing as I’m an only child and my mom died years ago, that only means me.

They assume that I’ll learn their defense tactics, their strengths and weaknesses, all of the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of our defensive skills. And it’s not safe to have me know that information. I wouldn’t do anything to them; I swear I’d never hurt this pack. But they don’t see that. When they look in my eyes, the brown ones I inherited from my father, all they can see are his mistakes.

That’s why they hate me so much. Because of my dad, and his stupid mistakes. I know that they were infinitely more than stupid, and I hate him for them. But so does the pack. And, rather than ignoring that hatred, the way I do, they take it out on me.

I shrug off the sadness and ache-y feeling filling my heart, and concentrate back on Grace. The wraps are now completely unrolled, laying around me in thick white strips, and I shuffle closer to her, bringing her from her thoughts.

"Move your other arm, please, Grace," I whisper, knowing to be as polite as possible as I try and look over her injury. She slips her right arm away, letting it hang beside her, and tenderly rests her broken left arm on her lap.

I wince when I see her forearm sticking out at a strange angle, showing off the break about two inches above her wrist. I gently move my fingers over the swollen area, knowing that under the thick layers of skin are cracked and splintered pieces of bone, which are probably already starting to heal.

I frown as I touch a part of her arm and she sucks in a sharp breath, cringing. Shit. Her wolf powers have already begun to heal her arm – and it hasn’t been aligned properly.

"You’re bone has already started to set, Grace," I whisper, recoiling at the thought of what I have to do next, and not daring to meet her gaze. "I have to re-break it so that it heals properly."

She whimpers, and I keep my eyes down. If I see how much pain is spreading through her eyes at the mere mention of re-breaking her arm, then I know that I’ll never be able to do it. And no one else in the entire pack knows how. Literally. I’m the only one trained enough to help her.

She takes a shaky breath, before sliding a little closer to me.

"Do it."

I blink, looking up at her.

"You heard me. Do it, please," she whisper the last part, her jaw set and her eyes weary but determined.

"Maybe we should wait, Grace, until Joe comes. He could help you-"

"No, it’s okay. He, uh, doesn’t like to see me in pain, and I don’t want to stress him out." I furrow my eyebrows, but quickly agree with her. Joe gets pissed when Grace’s hurt – it’s the whole ‘mate’ thing. And when he’s angry, he’s pretty uncontrollable. He would never hurt Grace when he was mad, I know, but he would more than likely hurt me.

Being selfish, but not really caring, I nod. "Okay then. I’ll be as quick as I can, ok?"

She nods, looking terrified all of a sudden, and I pass her the fluffy towel I brought up with me. "You might want to bite on this or something. I’m not going to lie – it’s going to hurt."

She nods, shakily grabbing the towel with her good arm and stuffing it in her mouth, before covering her eyes with her arm. I hear a muffled word that sounds something like, "Go."

Not needing to be told twice, I grab her arm tightly with both my hands, one on either side of the break, and grit my teeth together. I yank her arm in opposite directions, twisting as I go, and she screams, filling the air with her cries.

I gulp, feeling sick, and quickly set her arm back into its usual place, going as fast as I can. I wrap one thick strip of the cloth around her arm, tying it and making sure that blood can still circulate through her whole arm, before doing another strip on top of it.

There is a sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs just as I finish, and Grace sniffles, looking up for the first time, her teary gaze going to the open doorway.

I slide back, away from her, and Joe runs into the room. He spots Grace in the room and drops to his knees beside her, taking her tear-stained face into his hands in a heartbeat, before I can even blink.

"What’s wrong, baby?" He whispers, and in that instant, transforms from the Joe I know into the Joe that only cares about his mate. His normally stone-cold blue eyes go soft, his whole body relaxing. He hasn’t even recognized that I’m in the room yet; that’s how entranced he is with his mate.

A small smile almost appears on my face. See, this is what I can only hope for. A mate, to share this kind of love with – the kind that blinds you from everything and everyone else and change you, but you don’t care at all.

"I- I – I had my a-arm re-b-broken," she stutters out, trying to get her shaky voice under control as her tears dry up.

"Did she hurt you?" Joe growls, his eyes filling with anger as they snap to mine, and I quickly drop my gaze. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to never look a pissed-off Alpha in the eyes.

"No, Joe, she didn’t, my bone just was healing wrong," she whispers, pleading on my behalf, which still stuns me. I should be used to it by now, but seeing as how she’s the only person in this pack to at least distract people from me, it’s still pretty weird in my mind.

"You all right?" He asks, diverting his attention back to Grace once he’s sure I didn’t go and take a chainsaw to her arm and somehow manage to tear open her spleen in the process. I almost laugh; he’s acting bi-polar, all angry and then all kind and caring, but he’s always like that with Grace.

"Yeah," she whispers, burying her face in his shirt, and I look away, feeling like I’m intruding on a personal moment.

He only nods, before scooping her up off of the bed, carrying her bridal-style, and walks out of the room without another word.

Strange.

I shrug, looking at my watch. I have another hour or so before everyone will want to eat dinner, so I decide to go down to the kitchen and start cooking. I have to be fast; tonight there is another pack meeting, and I need all of their food ready and laid out before they begin. I shudder as I remember the last time that I was too slow, and was just taking the food out of the oven when they came in to start their meeting.

A long scar runs down my shoulder as a reminder to never do it again. I shiver again, but not because I’m cold, running a hand over the jagged line carved into my skin.

That night, a year or two ago, Tom, Beta of our pack, took the honor of digging one of his long switchblades into me. I can still remember it all, the sharp, metallic smell of my own blood, the heavy, warm liquid running down my back and onto the kitchen tile underneath me, soaking through my tank top as he tore through the fabric to make the cut longer.

The salty taste of my tears as I sobbed out my pain and desperation for the hurting to stop.

That night, like so many others in my short seventeen years of existence, I wished to die. But, the alpha blood that still runs determinedly in m veins is keeping my wolf strong, and more powerful than other wolves. It also means that, had I tried to kill myself, I wouldn’t die. I would be injured, and it would hurt like there was no tomorrow, but I would still heal. I wouldn’t be able to inflict enough injuries on myself to die – they would all start healing before I was damaged enough.

In short, until my wolf gives up, I’ll never be able to kill myself.

God, I hope she gives up soon.

With that thought, I stand up and head off to the kitchen, noticing that I only have forty five minutes now to make an entire meal for the pack.