Smile When Your Heart Breaks

Delia sat at a lake, not far from the beach, but covered in trees from the forest. She skipped a few stones across the surface. All the guys were gone (with Leah, of course) and it was one of her rare days off. She scowled. “Why the hell is everyone busy right now?!” She picked up her pile of stones, though there were only five left, and dumped them irritatedly into the water.

“Why so angry, sweetheart?”

She whipped around. No one was there. She looked up. A man jumped down from his perch on a tree. “She’s a smart one,” he smirked.

“He’s a stalker,” she mocked back, before realizing at a closer look that he was very pale. His eyes were dark, but there was a gleam of red surrounding the irises. “Leah!” She called out as the leech zipped over to her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he threatened menacingly. Delia thought fast. She needed to make enough time for Leah to save her sorry ass. She’d call for Jacob instead, but Leah beat him at a race Delia was refereeing to.

“You’re being very rude,” she crossed her arms.

“Am I?” The vampire questioned with mild amusement. It wasn’t every day that a predator was scolded by his prey for having bad manners.

“Yes,” Delia confirmed. “You’re supposed to introduce yourself and tell me your name.”

“Ah,” an ugly smirk crossed his face, humored. “Yes I’ll have to tell you the name you’ll be screaming as I screw you to death and suck you dry.”

Before Delia could scream “GO TO HELL,” which would have only taken her 3 seconds tops, the grey wolf she’d seen once before leaped out of the bushes and tackled the vampire. A terrible metallic wrenching sound echoed through the air as its arm was torn from its body.

Keeping an eye on both pieces of vampire, Delia began to dig through her wallet for matches. She pulled them out as another terrible noise rang out- the sound of cracking bones. She saw the vampire standing over the wounded wolf and immediately lit five matches at once.

“No!” It hissed as she dropped them onto the limb. The distraction was enough for two more wolves to burst into the clearing and finish it off- her cousin’s russet wolf form and Leah’s darkest brown.

Knowing that things were safe then, Delia ran over to the grey. Who was it? Quil? Embry? Paul? Jared? She knelt down next to the side of whoever it was. “I’m so so sorry.” He whined and pressed his nose against her hand. She was always horrible at reading emotions, but she could see strength behind the pained brown eyes.

“Move.” She didn’t question the order as Sam leaned over the wolf. “You need to phase back so we can carry you home.” The wolf closed his eyes and suddenly, she was looking into Paul’s face. It wasn’t for long though, as Sam and Jacob picked him up and started walking out.

Delia followed them to Paul and Jared’s; she’d never been to their place before, but she didn’t have it in her to notice anything outside of Paul being placed into his bed, his lower half covered by a blanket. “You have two broken ribs, minor cuts and a fever,” Sam told Paul, whose eyes were still closed. “I’ll be back to check on you in the morning.”

He left and Jacob waited for Delia. “I want to stay for a bit,” she told him quietly. “Is there a bottle of painkillers or something here?” Her cousin shook his head.

“We don’t take any medicine unless absolutely necessary. Our bodies heal quickly so we have to let it do its thing naturally.”

She frowned, realizing that although the pain would be over with sooner, it would also hurt a lot more. “Can you tell Uncle Billy I’ll be here for a while?” He nodded and left as Delia looked back down at Paul, who was sleeping. She went to the bathroom and found a washcloth. Rinsing it in cold water, she placed it onto his forehead- it was hotter than a frying pan! It must have been really bad for a shifter with already high blood pressure to be this hot.

It only took a few minutes for the towel on Paul’s forehead to heat up, so after a lot of running back and forth, Delia decided to just keep an icy bucket next to the bed with several towels and switched them out. As she couldn’t exactly call the hospital for help on what to do, she googled everything possible about broken ribs and fevers on her smartphone.

That involved bringing in another pitcher of icy water to keep the shifter hydrated, and digging out a completely untouched bottle of vitamins, probably from one of the guys’ moms. Remembering the ferocious appetite the boys had, she made a very, very quick run to the grocery store and bought what she’d need, driving her Escalade there and back. She never bothered much with it anymore, since she didn’t want it dirtied and now had her bike.

She dumped the food bags in the kitchen and went to check on Paul. His fever had gone down and his ribs must have been healing, since his breaking didn’t sound as labored. She changed the towels, set a pot of water to boil on the stove, then frowned at the assortment of items dumped out of the bags. Delia wasn’t squeamish about a lot of things, but raw meat did the trick. She closed her eyes and pinched the squishy cold pieces of dead bird and dumped them into the pot.