You Fight For All The Wrong Reasons

I don’t know how any of us managed to fall asleep that night. Or morning, I should say. It was 5:30 A.M. by the time we all got settled again.

I woke up around 4:00 the next day according to the little green numbers on Mitch’s VCR in the family room. I leaped up. My parents were expecting me back long before now. They were going to kill me.

Mrs. Windsor, who was in the kitchen with Julia and Trey, sensed the rustle of sheets in the next room. “Don’t worry. They know Mitch is sick and that you’re staying with him here,” she said, reading my mind.

“Oh.” I lowered myself back down. “Thanks.”

I looked over at Mitch, who was snoring softly on the couch. Snoring. Good. He was breathing.

I walked into the kitchen and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table between Mrs. Windsor and Trey. Neither one of them looked spectacular. I could see tear stains on Mrs. Windsor’s cheeks, and she didn’t look like she had caught a wink of sleep last night. A slight smile was being forced onto her face, and it made her look even sadder.

Trey looked absolutely awful. His left eye was brutally red, and his eyelid was fluttering spastically. One brown iris was frozen looking slightly to the right, while the other one carefully interpreted my face.

“Your eye is spazzing out,” I observed.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

I thought for a moment. “Did you know that goldfish are actually green in the wild?”

“Really? Now that, I did not know.”

I heard a laugh from behind Trey and looked up to find Julia standing there, holding a hot water bottle out to Trey. “Thanks,” Trey said, taking the compress and standing up.

“We’re going to see if a hot compress will revive my eye,” he explained.

“You still can’t move it?”

“Nope.”

“Can you see out of it?”

“A little. It’s getting harder.”

This was not good. Our Alpha could not go blind.

************************************************************************

It was nine o’clock that night, and I was home alone with nothing but a pile of textbooks for company. I really tried to finish my homework, but every time I picked up my pencil, the lines would dance across the paper, thanks to my shaking hands. Chemistry reminded me of chlorine. I tried to drown everything out from the previous night, but the cold crashing sound of metal canister against metal canister still rang in my head.

Eventually I gave up and threw my Chem book at the wall in frustration. I whipped around, stood up, and ran right into the frigid embrace that I happened to need right at that very moment.

“Cam!” I exclaimed, looking up at him. “How did you get in here?”

“I have my ways.” He grinned mischievously.

“Oh, I see. I hope you haven’t been a naughty boy, breaking into people’s houses like that.”

Cam wrapped his arms around my waist. “I heard about Mitch,” he said, ruining the moment.

I studied the worry in his face. It was beautiful that he cared so much. Would I be just as concerned if something bad happened to Stella? I hoped I would.

“Yeah,” I whispered, lowering my gaze.

“He’s going to be okay,” he said, and the way he said it made me believe him.

“You think so?”

“You guys are werewolves. You’re strong. He’s strong. He’ll be just fine.”

“And Trey?” I said immediately. “What about Trey?”

“Him too. He’s not going to go blind.” He made a face as if this were the most ridiculous assumption in the world.

“But what if he does? Can he still be Alpha? How will he see anything coming from his left side?”

I heard a door slam. My parents were back.

I looked at Cam, alarmed. “Don’t worry,” he said, cupping my face in his hands. He planted his lips on mine.

He pulled away, and flipped the latch on my bedroom window. “They’ll be just fine,” he said as he pushed open the window and slid out, a promise I knew he couldn’t keep.