Zale’s POV
I feel like a thousand trumpets were being blown in my head. Not around me in the white room, not even just outside of the room I was in—but inside of my head. Isthat even possible? Does that make sense?
My migraine only becomes worse when I open my eyes and come face to face with my beta.
“Get out of my face, Johnny,” I groan and turn around to face the window. Big mistake. The bright light from outside only worsens my headache.
“Tough talk for someone scared of the sunlight,” Johnny says when he notices I wince away from the light and rip the bedsheets over my face. He at least had the sympathy to get up from where he was sitting and close the curtains for me.
“What happened?” I groan out to him once I lift my head from the sheets and face him. Johnny gives me a dumbfounded look and opens his arms up as he looks around the room, as though he knows just about as much as I did.
“You tell me, Zale. I had my retainer ready to get to bed. Next thing I know, I’m being frantically called from your phone by a woman I have never met in my entire life.” He points an accusing finger at me. “And I’m pretty sure neither have you.”
I turn my head from him with a groan and catch sight of my face in a mirror beside my bed. The scar that normally decorates my left eye was now accompanied by a few others. Some slight bruises heal in front of me as I watch them, but some of the other cuts below my eyebrow and on my high cheekbones will take longer to heal.
“Who?” I ask him when I realize what he said.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You don’t know. No one knows, man. She gave her name to the doctors for emergency purposes, I guess, but they wouldn’t tell me.”
I shut my eyes and throw my head back into my pillow as Johnny continues speaking. “What were you even doing at a club anyway? That’s where she told the doctors she found you.”
Images of the night before flash before me, but it was all fragments, scattered in bits of pieces. I can vaguely make out the scents of it all. From there, I piece the night together.
The girl, I can’t remember her face, but that scent; she smelled like fear and anger. It rolled off of her like seafoam. And hopelessness. Why did she look so lost? I find myself deep in thought about her before Johnny snaps me out of it.
“Earth to Zale? Hello?” I blink up at him.
“What?”
He's deadpanned. “What?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Yeah, what.”
“What what! What is up with you!” he says as he grabs the pillow from beneath me and slams it on my face. “I should kill you for how irritating you are.” He growls as he pushes the pillow onto my face.
I don’t retaliate until he lets up and then take the pillow and throw it as hard as I can against the back of his head.
“Ouch! What the hell!” Johnny says, turning around.
“Maybe if your head weren’t so big, it wouldn’t be such an easy target.” I laugh at him and immediately regret it as I feel a sharp pain in my side. When I look down, I see there is a large bruise there.
“I hope you succumb to your injuries,” Johnny says with a straight face before he begins walking out towards the door of my room.
“Where are you going?” I call after him.
“To tell your doctor you woke up. He’ll bite my head off if he realizes you’re awake after giving me specific instructions to call him when you do.”
I don’t say anything and let Johnny find my doctor. I need a moment alone, any way to think about everything that happened.
I remember fighting. But not with those guys from the club—I was yelling at someone else—a woman. I can faintly see through my clouded memories her long brown hair, her eyes like mine. Is it my mother?
What is she saying? I snap my eyes shut and keep them closed, concentrating on the memory before it slips away from me.
“You need to find a mate,” I whisper to myself, speaking the words she had told me last night. That was it. That was why I left the house that night and went to a club of all places.
“A mate…” I sigh as I stretch out on the bed, the shirt rising from my stomach as I did so. I can see the faint bruising against my skin from where I had been attacked. From what I remember, it had been a scratch of some kind, bleeding. But by now, it has healed itself almost completely.
A woman’s words flash through my mind just then.
“Look, I don’t care about what you’re feeling right now, but you’re drunk and bleeding. So quit walking away while I call you a taxi to get you to the hospital.”
Did she speak to me like that? I scoff at her brazen attitude. She wasn’t a small woman by any chance, and I could tell that she was a wolf too, but what did she plan on doing going up to five grown men like that in the middle of an alleyway?
I look up when the sliding door open again to reveal Johnny. He was back alone with nothing but a green Jell-O cup in hand, a somewhat broken plastic spoon, and a satisfied smile on his face.
He looks like he just robbed that Jell-O from someone. I know better than to ask.
“Where’s my doctor?” I ask him, and he looks up as though he is shocked to see me still there. I raise my hands at him in question.
“Oh. Couldn’t find him, but you said you’re fine, right?”
I deadpan for a second before forgetting the conversation and opening up a new topic that had been on not only my mind but my parents as well.
“I need to find a mate,” I tell Johnny seriously.
He pauses. Johnny stares at me with the Jell-O cup in his hand, then rolls his eyes and turns back around. “I’ll go look for your doctor.”
“I’m serious.”
“Says who?”
“Johnny!”
“Look,” Johnny says as he sets the Jell-O cup down and raises his hands at me. “You, Zale Seoh, who has never expressed any interest in having a mate, you suddenly want one after you got completely wrecked in a fight?”
“I did not get absolutely wrecked in a fight!” I contradict his statement.
He snaps his fingers. “So you admit you were partially wrecked—”
“Johnny,” I call out to him, my face is straight and serious about him mimicking my tone. Suddenly my beta straightens up, and all sense of humor is gone from his face.
“Zale,” He sighs, “I thought you said you’d never take a mate. Especially after everything happened with your—”
“I know what I said.” I snap at him. I see Johnny shoot me a disapproving look for a moment, and although he doesn’t say anything due to our positions, I know that my tone is uncalled for. Especially to him.
“Look,” I sigh as I run my hand down my face. “My parents were on me last night, more than usual. I just think it’ll be better if I get a fake one.”
Johnny chokes on the Jell-O he just put in his mouth.
I watch unamused for several moments as he pounds against his chest. “What?” He choked out. “Zale, you can’t be serious!”
“I am.”
“That!” Johnny sputters, “That goes against so many rules! Oh my God, that is so illegal.”
I roll my eyes at his dramatics. “It isn’t illegal; calm down. No one will know. It’ll be just you, me, and her.”
Johnny lets out a frustrated sigh and sits on the foot of my bed. I don’t say anything as he thinks about it. He usually does this. He always takes time to digest whichever crazy, insane thing I suggest.
I know he will agree to help me, though; he always does. Ever since we were little, ever since we were kids. Even now.
“Look,” He says as he turns to me, “I just… I don’t want you to lose control. You said yourself that because of your un—”
I nod my head and raise my hand. “I know, but this won’t be anything I would get emotional over. It’s purely a business contract.”
Johnny sighs. “Okay, who did you have in mind?”
I smirk.