Rejected At First Sight (Spinoff Series)

21

Sage

"David!" I yelled as the door shut behind me. I looked around the spacious alley way located at the back of the hospital, the walls closely holding us in. A great place for secrecy. Or to beat someone's face in.

Dr. Welden slowly came out from behind a dumpster. "Sage," he started, "we can't keep this from her."

"You think I don't know that?" I yelled.

"She has a mate. She will be thrown into the supernatural world anyways. Why not now?" He argued.

I shook my head, rubbing my now scruffy jaw line with my thumb. Self care had taken a back seat over the last few days. "She's hurting. If she finds out about the pack now, after what has happened to her... she would run. And never look back."

"And you think if she finds out that you were keeping all of this from her much later, that it will make it better?"

I hesitate.

"The longer you wait, Sage, and that mate of hers, the sooner you're going to lose this girl." Dr. Welden said and walked back inside the hospital.

I knew that there was truth and logic behind his words, but even still, as I drove home, I dreaded having to tell Ash everything. I did not doubt that she would reject us as wolves. No, it was what came after that. Telling her that I let her be hurt. That I let him hurt her over and over and over again.

The drive blurred past in an instant, and soon I was pulling into the gravel driveway.

I sighed as I parked my car in the garage. For the last four days, whenever I got home from visiting the hospital, he had been waiting. I knew there were countless times throughout the day where he considered approaching me again. Even when he knew I had no new information.

It was always the same questions.

"Is she okay?" Jay asked the second I stepped out of my car.

"No." I answered.

"Is she getting better? Her fever?" His voice didn't hold hope, it never did. Only desperation. He knew he didn't deserve to hope.

"She woke up today." I said drily.

"What?" Jay said as I walked past him. "Wait, Sage, what did you say?" I let him grab my wrist and turn me around.

"She still has a fever around 100 degrees." I spoke while directly looking into his eyes. While Jay had been my friend, he did something unforgivable. "Ash isn't out of the woods yet. David told me that the bruised tissue penetrates her muscle. It will take months for her human genes to heal."

With each word I spoke, his face fell bit by bit. There was nothing that would completely and utterly destroy him that he didn't already know. He had been beating himself up ever since I told him that she had been hospitalized. Before that, even.

His eyes were red from stress, his skin dull. His hair unwashed and flat. Then there was that expression on his face. Lost and empty.

I frowned at him. "You disgust me. You don't have the right to look at me like that." I spat. "All wounded. Like you're the victim."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Sage, I know I messed up."

"Messed up?" I laughed, a dry humorless sound.

Jay shook his head, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead. "I can barely live with myself, after what I did to her."

"Yeah, well. You did. She has the bruises to prove it." I say, leaning back on the side of my car.