Chapter Nine

Falling asleep on the ground with your body already all banged up and broken shouldn't have been the best night's sleep in recent memory. But somehow it was.

Once the kids were all asleep, and Tyrus promised to keep an eye on us for a while, slumber came quick and hard. He had his own comfy bed and still chose to be here with me…with us. It meant more to me than even I'd realized at the time. My excellent sleep could attest to that. I didn't toss or turn the entire night, and I woke refreshed and ready for the day. In pain, but impressed.

It was probably early; at least for most people it would be. When you regularly get up before the sun, anything past sunrise was sleeping in. I sat up. It took so much more effort than it should've to get up. It probably didn't help that I'd been sleeping on the floor or that I'd been in his arms the day before. Never had pain felt so worth it—the feel of his arms hug, his warmth, what little of a scent I could detect, thanks to this stupid collar filling my senses. If he held out his arms, I'd step into his embrace without hesitation.

In the far corner, the kids were already up and in a half circle. Sitting in the middle? Tyrus. I headed to the bathroom quickly and came back out and over to them to see what they were up to.

"And this is my favorite book," Tyrus said, holding up a picture book with a cartoon monster on the cover. Even the teens and preteens were watching him as if he was the most amazing thing ever as he began the book.

It was the story of a kid who pretended they had a pet monster, only to find out it wasn't pretend after all. All the kids giggled as the creature came to life, Tyrus making all of the voices. It was a silly cartoon, nothing scary, and I heard even Sally laughing along with the creature's antics.

It was going to be really good for them, at least for as long as we were here. I didn't know what would happen to them once the dust settled, but, for now, they were all safe…all laughing.

"He's pretty amazing, isn't he?" one of the alphas who'd been helping us said. I really needed to learn names.

"He really is. I'm Sloan."

"They call me Pop-Tart."

"Is that your name?"

"They call me Pop-Tart." It wasn't really an answer, but I was going to take it.

"I came to get you because we have someone here who can help you get this collar off…we think." That didn't sound overly promising.

"The kids are here." I wanted this off, but I also wanted them to have things as normal as possible.

"They'll be fine with Tyrus, and then pretty soon everybody's going to be called to breakfast. You'll see them there."

I didn't love the idea, but out of all the people here, I trusted Tyrus the most. If anyone was going to keep them safe, it was him. And really, nothing about this place felt unsafe. Not that I'd been the best at discerning what was or wasn't secure. I shivered at the thought of how compliant I'd been working at Shifter House.

"Okay." I followed him into a little room where a healer awaited me. They were nice enough, but there was for sure an edge to them that had me not overly comfortable.

The healer didn't say much, focusing on the issue at hand. First, he had me drink some nasty things in little shot glasses. I didn't ask what they were. If he didn't offer, I didn't want to know. More than once, he mumbled words I didn't understand.

It had been mentioned by more than one person that they thought some dark healing went into the creation of this collar. If he was using dark healing to remove it… That was something I didn't want to put too much thought into. Dark healing wasn't something to mess with.

Eventually, he brought out a tool that looked like it came out of a medieval torture chamber in a horror movie. No one else in the room seemed concerned about it, and I held in my fear the best I could.

Pop-Tart was still there, and everything about him shouted that he would protect me. A haziness from the liquids, or maybe the words, clouded my ability to focus on exactly how they were removing it.

A loud pop followed by both clarity and a sense of feeling like myself told me they were successful. For the first time since the collar was placed around my neck, my beast had control. He could come through if he desired. He wanted to so badly.

"I need to shift. Can I shift here?"

"No. You can't shift yet. You need to eat breakfast." The healer was adamant. "Go with them. Eat. I want you to make sure you double stack your protein."

"We have eggs," Pop-Tart promised him.

"Then have eggs—no less than eight of them. An hour after that, you can try to let your beast out."

"Okay." Try wasn't the word I wanted to hear.

My beast didn't like it either, although his solution was to do it now. It took all my strength to push him down. Not that I had much, as broken and battered as I was. I wasn't going to risk ignoring the healer's suggestions. I was in bad enough physical shape already. I didn't need to make it worse.

Pop-Tart led me to where everybody was eating their breakfast. Tyrus sat with the kids, telling them dad jokes that had them groaning. I filled up my plate with all the eggs and sat with them. I didn't love eggs, but I wasn't willing to risk something going wrong with my first shift.

Tyrus looked at my neck. "All good?"

"Yeah. All good." At least as good as it could be for the moment.