Awakening (2 book series)
Awakening – Rejected Mate Chapter 76

My head aches crazy bad with the weight of that damn bear sitting on my skull, my mouth feels weird and furry like I just ate my own socks, and I blink at the bright white piercing light as I slowly try to open my eyes. Flinching at the assault and screwing my face up in reaction. My body is heavy and disconnected as I try to come to and figure out where I am and what happened to me. I feel like I just survived a train wreck, and I'm not entirely sure I'm not dead and in the afterlife waiting room. I'm completely disorientated, everything spinning, and I can barely move my body as though somehow, I've lost use of anything but my eyelids. I feel vacuum pressed to the surface I'm lying flat out on and it's the most surreal sensation to wake up to.

It takes a minute for my eyes to grow accustomed to the brightness of my surroundings and much like having a torch shone in your face, it's painful at first until it starts to level out and an actual ceiling comes into focus. Watery eyes blurring to clarity and blinking repetitively to figure out what I am staring at.

White square tiles, and a center grey wooden fan that's on slow and hitting me with a gentle breeze. The tiles are large, grubby, and pull my focus enough to let me grasp at the reality of my situation. That I'm inside a building and no longer on the forest floor. My gut twists and my insides sink as that filters through. It all comes slowly back, the memory of eating dirt and passing out, and I try to sit hurriedly as panic comes kicking back into play. Straining with all I have in me as mild panic sets in.

I can't move, a tightness across my chest, arms, and legs, yanking me down painfully and when I attempt a second time, trying to figure out what's wrong with my body, I realize it's not me... I'm restrained. It's not some weird malfunction of my body after being tranquilized at all.

I manage to tilt my chin, still woozy but able to drag the exaggerated weight of my skull up enough to look down my body and exhale at the sight I see. Laid out flat on a hospital bed of some sort, dressed in a light medical gown. There are leather straps across me at several points of my torso and legs, keeping me taped down, and both my ankles and wrists are shackled in wide black fabric to the side bars of the bed. The guards are up, holding me in place, and try as I can to wriggle, I can barely move an inch. They're tight, thick, and impenetrable while I'm in human form.

I turn my head to the side, dizziness making everything sway, getting a blank white painted brick wall and turn the other way, opening up my view into a small medical room. Brick all around, no windows, and one white door closed shut with nothing but a high square glass panel in the upper half. There are cupboards, trolleys, and worktops in here, with all manners of medical kits and supplies, some posters on the walls that remind me of the doctors surgery in Radstone and an array of panels up near the door that look pretty high tech. The floor is vinyl tiled in a weird blue grey and apart from the information posters on dressing wounds, the predominant color in here is white. It's stark, stinks of disinfectant, and has the usual low hum of electrical outlets and the whirring fan over my head.

It's almost eerily silent and deserted, but I know that's far from reality. There is nothing overly out of place for a sick room that causes me any extra alarm. I mean, it's not like I'm waking up mid body slicing in an alien abduction story.

I feel nauseous, my heart pounding through my ears already, even without the added anxiety of me waking up and replaceing myself captive in a strange place. I'm obviously inside the building now, somewhere below ground and I have no chance in hell of getting off this bed. My energy levels are low as hell, I can't get up, probably not even without the straps, while I haven't come all the way to out of my drugged stupor.

My first attempt at turning is completely futile, as with sheer will power, I try in the hopes of wiping the residue drug out of my system. It's like I have zero ability, and even breaking my own promise to myself to never link Colton's again, I try, desperate for some kind of help right now. Just his reassuring voice, his always knowing what to do, his words to calm me. I get a black wall of non-penetration, meaning something is blocking all of my gifts and abilities and I'm right now, no better off than a mere mortal with no gifts at all. I wonder what the hell they've done to me to subdue all that is supernatural and I don't have time to ponder it when a tiny buzzing sound draws my attention up above my head, behind my line of vision. Wriggling around until I can tilt my head far enough back, arching the very slight amount I can, to see a camera repositioning in the top corner over my head and focusing its attention on me. I guess my movements alerted someone to the fact I'm now awake, and I glare at it hatefully, visually doing what my body can't and rebelling in some small way. I try harder than ever to get movement out of these straps and give up as a wave of fatigue washes over me and leaves me breathless.

Its futile, I have no strength at all, still groggy enough that my little amount of energy wanes fast and I jump internally when the door across the room beeps loudly, reverberating through my ears and clicks to signal someone coming in.

"I see you're awake, dear girl. I've been impatiently poised and ready to come introduce myself to such a marvel as yourself." The heavy accent is foreign, almost like the Queen of England that I've heard on television in the orphanage, and I screw my face up at the man who strolls in towards me, smiles weirdly as though eyeing up a special gift someone has left for him by surprise. I'm momentarily taken aback by the almost caricature way he has of talking.

He's in his older years with greying fluffy hair, glasses, and a balding head. His midriff is round and portly, which makes his white lab coat look restrictive and emphasizes he's wider in size than in height. I can tell the second he walks in that he's not wolf; I mean you would never see a wolf in this bad a physical shape and we definitely do not go bald. Grey over time, but none of that human aging flaws like developing weight or saggy bits. Definitely no losing hair. Wolves stay in their prime until they cash out past the hundred and so years we live for, and this guy looks like he's maybe hitting human sixty at a push. He has a striped, baby blue shirt on, a peek of green braces, but a dark red polka dot bow tie that just adds to his peculiarness.

I just stare at him pointedly; eyes steeped in mistrust and give him no response.

"Quite." He says absurdly for no obvious reason as his eyes travel up and down me in the most disturbing way. I'm definitely being sized up for some sort of alien autopsy. Either that or he's lost in his own head and marveling at some wonder that has him smiling like a weirdo.