Chapter 14: Empathy
The next morning, Brooke awoke in a haze of sleepy bliss. She didn’t have a migraine, for the moment. She stretched her limbs out towards all 4 corners of the bed, only then noticing that Avery was, as usual, already up. Brooke was starting to wonder if werewolves ever slept. If so, it certainly seemed like they needed less sleep than humans.
Brooke rolled out of the bed, clutching one of the blankets around her naked body for warmth. She walked around the foot of the bed and as she was crossing towards the bathroom, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror along the same wall as the bed’s headboard. A ghostly figure swathed in a dark drape of cloth. What really caught her eye were the bright red marks standing out sharply against the pale flesh of her neck.
Brooke approached the mirror, one hand dropping the blanket to touch the mate mark, the other holding back her hair. It looked like what it was, a large bite mark from something, someone, with the V-shaped jaws of a dog or wolf. The flesh had already healed over, but it was still thin. Brooke realized the red color was her blood, seen through translucent new-grown skin. It reminded her of very new stretch marks that hadn’t yet faded to white, and she wondered if it would change in appearance over time. Brooke dipped and flexed her shoulder, admiring the mark from different angles. She smiled, enjoying the sight and what it meant.
Reaching into her mind’s eye, fumbling, Brooke tried to feel for Avery’s presence. She focused on trying to discern what emotions Avery was feeling at that moment, rather than something more specific, like where exactly she was. At first, she felt nothing, just an empty grayness like mental radio static. But then she caught a glimpse of something; a vague blue haze in the gray. As she focused on it, the haze solidified, and she could feel her mind suffused with happiness and comfort. Avery was doing something pleasurable.
Her mate seemed to notice her attention right away, because the feeling of the bond suddenly began to intensify. Within a minute, Brooke heard the latch turn on the door out to the veranda, and Avery padded inside, topless, with only a pair of shorts on. Her hair was a tangled mess. She’d been running in wolf form.
Brooke could feel how happy Avery was to see her awake. As her mate bounded across the room, Brooke felt the warm fuzzy feeling envelop her as Avery’s embrace did in the physical world. Brooke sighed, and felt her mind relax into a warm haze of contentment. She wrapped her arms around Avery’s waist, not caring that her blanket dropped to the floor. Avery produced more than enough body heat to keep her warm. Brooke could feel every nerve ending where their bare skin touched, alive with sensation. It felt like the feeling she’d gotten from touches before being marked, only 10 times more powerful.
Brooke was glad that Avery had waited to mark her instead of doing it immediately. Such an obviously supernatural feeling would have freaked her out if she hadn’t already known Avery was a werewolf.
Avery put her hands on Brooke’s shoulders and pushed herself back so that she could stare into her eyes. Brooke looked back at her, perplexed. Avery’s dull golden-brown eyes sparked here and there with flashes of gold, and her brows furrowed in concentration. Brooke felt her determination through their bond, and for several seconds she could feel Avery’s presence pushing, straining, as if she was trying to break through the thick fogged glass separating their two minds. But then it was gone, and Brooke was back to feeling a vague sense of Avery’s emotions and nothing else. Avery sighed.
“I was trying to talk to you mentally,” she explained, trailing her fingers absently over the marks on Brooke’s shoulder. “I know it’s probably impossible. Rachel’s told me, and Janae and Gabriel. But I thought I’d try regardless.” Brooke could feel her disappointment.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Brooke said, reaching up to comb her fingers through the tangled mess of her mate’s hair. “For me, even this amount of connection is miraculous.” She closed her eyes, trying blindly, to project her wonder towards Avery, not knowing whether she had any success. But it seemed Avery felt it, because a small smile spread across her lips.
“How did you sleep?” Avery asked, her voice low.
“Better than ever,” Brooke replied, smiling. It had become a sort of ritual between them. Every morning Avery would ask how she’d slept, and she would respond ‘better than ever’. And every morning it was true. Something about sharing a bed with Avery made Brooke’s insomnia a distant memory. “How about you?”
“I slept fine,” Avery said.
“How long do werewolves sleep anyway? You’re always up before me but you stay up as late as I do.”
“About three or four hours a night,” Avery answered. Brooke was past being surprised by any strange new werewolf facts. “Less, if need be. We get a lot done in the early mornings. Ever wonder why you’ve never seen me or any of the teens doing homework?” Avery flashed a grin at the last sentence.
“Well, that’s awfully convenient,” Brooke chuckled. “Makes sense now why I’m struggling in chemistry and you’re not.”
“Well, that, and you’re chronically ill, and I’m not.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Brooke’s face darkened slightly. She was already two days behind in chemistry. “I should probably be doing homework right now, actually,” she said, going to the walk-in closet where all her clothes had been unpacked the day before. She slipped on a pair of underwear and a sweater and picked out a pair of comfy sweatpants to wear.
Brooke teetered on one leg as she bent to pull the left leg of the pants up. She lost her balance and fell. Being unfamiliar with her new home, she didn’t realize that when she’d bent, her head was dangerously close to the sharp edge of one of the shelves. As she fell, her head hit the shelf, not very hard, maybe it would leave a small bruise. For someone else it would have been a minor inconvenience. For Brooke, whose cranial nerves were hyper-sensitized by years of chronic pain, it was an ice pick plunging straight into her skull.
“Fuck!” Brooke swore under her breath, gritting her teeth.
“AAH, FUCK! OW!”
Brooke’s head snapped up when she heard a cry from the other room. “Avery?! Are you okay?” She called, her voice tinged with panic. Brooke felt a thick cloud of vivid orange panic and fear wash through her mind and ran back into the bedroom, one hand on her throbbing right temple.
Brooke found Avery, lying curled on the floor, one hand pressing hard into her right temple, her face a rictus of pain.
***********
Avery had never felt pain like this before. With her accelerated werewolf healing and her tendency to win every fight she was a part of, she had rarely ever had so much as a stomachache before. She was completely unequipped to deal with the searing, ripping, nerve-igniting pain that sliced through her head suddenly while Brooke was in the closet changing.
Avery fell to her knees, scraping burns into them that she wasn’t aware of. She wasn’t aware of anything, other than the immense pain that had come from nowhere. She put a hand to her right temple, pressing as though she could rub the pain away. But it had no effect. It didn’t make the pain worse or better, but she kept it up. It felt good to be doing something.
Avery was dimly aware of her body listing sideways and a moment later she felt the soft fibers of the rug rubbing against her cheek. She felt a hand on her shoulder and could tell from the responding tingles that it was Brooke. She rolled onto her back and looked up to her mate for help, only to see Brooke mirroring her gesture, one hand on her temple in the exact spot where the pain was radiating from.
Only then, through a thick fog of pain and fear, did Avery understand. It was a side effect of their bond. Brooke was having migraine pain, and Avery was feeling it too. Avery’s thoughts started to spin ever faster into a never-ending vortex of uncertainty and fear.
What does this mean? Her pain is chronic! Can I do this every day? How can I lead my pack when I’m weakened by my mate’s chronic pain?! Does this happen with all mates? Or just human/werewolf couples? Why did no one warn me this might happen? Did they even know? There were only a few wolves in her pack with human mates. Avery carefully erected glass walls around her consciousness, so none of the other members of her pack would smell the pain in her thoughts, and sent a haze of urgent curiosity in Sebastian’s father, Gabriel’s, direction.
Avery could smell that he was in their rooms on the ground floor of the pack house. He immediately sprang to attention at the scent of his Alpha’s mental probe.
Yes Alpha?
Avery did her best to compose her thoughts. Do you experience Leia’s pain through your bond? she asked, getting right to the point.
Oh yes, I was completely useless throughout Sebastian and Mariah’s births. My apologies, Alpha, I should have thought to warn you and Beta.
It’s alright, thank you, carry on with what you were doing.
Good day, Alpha.
Avery severed the link and drifted back to her present. The pain was already fading from her head. She sat up slowly, Brooke supporting her arm. She felt dizzy and dazed, her thoughts moving slowly and incoherently. Is this what Brooke feels like all the time? How does she do it? Avery looked over at her beautiful mate, her light green eyes pinched with concern, her own pain imperceptible.
“Are you alright?” Brooke asked.
“I think so. What happened in the closet?”
Brooke looked taken aback by the question. “I hit my head on one of the shelves.” That explained it. “You felt it too, somehow?” Brooke’s voice was doubtful and confused.
“It’s a side effect of our bond. We can feel each other’s emotions, and, apparently, each other’s pain as well. It’s the same for Sebastian’s parents, his dad told me.” Avery pushed herself up, so she was fully upright. The pain was more tolerable now, mainly because it was fading minute by minute.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Brooke exclaimed, recoiling, pressing a hand to her chest. “I had no idea!”
“Hey, hey,” Avery pulled her mate into a gentle embrace, leaning back against the footboard of their bed. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t know either.”
“If I had known this would happen, I never would have let you mark me, let alone encouraged it.”
“Hey,” Avery said, holding Brooke away from her slightly so she could look into her eyes. “I wouldn’t trade being mated to you for anything, you hear me? This is just… an adjustment. Something I’ll have to get used to for now.”
“But don’t you see?” Brooke cried, her voice thin and shrill, recoiling . “It’s not just for now. I’ve been getting migraines since I was 8, maybe younger. Over half my life! My pain is chronic and incurable. It’s a torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, let alone the woman I love!” Brooke ran a trembling hand through her hair, and Avery gritted her teeth at the searing handprint that grated across her nerves, fighting not to let it show on her face.
“Shhhh,” Avery whispered, pulling Brooke in close and stroking her back with one hand. “It’ll be okay,” she said. But she thought, SHIT. She couldn’t even tolerate a bump to the head, how was she supposed to learn to cope with migraines multiple times a week lasting hours or days at a time? But she wouldn’t tell Brooke that. She already blamed herself. Avery refused to make her feel guilty about something she had no control over. She could feel Brooke’s tears running down the skin of her shoulder, and she could feel the wash of overwhelming sadness through their bond. She would learn to cope with this. She would have to. Brooke was a blessing in her life, everything she could have wanted in a partner. There was no other option. Avery would not, could not, reject her mate. Some would say it would be for the best. For her sake, for the sake of the pack. She could hear Serena now: ‘You have to do what’s best for the strength of the pack, always. Your wants and needs are irrelevant.‘ But Avery refused. She would not.
“We’ll get through this…” Avery said, gingerly kissing the top of Brooke’s head, and throwing every ounce of her love and surety against the barrier that separated their consciousnesses. “…together,” Avery finished, sinking back into their bond. Into the sweet wildflower scent of her tormented mind.
Avery got the opportunity to prove her words sooner than either of them expected. Brooke made it to history Monday morning, but by the afternoon her pain was calling the shots. Brooke had an awkward few hours between history and form drawing on Mondays, and, now that she didn’t have her dorm room on campus, she decided to spend it in the library. It was always quiet, at least, making up for how bright it was. Brooke got out her tablet and tried to get some work done, but the migraine was insistent. The nurtec she took made only a marginal difference.
Brooke was muddling through a chapter of the book they were writing an essay on this week in history, struggling to move on from the same paragraph she’d read at least half a dozen times without absorbing any of it, when something caught her attention. Her brain was so sluggish with pain that it took seeing Avery across the large room to make her realize that the waves of worry and concern washing over her consciousness weren’t her own.
Avery crossed the room at a brisk walk. Brooke could feel and see how frustrated she was at having to maintain normal human speeds in public.
“Hey, how was class?” Brooke asked on autopilot, surprised to hear how gravelly her voice had gotten. If Avery did answer the question, Brooke didn’t hear or remember it for more than a second. It was like there was too much pain in her brain to make room for new information.
“It’s a bad one, huh?” Avery asked needlessly, dark brows drawn in concern. She rubbed absently at the back of her head as Brooke nodded gingerly. “You want to go home?” Brooke nodded again, lacking the energy for words. Avery quickly packed Brooke’s things back into her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and straightened up, extending a hand to help Brooke up.
When they got outside, the cold November wind cut right through Brooke’s thin jacket. The further they went, the worse Brooke’s lightheadedness got, her heart pounding in her ears. She was about to trip over her words asking for help when she felt herself swept into warm arms, settling her aching head against Avery’s shoulder
Brooke was surprised when they walked right past the line of motorcycles parked near the bike racks and further into the parking lot to where Alex’s car was parked. Brooke looked around but didn’t see him anywhere. Didn’t he have afternoon classes on Mondays? Or did he? Avery must have sensed her confusion, because she answered without being asked.
“I already texted him. Rachel is picking him up later.” Brooke had never seen Rachel drive any vehicle, but there usually seemed to be a few extras around the pack house.
“That’s good.” There was something Brooke knew she should be focusing on in what Avery said, but her brain was not cooperating. It wasn’t about Alex. Or Rachel. But close, maybe? It floated right out of reach, not allowing her to fully relax into Avery’s warmth. It came to her like a bus arriving a half hour late. Relief overwhelmed by resentment.
“Don’t you have class? Or practice?” Avery didn’t respond right away
“Most of my classes are done. No one will care if I miss one practice.” Brooke didn’t have the energy to argue, but she knew she would later.
The migraine lasted almost a week, leaving Brooke all but bedbound. It finally started to fade on Saturday evening, only for the postdrome phase to hit her with a whole collection of other symptoms. Auras, fatigue, vertigo, none of which paired Well with her POTS. She spent All of Sunday catching up on the schoolwork she’d missed, including four straight hours to finish the History essay she’d started on Monday.
Brooke insisted that Avery not miss class or practice for her sake, and Avery complied, if not happily. But whenever she had any free time, she spent it with Brooke, siphoning off a little of her pain and stress like a sponge with shockingly long arms. They watched movies, played games that Brooke’s sensitive eyes could tolerate, and Avery brought Brooke anything and everything she could possibly need. The pain was somehow more tolerable when she didn’t have to go through it alone. She wished she could stay wrapped in the cocoon of comfort they’d constructed forever. But Monday loomed just over the horizon like a harshly burning sun. By Sunday evening, she was already ready for the next week of classes to be over. Unfortunately, they weren’t.