Feral Read Online Free PDF Page B

the chair as my stomach wavered biliously.  Icarus dropped my hand to offer the wastebasket beside the bureau.  I glanced at the basket and back at him, shaking my head.  There was no way I was going to retch with someone watching.  “Bathroom.  Please.”
    Nodding in assent, he led the way to the bathroom, stepping aside and swinging the door open.  I brushed past, pushing the door shut behind me.  As I dropped to my knees, curled over the toilet, though careful not to touch it, I noticed Icarus had followed me in.  Staring down, he stood over me like a Greek Adonis.  Or the devil himself.  My frown sank deeper.
    “I can’t puke with you watching me.”
    “I don’t think you have much choice in the matter.”  Pushing the door closed, he opened the linen closet behind it and retrieved a washcloth, doused it under the faucet and wrung it out.
    “Can’t a girl have a little dignity,” I muttered.  Had he undressed me—seen me naked?  Did he know I had a birthmark on my left hip shaped like a quarter moon?  Apparently, I couldn’t—have dignity that is.  Crouching beside me, he pulled my hair back, knotting it in his hand at the back of my head.  With his opposite hand, he ran the washcloth across my face.
    “Everybody pukes, Thaleia.”
    “Everybody dukes too, but I’d rather not bear witness to it.”
    Icarus chuckled.  “Not quite the same parallel I’m afraid.”
    “We’ve a difference of opinion then.”  For several long minutes we sat, waiting.  I refused to retch in front of him, prudish as it was.  Some lines were not meant to be crossed.  In my book, anything involving bodily fluids, voluntary or not, was meant to be done in private.
    “You’re resisting it, aren’t you?” he asked with disapproval.
    “With all my heart and soul.”
    “You’ll feel much better afterwards.”
    I shrugged.  I seriously doubted it.  My recently disavowed boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend, and then chased me through the woods and nearly mauled me to death.  My neck looked like a strip steak.  My clothes were missing.  I was in a house full of strangers—boys for the most part—who wanted to ‘keep me’ a s if I were some stray animal.  Oh, and the cherry on top, while I wasn’t dead, I suspected that I was now a werewolf thanks to said mauling.
    “ Thaleia Llorente,” Icarus said in that voice that made my skull tickle.  “You will stop resisting the urge to vomit this very moment.”  My stomach rolled and I lurched forward, nearly falling into the toilet had Icarus not reached his arm across my chest to support me.
    “Bastard!” I cursed between heaves.  “What the hell is that that you keep doing?”  Disperse, rest, speak, sit, vomit.  That tickle I was feeling wasn’t merely a tickle.  In every instance, it was backed by a command that I was powerless to ignore.
    “Power of the Alpha, Thaleia.”
    I heaved again, repulsed and indignant.  “So what—you’re asserting your dominance over me? Oh Holy Christ,” I gasped, glancing blearily into the toilet.  I was vomiting blood.  “That can’t be good at all.”
    “It’s nothing, Thaleia, your esophagus was punctured during the attack and you swallowed a lot of blood,” Icarus dismissed.  Pressing the lever, he flushed the toilet divesting me of the horrid sight.  “You’ve no need to worry.  It’s healed already.”
    “God, my mom’s gonna freak,” I said.  Delirium was creeping up on me.  While the nausea had passed, I felt disconnected and the room whirled in dizzying circles around me, spinning and turning, rising and falling.  My head grew heavy and fog hazed.
    “The rest of your wounds will have healed by morning.  Your mother won’t know a thing about them.  You’ll be as good as new.  Better, truthfully.”
    “Wounds?” I murmured in amusement, sinking to the floor.  It was cool against my back, but left me with vertigo, staring up at Icarus who stood towering over me,