Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,64
what they wanted him to think.
Nick snorted to himself as he braced his feet against the mattress and pushed himself as far up the bed as he could with the cuffs limiting his movement. He sounded paranoid, Nick knew that, but his world had never been this normal….
Maybe he’d believe the Wild and the horror he’d not quite survived back in Girvan was the result of a break with reality, that the stress of that endless rote delivery of cold sad corpses had made his brain fold back into his memories of Gran’s old stories to make sense of it.
Nick could even doubt Gregor, although that one hurt like a knife in his gut. The idea that someone could love him when even his gran had struggled with it had always been hard to buy.
The monsters and the dead things had always been there, though. Dry, dead eyes that watched him through the crack in a cupboard door or things that scraped bone-fingers against the mirror in a dark room. Nick had learned to turn a blind eye to them, afraid that no matter how many times he told himself he wasn’t crazy, the evidence was right there. But when he looked, they were always there.
Even, Nick glanced from the cannula plugged into his arm to the IV stand, medication hadn’t ever shifted them before. The straps on the cuffs were too short to let him reach the needle, but he squirmed over onto one hip and caught the thin plastic tube between his teeth. A yank of his head ripped it out of his arm with a quick, dry flash of pain that should have been worse.
He left the IV to drip onto the floor and his arm to drip bright red blood on the sheets as he reached down over the side of the bed. The metal rim of the bed was cold under his fingers as he followed it along until he found where the strap was fastened.
Medical restraints weren’t prison shackles.
Nick caught his tongue between his lips as he twisted his hand around so he could pull at the buckle. The tendons in his wrist pulled tight as he fumbled at the rough leather, his little finger curled in a cramp, but he stuck to it. He finally worked his thumb into the loop and pulled it out. A tug unraveled the stiff leather from around the bed frame. It dangled limply from the cuff still around Nick’s wrist, and he twisted over onto his side to do the other hand.
They weren’t actually that hard to get out of if you weren’t panicked.
Once his hands weren’t leashed to the bed, Nick pulled the heavy, padded cuffs off and rubbed his eyes. Then he threw the sheet back. He was naked, all pale skin and the old scar on his stomach, but all his bits were still there. Someone had bandaged his feet in fat, overstuffed socks of gauze and surgical tape, but when he wiggled his toes, it didn’t hurt.
If he’d somehow made it from Girvan to here without the bird inside him, he wouldn’t have toes or fingers.
He scrambled out of the cot, goose bumps pimpled over his skin at the chill, and hunted through the cupboards and drawers—pills and rolls of bandages, a scalpel left in a tray, shreds of gray flesh still stuck to it. He grimaced at it but set it aside for later. He didn’t know where he was exactly, or why anyone else was there, but he knew doctors. Every last one of them would have a spare set of scrubs stashed somewhere to change into after you were bled on, barfed on, or both.
Bottom drawer beside the single cot. The gray tracksuit bottoms were a bit short on him, the cuffs just above his bony ankles, but they’d do. He zipped the hoodie on over his bare chest and left the bandages on as he shoved his feet into the grubby white sneakers. It meant they almost fit.
Now what?
It wasn’t a hard question. Or it shouldn’t have been. It doubled Nick over, his hands braced against the edge of the counter, as he tried to convince his lungs to let in the air he’d sucked up. His brain felt pinched, and behind the scar on his chest, he could feel his heart batter against his breastbone.
The old go-to mantra bounced around his head—Gran was crazy, I’m not—but it didn’t help the way it used to. He reached up and