Chapter 40\u00a0<\/p>\n
46\u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman lying unconscious on the hospital bed was someone I never thought I\u2019d see again. Someone I\u2019d hoped to never see again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
it I\u2019m being completely honest,\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seraphine Ashworth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even after all these years, even with her face swollen and bruised beyond recognition, I knew it was her. The same perfectly straight\u00a0<\/p>\n
blonde hair, now matted with blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The same sharp cheekbones that used to look down at me with such disdain. The same small scar above her left eyebrow that she\u2019d gotten\u00a0<\/p>\n
when she tried to fight a senior girl who\u2019d told her she wasn\u2019t pretty enough for Tristan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seraphine had been my senior in high school, two years older and infinitely more confident than I ever was. She\u2019d made my life a living hell for months, all because she had a massive crush on Tristan and he didn\u2019t even know she existed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I never told Orion or Tristan about what she put me through. It seemed like such a silly girl thing compared to the real problems they were dealing with \u2013 pack politics, training, preparing for their futures as leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How could I complain about mean girls and stolen lunches when they were learning to protect our entire community?\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Seraphim\u2019s torment had been relentless. She\u2019d slam my locker shut on my fingers, \u201caccidentally spill drinks on my homework, spread\u00a0<\/p>\n
rumors that I was sleeping around with human boys.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once, she\u2019d cornered me in the bathroom and told me that freaks like me didn\u2019t deserve protective brothers, that if I didn\u2019t stay away from Tristan, she\u2019d make sure something really bad happened to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n
The worst part was that Tristan never even looked in her direction. She was pretty enough \u2013 all the boys in school thought so \u2013 but something about her desperation seemed to repel him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe he could sense the cruel streak that she hid so well from adults, or maybe he just wasn\u2019t interested in someone who tried so hard\u00a0<\/p>\n
to get his attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Did they end up together later? Had she finally worn him down after I left for London? But that didn\u2019t make sense either. It wasn\u2019t her picture plastered all over Tristan\u2019s apartment \u2013 those belonged to some mysterious woman with dark hair and kind eyes that I\u2019d never been brave enough to ask about.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the fact that Seraphine was the one lying on the bed that made me speechless, though. It was how she looked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She looked like someone who\u2019d been hit by a truck, then backed over for good measure. Her face was a canvas of purple and black bruises, her lip split in two places, and her left arm was in a cast that suggested multiple fractures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There were finger\u2013shaped bruises around her throat that made my stomach lurch with recognition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
1\/2\u00a0<\/p>\n
18:37 Fri, Jan 2 d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chapter 40\u00a0<\/p>\n
I turned my gaze toward Tristan, and he nodded grimly, letting me know my horrified thoughts were absolutely correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n
46\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHer mate did this,\u201d the young pack member said quietly, his voice filled with disgust. \u201cLeft her for dead behind the packhouse. If Lucius\u00a0<\/p>\n
hadn\u2019t been doing perimeter checks\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I felt the blood drain from my face. Her mate had done this to her. The person who was supposed to love and protect her above all others\u00a0<\/p>\n
had beaten her nearly to death and left her broken body like garbage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I felt a sharp pain on my heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The machines around her bed beeped steadily, monitoring vital signs that were apparently stable but fragile. She had tubes in her nose helping her breathe, and the IV in her arm was delivering what looked like a significant amount of pain medication.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Memories Drifted Into Soft Silence by Kyx Frost 40 Chapter 40\u00a0 46\u00a0 The woman lying unconscious on the hospital bed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-second-gear-of-love-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}