The Wolf Came on Christmas (Johanna and Alexander) novel Chapter 43

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I leaned halfway against the wooden panel and he went downstairs with the speed of an exhalation. Alexander came back accompanied by a new box of painkillers plus a bottle of cold water, and offered me his arm for support to return to my room. I thanked him for all the gestures by accepting his help. I sat back down on the bed and drank some water to swallow the pills, no more than the recommended dose. I closed my eyes again for a moment, so the world would finally stop spinning, and I felt better.

“…thank you. I’ll go back to sleep, I’m fine now,” I said, exhausted. I needed to rest; he had been right all along.

At least he wasn’t shameless enough to say “I told you so.”

“Are you sure you’re better now?” he asked instead, and crouched in front of me. He brushed my hair away from my face and placed his rough, large palm against my forehead, staying like that for a while. Then he growled from deep in his chest and muttered, “The fever isn’t very high, but you’d better not exert yourself. Do you want me to stay with you for a bit?”

“Huh? No. No need, really…”

He pulled away from me then and we looked at each other briefly; that moment was becoming just as instinctively uncomfortable as when he cut my clothes to clean my wound in the first place. I was still hot and would have liked to change that sweaty shirt, but my arm hurt too much-I didn’t dare do anything.

“Are you sure?” he asked tentatively. “You said you had a nightmare.”

“…I’m a big girl, Alexander. Thank you, I can sleep alone.”

I suppose under other circumstances I wouldn’t have refused his company, and that if I’d been in my right mind I would have been more aware that having him there made me feel safer, but I just wanted to close my eyes and dissolve the pain.

I didn’t have to ask him twice to leave.

That time, it was seven when I heard the baby crying.

I woke up immediately, as if someone had driven a needle into my elbow, an animal roar still echoing in my ear like a fleeting memory of the night’s dream. Sasha was tapping my chest with her fists, nosing at my shirt. Looking for food again? A shiver ran down my spine when I realized what the baby was trying to do to me, and I felt a mix of embarrassment and fear. Sleepily, I swallowed and pulled her away a little, rolling onto my back in the process. That made Sasha cry harder, and my arm hurt a bit. Andre sat up on the mattress and took his

Chapter 43-1

sister right away, but we both already knew she wouldn’t calm down until she ate.

At some point I thought about giving the little one a bath. Nonsense.

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I got out of bed, rested but with my right arm feeling a little heavy. Maybe it was time to change the bandages, or do another checkup. To shower-I hated feeling my hair stiff with blood I still hadn’t dared wash out. I slipped on my slippers and picked up Sasha, focused on feeding her before thinking about my own hygiene or appearance. You could say that, in fact, I hadn’t fully woken up yet; and while I reached the stairs, the baby found something better to do than cry: she curled into my shoulder and started sucking on the collar of my shirt.

That gesture amused me. Andre stayed in the room, to keep sleeping.

As I went down the stairs, I noticed that once again the living room was empty, but there were voices in the kitchen-very angry ones. Someone was arguing; at first I couldn’t tell about what. For a moment I thought about going back to the room, but if I did that Sasha would cry again, and I couldn’t let her suck on my shirt forever. The baby needed to be changed and fed.

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<Chapter 43-2

Chapter 43-2

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I peeked through the doorway just in time to see the blonde woman, Nika, give Alexander a fierce slap.

Chapter 43-2

“You simply DON’T UNDERSTAND, do you?”

He sighed (or huffed) deeply, growling again a little, and after a tense moment said:

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“The only thing I don’t understand is why you’re so angry. It’s not like it’s such a big deal- everyone knew I could only be with Anya, that I didn’t leave alone. What we had was a farce, Nika. I don’t see why it affects you so much.”

That put me on alert, and I understood a little of the wolf-woman’s resentment toward me. I was human, and Alexander’s wife was too. And those two-the man and the blonde woman now in my kitchen arguing-had very possibly had… something?

“We’re engaged!” she snapped, exasperated. “And you rejected me to go off with a human. Do you have any idea what that was like, the gossip? God! It was WEEKS that I couldn’t go to any of the family clubs without hearing a new rumor about what happened!”

Ah. Well. That explained everything. Engaged. I understood Alexander’s story much better after hearing that part. His father hadn’t approved of Anya and had arranged a marriage with this woman, Nika. Awkward. Very awkward. Eight years later, she had a lot to say to Alexander, and I could understand why she wouldn’t hold back even in someone else’s house -she was clearly a very strong, determined person. But I never imagined things could get so complicated from something as small as a rescue operation. Because that’s what it was, right? All of them-the doctor and his daughter, the Japanese man, Rex, and those two I still didn’t know-were there to help Alexander, right? At that moment it sounded like it wasn’t as simple as Alexander had made it seem at first.

“Nika, I didn’t love you then, and you didn’t love me either,” he replied quietly. “Even now you don’t feel anything for me besides respect. You accepted the arrangement because you thought it was your duty.”

“You made us believe you were dead-and you left with her! You have no idea how much you humiliated me.”

Well, seen that way, I would have been furious with him too and would have slapped him. Or who knows, maybe even sued him-people with that much power. I wondered if they had their own lawyers, lawyers “of their kind.” Alexander answered her harshly this time:

“Is that what you think? Wouldn’t it have been more humiliating if I married you and kept seeing Anya in secret? Imagine how you would have felt then. No, Nika, no. You are my friend, my comrade-how could I do that to you? The line between duty and ridicule is too thin, and you never knew how to tell them apart. Believe me, letting you think I was dead was probably the best thing I ever did in my life. Only that way would you start living on your own -but I see that eight years later you’re still where you were when I left.”

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