🍃Choking plea🍃

When Gypsy woke up, it was to the feeling of being shaken. She opened her eyes and stared blearily at Billie, standing beside her bed with her hands on Gypsy's shoulder.

"You were spasming." Billie signed, retreating back to the bedroom sofa across from the bed Gypsy laid. A quick glance around showed her she was back in the guest room Trevor had put them.

"How did I get here?" Gypsy slowly sat up, feeling like she'd ran a tavern out of drinks the previous day.

Her daughter signed "T" without looking up, concentrating on lacing up her worn out trainers. Trevor must have brought her back home. She didn't remember any of it.

"Why are you putting on your shoes?"

Billie stood and approached the bed. "Going out. I made friends, we're hanging out."

"You made friends?" Gypsy blinked in disbelief, "Are they imaginary?"

She smiled, rocking on her feet in excitement. "Toby and Gwyneth I met them when Rachel took me to the M.e.s.s."

"The Mess?" Gypsy remembered Trevor showing them the building on the drive in and said his people met there for meals and general socializing. "Rachel took you? I thought Trevor was taking us tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow-today and 'T' didn't want to leave your side, so he asked Rachel to take me for breakfast."

Gypsy groaned. "How long was I out?"

"Almost 16 hours." Her daughter signed, concern replacing the buoyancy in her eyes. She crawled into the bed with Gypsy and mouthed. "Are you feeling alright?"

Gypsy discreetly hid her shaking hands under the blanket and nodded away. Her head weighed a ton on her shoulders, her heart was still racing from the nightmare Billie just woke her from, and her tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof her mouth.

"If you want me to stay with you, I'll stay."

"Absolutely not, go have fun."

"People are talking about you." Billie smiled, "Everyone wants to meet you. You're a hero around here."

Gypsy grimaced, everyone would have to wait until she doesn't feel like absolute shit.

"Was Kellen here, while I was passed out? You know, the other Trevor." She explained when Billie frowned in confusion.

"No, just 'T' and Rachel, and a woman named Barbara."

Trevor's sister, she thought feeling a wave of disappointment wash through her. She thought Kellen would be more amiable after what she did for his people. Oh well..

"Trevor, I like him."

"Yeah, he's a good one." Gypsy nodded in agreement.

She made it out of bed not long after Billie walked out of the door. Dizziness and nausea hit her like a wet slap across the face as soon as her feet met the hardwood. It was a miracle how she managed to remain upright until it passed.

The residual side effects of using her power, if it didn't kill her, made her feel like death itself. Her anxiety was on the rise, paranoia was bubbling to life at the back of her head thanks to the same nightmare she have every single time she siphon someone's illness.

Gypsy retrieved their bag from the closet and emptied its contents at her feet until she found what was buried at the very bottom. Her fingers curled around the cold metal of her gun; a Glock 27, semi automatic. She sure felt ten times better as she hid it in the waistband of her sweatpants and covered it with her shirt.

🍃🍃

Gypsy stepped out of the guest room into the hallway barefooted. She trudged through her right side like a woman on a mission; which she was. Rachel, the young lady Trevor had stuck to her and Billie had shown her the kitchen the previous day and said to come find her there if they needed anything.

Gypsy needed coffee, a cold shower and a decent meal. Exactly in that order. Except when she waddled into the kitchen, it was empty, like the feeling inside of her skull.

She began to have a mini panic attack when she saw no coffee maker in sight. The kitchen was obviously designed with extremely tall people in mind, all the cabinets were a mile high and she considered herself a person of fair height. In a frenzy she began opening cabinet after cabinet and jumping up to get a look of what was inside, the gun in her waistband digging into her butt with every hop.

Turned out it was the wrong move. After only three hops her dizziness was back with vengeance and her empty stomach reeled on her, she rushed to the stainless sink and doubled over, dry heaving and retching.

Gypsy opened the tab and splash some water on her face, cupping her hands under the flow, she collected more and bathed her neck with it. Whirling around when someone suddenly cleared their throat behind her, she splashed the water in her cupped hands in the direction without thinking.

"You're not Rachel." She voiced the first thing that came to her head.

"You're observant." The stranger replied coolly.

Kellen.

Or Kellens, because there were like a dozen of him. She narrowed her eyes until only one of him came into full focus.

"There's a bathroom in the spare room and last I checked, it works." He glared at her from his position, leisurely leaning on the entrance frame with his hands buried deep in his pockets.

Gypsy rested back on the sink, her legs felt like jelly and were doing a terrible job of supporting her weight and this man just stole the little air left in her lungs.

His thick, shoulder length dreadlocks was let falling freely down his perfectly chiseled jaw like fine black ropes. The last time she saw him, he was spotting a five o'clock shadow that gave a stern, no nonsense twist to his looks. Now he was cleanly shaven and it came with a relief, it took about a smidgen off his sex-appeal.

Oh man, he was a step above beautiful and entirely out of her league. No wonder he kept fighting their bond, what was the universe thinking?!

"I'm glad one of us likes what they see."

Gypsy snapped her eyes shut in embarrassment. She hadn't bothered to do a single thing with her appearance, her hair was sat on her head like a mushroom, her white shirt was two size too small around the burst area and she couldn't for the life of her remember if it was even hers, or her daughter's. To top it all off, she was barefooted for goodness sake!

"I was looking for Rachel." She cleared her throat. In her defense, she wasn't expecting to run into him in a kitchen of all places.

"And when you couldn't find her you thought you'd have a quick shower in the middle of the kitchen?"

"No, Kellen." She said breathlessly. "I thought... I was trying...uhm..."

He moved sleekly into the kitchen and pulled out a tall chair from the side highland, whilst she was stammering.

"Sit down." He ordered.

She eyed him suspiciously, until he raised a brow in a wordless challenge. Gypsy slowly shuffled closer and hop onto the chair, clutching onto the bars before she could fall face first into his chest.

"How are you feeling?" Kellen asked, standing aside but close enough that his cologne infiltrated her senses. The richness of his voice snaked around Gypsy's spine into her lower belly and made her weak in the knees for a whole new different reason.

"Nothing a cup of coffee can't cure." Her tongue darted out to moist her dry lips. "That's what I was looking for, coffee."

"I thought you were looking for Rachel?"

"Yes, to tell me where I can get coffee."

"You can't, we don't have any."

Her eyes widened, "How can you not, you literally grow them!"

"And supply them to human manufacturers. My kind do not need caffeine."

She threw her elbows on the surface before her and face palmed. "I guess I'll just die then."

One side of Kellen's mouth lifted in a mocking smirk, "I'll make you camomile tea, doctor's order."

"You're a doctor now?"

"Nah, Ernie is the doctor. I'm a repo man," He replied airily, folding the sleeves of his crisp-tailored black shirt he walked purposefully to a cabinet and withdrew a gold and silver vintage kettle.

Gypsy worked to keep her shirt on at the sight of this rather large and rough man trying to make her tea. And he seemed to know his way around the bloody kitchen!

"You see, when people don't pay their bills I'm the guy that goes into their homes and forcefully takes their possession for the bank." He told her.

"What?!" Gypsy chortled. "That sounds like the shittiest job."

"Hey!" He looked over his shoulder and gave her a tiny smile that almost stopped her heart. "I love my job, I'm a peoples person."

"Why are you doing this?" She regretted the question the moment it flew out of her mouth and saw his shoulders stiffen slightly.

"Making you tea? Ernie asked me to." He shrugged.

"Did she also ask you to be nice to me while at it?"

"No, that was Barbara." He answered monotonously.

Gypsy's gazed dropped to her hands, thank god she wasn't delusional. All the man had done since setting eyes on her was call her a liar and a fraud. How could he go from that to chatting plenty and making her tea?

"How's Bebe and the other lady?" She tried to swallow her disappointment like a bitter pill.

"Bebe is recuperating, Vera is already up and about like nothing ever happened. Once you took the poison out of her system, her lycanthrope genes kicked in and did the rest."

"Did you say poison?" Gypsy's head pivoted sharply in his direction.

Kellen set fire under the kettle before turning to face her. "Do you not remember?"

"Remember what?"

"'It's poison. They were poisoned' those were your words, right before you blacked out."

Her mouth went dry, no she did not remember that part. "Who would do such a thing? Bebe is only a baby?!"

Kellen gasped silently, his dark eyes boring into hers. She could have sworn he stopped breathing for a second there, like he saw something that caught him off guard. Then he blinked and the shutters were drawn again.

"No one." He said, "We got the results back from Dr. Snowman and all the patients have ridiculous amount of Aconitum Napellus in their system that could only have been ingested over a period of time."

Gypsy stared blankly at him, was she supposed to know what that means?

"Monkshood." He offered and grinned wryly when her expression didn't change.

He approached her, stopping just mere inches from her and leaned his arms on the same surface she rested her elbows.

"Wolf's bane." He sighed, "I'm sure you know it's deadly to my kind, and if anything we eat or drink has ingredients that was grown in even a yard from a wolfsbane? Well, continuous ingestion as you've seen, is a silent killer."

Gypsy eyed him, "So you don't think this was an attack?"

"No way." He said assertively.

They both settled into a comfortable silence. Gypsy found that her nerves weren't as frayed as they'd been a moment before, she was enjoying his nearness, his company.

She eyed the distance between both their hands on the counter and wondered if he was feeling the almost magnetic pull in the space between them that was causing the goosebumps on her arms.

"Thank you." He said out of the blue, turning his head to lock eyes with her.

The sincerity in his eyes, the relief, it stemmed out from a place of vulnerability and warmed her heart. It felt good, sharing a sincere moment like this.

She opened her mouth to ask if that meant they were good but the shrill whistle from the kettle startled her back to silence.

Kellen moved away to brew her tea, returning with a steaming mug and a peaceful aroma that instantly appease her senses.

She reached for the mug with both hands, deliberately letting her fingers brush over his.

Kellen froze at the contact. Her heart sped up, she thought she had imagined or maybe over exaggerated the charged current that ran through her body when they touched.

Staring up at him through her lashes, anticipating his next action, Gypsy took an unintentional gulp from the hot tea in her hands and quickly lick her lips to compensate.

When his eyes flashed amber at the movement of her lips and he took a somewhat hypnotized step closer, she realized he wasn't as immune to their bond as he wanted everyone to believe.

Her eyes dropped to blatantly take all of him in again, letting herself wonder what it'd be like to be held by him. Kissed by him. Fucked by him.

She squirmed in her seat and crossed her thighs involuntarily, a vain attempt to suppress the sudden dampness between her legs.

When she innocently looked back into his eyes, he pinned her with a smoldering look. She was spellbound as he grabbed her hand and pried the mug out of her fingers. He set it on the counter without looking.

And without warning he pulled her off of the stool and Gypsy went tumbling into his sturdy chest. She realized it a second before everything went to hell, when his other hand went round the small of her back to hold her in place but accidentally found the bulge of her gun.

She watched all emotion disappear from his face in the blink of an eye as he flipped her around and whip out her gun faster than she could say 'sabotage'.

"Kellen," She yelped when he shoved her aside and pulled out the magazine to reveal that it was fully loaded. "I can explain."

Before she could register the movement he'd expertly clip the magazine back in place and got the crook of his arm tightly wrapped around her throat, instantly cutting off all air circuits.

"Explain then!" His growl was low and deadly against the shell of her ear. With her back firmly against his side and her own gun now cocked and pressed to her temple, he lifted her clear off her toes by her slim neck. She couldn't breathe, much less speak.

Gypsy clawed at his hand, digging into his skin with her nails but his death grip was unyielding. He was going to kill her, of that she was certain.

"Plea-se." She made a choking plea.

He dropped her abruptly and she crumpled straight to the floor, coughing and gasping for air. She rub at her throat, trying to ease the burning sensation on her skin.

Gypsy was unsure what made him let go; her weak plea or the sudden voices and footsteps that filtered into the kitchen from the hallway and continued to grow closer.

"Just in time!" Kellen snarled.

She looked at the entrance with watery eyes to see Trevor and two other men filling into the kitchen.

"Just in time for what?" Trevor came to a halt, his eyes bulging as he found her on the kitchen floor like a pile of rubbish.

She watched his usually friendly and smiling face slowly transform into cold hard rock as he looked back at his Alpha.

Kellen clapped the gun in his hand down on the counter. "In time to ask your little friend here, what the hell she's doing in my pack with a fully loaded gun!"