Chapter 260: Turned Tables
Right on schedule.
"Kyle!" I commented, my mouth fell open as I registered his presence. "What are you doing here?" I discreetly pinched myself underneath the blankets.
Ouch. Okay. This was reality, and I did not hallucinate Kyle standing in front of me. I peered at him more carefully, to check for any secret traces of injury. Other than his dark eye circles, he seemed to be completely fine, standing stably on his own two feet.
But there was a pinched look on his face, as though he had sucked on a lemon.
Perhaps he was constipated and needed something from Nicole. That would have been a more rational explanation for his presence. He definitely wouldn’t be here to look for me.
"Are you looking for Nicole?" Elijah asked. Clearly, he had arrived at the same conclusion as I did, and he wanted to forestall the incoming argument. He handed me a slice of apple and gestured for Kyle to take another. "You just missed her, I’m afraid. Here, have a slice."
Kyle made no move to take it. "I’m not looking for Nicole," he said awkwardly.
"It’s not poisoned," I said bemusedly, deliberately taking a big bite of apple to prove it. Strangely enough, Kyle seemed even more pained at my actions, his lips pursed with disapproval.
Ah. I guess it would be considered a harrowing experience for him; I was basically making light of a life-and-death memory of his. Yikes. If Kyle wasn’t going to bitch at me before, he definitely would do it now. I quickly took a big bite of my apple, determined to chew it so loudly so that I could drown out his words.
Kyle opened his mouth, and I half-expected a tirade to spew forth about how insensitive I was, whether or not I thought he was better than him, or how I was such a useless fighter that I couldn’t even take down one vampire without ending up in the infirmary―
"M’sry."
Huh? What came out of his mouth wasn’t any of the above. I blinked in confusion.
"Excuse me? Sorry, I didn’t quite get that," I said hastily, quickly swallowing a mouthful of my chewed-up apple. I had done too good of a job in an attempt to drown out what I thought would be Kyle complaining, and now I didn’t manage to get what he said.
Kyle’s face turned an angry red. "Are you doing this on purpose!"
"Doing what?" I asked. Now that sounded more like the Kyle I knew. "I’m just eating and I couldn’t hear you. If you want a fight, can you wait until I’ve recovered?"
I lifted up my bandaged arm to let Kyle take a look. To my surprise, Kyle fell silent again, his eyes drawn towards it.
"I’m... not here for a fight," Kyle said quietly, his gaze darting between my arm and the ground. His words were spoken in such a soft murmur that even without the crunch of the apple affecting my sense of hearing, I had to strain my ears just to catch his words.
"Then what are you here for? Surely you’re not here to visit me!" I said, laughing to myself at the sheer incredulity of that thought, but Kyle flinched as though I had slapped him.
"Wait, you’re really here to visit me?" I asked, my mouth falling open in surprise.
"Close your mouth, I don’t want to see bits of chewed apple," Kyle said, but there wasn’t much ire in it. I shut my mouth and gave Elijah an incredulous glance. This was reality, but somehow I felt more disconcerted than if he had just yelled at me.
Elijah merely smiled. "I’ll be making a move. Kyle seems to have something to say to you." With that vague statement, Elijah left the room, leaving me alone with Kyle who seemed to have an allergic reaction to my face. Every time his eyes met mine, his face got steadily redder.
I stared back at him. "What do you want to say to me?"
Kyle sucked in a deep breath. "I wanted to say... thanks. For saving me." Kyle’s voice was barely a whisper at the end. "You didn’t have to."
"Of course I had to," I raised an eyebrow. "You’d rather I leave you to die at the hands of a vampire? I’m not that heartless."
"You should have been!" Kyle burst out, and I was startled at the sudden change in his volume. "I was terrible to you! I took every opportunity to make your life difficult on purpose! Why didn’t you use the chance to get rid of me for good? If I were you, I would have done the same! But now you saved me!"
I paused, finally understanding why Kyle was here.
"So... you’re here because you feel sorry for treating me badly?" I asked, guessing the reason for Kyle’s dark eye circles. He must have been tossing and turning, unable to rest at the thought of being indebted to me out of all people.
Kyle gave a sharp, jerky nod.
"I have no right to ask you for anything. But... Please don’t throw me out of the pack," Kyle begged, "I’ll go on my knees if I have to."
"Do you really think so badly of me?" I wondered, blanching at the thought of making Kyle kneel to grovel at my feet. Whatever made him think I would just exile him like that?
"I... I don’t know what to think of you," Kyle confessed, almost frantically. "You saved my life, and you nearly died as a result. By all means, you shouldn’t have to. I owe you a life debt. My life is up to you to decide."
"It’s not that serious..." I sighed at the words Kyle used. A life debt was an old custom that had nearly faded from disuse, but since Fangborne held to their old customs, their pack members must have had this ingrained in them too.
If a werewolf owed another a life debt, they would basically have to spend the rest of their life serving the other werewolf loyally, until they repaid the favor by saving their lives too.
