As I sat on the cursed wheelchair six days later, I couldn’t stop replaying that special night like a reel, over and over again. As I had done for the past six days, just for the fun of it.
Know what was funny? It was how the entire pack was blaming it all on a non-existent witch. I an, there was a witch around, but he didn’t even live in the pack.
I bet Rosa was laughing at them all along with . Because we both knew that this... this wasn’t the work of a witch.
Rosa hadn’t said anything, of course. She knew better than to poke at the hornet’s nest, especially when the hornets were paranoid alphas with too much testosterone and not enough sense. But I caught her eye once, across the courtyard, when one of them declared we were cursed by the moon, and I swear to God, her smirk almost healed my imaginary broken legs.
Still, every ti I closed my eyes, I was right back in that night. Savoring the kill, the juice of the fear, and the unending pool of blood.
Life was good.
.
.
There was a certain kind of peace in pretending to be paralyzed—like being at the eye of a storm I had created myself.
I sat motionless in the damned wheelchair, parked by the open window of my little house. The curtains fluttered like old ghosts, and sowhere down the hill, soone was probably being accused of cursing the pack again. Poor bastards. anwhile, the real curse was sitting right here—.
If the pack ever found out, there would be pitchforks and silver bullets and not enough holes for to crawl into. But they wouldn’t. Because they were idiots. Not that they were any match for and my master anyway.
Now, now...
There are only three places in the world I truly hated:
Church.
The hospital wing.
This damn chair.
The chair was the worst. Church had incense and screaming. The hospital wing had narcotics and screaming. But this chair? It had Rosario. And Rosario had lungs.
"...so I told her, ’Just because you’re a Delta’s cousin doesn’t an your baby ain’t ugly!’"
Her voice ricocheted off the walls, bounced through the cracked ceiling beams, and probably punched a bird out of the sky outside.
I blinked serenely with the asured patience of a man who could snap her neck but chose not to.
Rosario.
Plump. Sticky. Loud. Always slling like sothing half-fried and over-sugared. Currently wearing a too-tight shirt with a cartoon of a taco saying "I’M NACHO BABY!" and leggings that begged for rcy.
She stomped around the tiny kitchen of my shack with a spoon in one hand and her phone in the other. Ranting. Always ranting.
"I told Ramiro, ’If you co near again with that limp little..." Oh, wait, no, that was two weeks ago. No—no, three? Wait, it might’ve been after Ernesto’s wake. Dios mío, Luis, I can’t rember anymore!"
She let out a sharp, musical wheeze-laugh. The kind that usually ant she was about to overshare.
And overshare she did.
"I think I’m pregnant, Luisito."
W-what?!
I blinked again. She didn’t notice.
"I took two of those cheap tests, the ones you have to pee on, but they look like discount USB drives? Both said yes. A fat, ugly ’yes’ like a slap to the uterus."
She had been in my house for over an hour now, ranting at a volu that could probably wake the Moon Goddess herself.
"... two damn lines. I nearly fainted. Like, literally, mi amor, I sat my fat ass right there in the chicken coop and fainted. Chickens were flapping, one even pooped on my shoulder. But was anyone around to help? No. I just sat there, thinking, ’Dios mío, who’s the baby daddy?’"
I blinked slowly. Fuck. She was pregnant?
Rosario didn’t notice my motion. Of course, she never did. She had never caught on to the fact that I blinked only when I wanted to. Or that sotis my left hand twitched when she bent over to pick sothing up. She’d just coo and pat my cheeks and call her angelito inválido.
She plopped onto the couch beside with a loud grunt, holding her belly like it already weighed twenty pounds. "I an, there’s Ramiro, of course. My useless ever ever-absent husband. He always finishes too fast, so I thought—eh, unlikely. But you never know. Then there’s Ernesto. That bastard had pullout discipline like a drunk raccoon. And now he’s dead. How convenient."
She looked right at .
"But then... there’s this weird week. One whole week, Luisito. Gone. Blanked out. Like God hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete on my brain."
My throat tightened.
She leaned forward. "You rember that week, right? The one where I kept complaining about my hips? I thought it was my period coming. But no! Just full-on baby mode. I even dread soone had their hands on —these cold, calloused hands..."
Her eyes narrowed. My stomach twisted. She couldn’t be rembering fragnts, could she?
"I thought it was just sleep paralysis. But then I rembered... you were here. The whole ti."
Don’t move. Don’t twitch. Don’t even breathe.
She squinted. "But that’s silly. You’ve been paralyzed for years. Right?"
I blinked. Once. Nice and slow.
Rosario stared at for a while, too long. Then, just like that, she scoffed and waved her hand.
"Bah! What am I saying? Like you’d know what to do with a woman even if your junk worked. No offense."
None taken, I thought dryly. I only made you moan my na into a pillow while I wiped your mind with ash and blood.
She stood again, groaning like a walrus in labor, and waddled back to the kitchen. "I need a pickle. And hot sauce. Don’t judge ."
There was a loud clank as she began tearing into jars. I watched her over my shoulder with narrowed eyes—not that she noticed. She was too busy narrating her food choices to an imaginary cooking show.
If she rembered anything...
Even a whisper of what I did...
I would have to wipe her again. Harder. Risk the long-term damage. The woman already forgot her own PIN half the ti... how much more could I erase before she turned into vegetable soup?
My eyes shifted to her again. She was perched on a stool now, swinging her legs, licking hot sauce off a knife.
"Luisito," she said between licks, "if it is Ramiro’s, I’m naming it Carlos. If it’s Ernesto’s, I’ll na it Junior. But if it’s—if it’s nobody’s, maybe I’ll just na it Luis. You’d like that, huh? Having a little nasake?"
Oh, God. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
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