Chapter 43 #3
“Yes, I know,” he told Jason angrily, flicking the rust-colored film, flaked dry, from his torso. “This isn’t my blood and puke I’m wearing.”
“We’re all hurting,” Jason said, empathizing.
Typhon shook him off and started to walk away but paused to turn back. “I’ll be a good little kitten, Alpha,” he sneered and mocked me with a bow. “Just don’t get in my way.”
“See to it that you are,” I replied evenly, “and remember your place, Gamma.”
Ty growled and left. I closed my eyes, sighing, and felt Jason’s hand on my arm.
“Alpha,” he said. “I’ll handle him and everything here. Take a break. Go check on your mother and Cyrus and Arax.”
I hesitated, and he grinned wearily at me. “I could use the distraction, plus it’s what Val would want me to do.”
I smiled at him in gratitude. “I won’t be long. Get prints off whoever is intact. Send them—”
“Stan,” he said, interrupting me. “I know, man. Now go.”
I tunneled my vision and jogged to the hospital.
Come what may, facing Arax was going to be a grueling task.
I tried not to think of the disappointment, the indifference I’d seen in her eyes, and what it could mean for the future, if we even had one.
She was still unconscious when I passed by her room.
A team of nurses and Dr. Distefano hovered close by. The doctor smiled wanly at me.
“She’s stable, Alpha, but it’s delicate,” he said, mindlinking.
My jaw clenched but I nodded, putting my faith in his expertise.
A nurse provided a pair of sweatpants and informed me my mother was awake and doing well. Cyrus was being tended to in a unit on a different floor. His injuries were serious, but he’d pull through. Vallon, she said with a sigh, had requested no visitors.
“Oh, my beautiful boy!” my mother exclaimed when I entered her room. She was sitting up, looking tired, pale, and weak. One arm hung across her torso in a sling, but she smiled and patted the bed.
Holding me to her with her one good arm, she didn’t ask any questions about the day.
“That boy Dorian needs a promotion,” she jested instead.
“I’ll get right on that,” I replied, going along with her humor.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it, Tinos, but you did all that you could.”
“Did I?” I answered cynically.
She shook her head. “You’re just like your father, always too hard on yourself.” After smoothing my hair, with its remnants of blood and dirt and all, she held my chin. “You will learn with experience that there is so much you cannot control. All you can do, Tinos, is take each day as it comes.”
It was sound advice to someone who was willing to listen. My mother, however, knew better than to think that someone was me.
I stayed quiet and scratched at an itch that prickled the skin on my chest.
A disturbance outside had my mother and me looking toward the door. Nurses and the doctor went running past, their faces worried and grim.
“More attacks?” my mother asked. I got up hurriedly, then doubled over. The itch had morphed into a burn, tugging at my heart. I became faint and almost lost my balance. Breathing became forced and I clutched my chest, the struggle for air fueling the wildfire scorching inside.
“Tin—oh, no!” my mother whispered, blood draining from her face, sheeting it white.
I stumbled blindly into the hallway, using the wall as my guide back to Arax’s room.
With so many people surrounding her, she was not visible in her bed. I pressed my face against the glass, my worst fears coming true.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Cyrus limping toward me. Welts covered his arms and legs, his wounds not yet healed. None of it registered properly in my brain.
“What is going on? How is she?” he asked, his voice shaky.
I couldn’t answer. Trying to form words was impossible. I kept my focus on the frantic pace at which the doctors and nurses were working.
“We have a pulse! It’s weak, thirty-two BPM,” one of the nurses told Doctor Distefano. “Her oxygen levels are far below normal. Doctor, she’s crashing.” He checked a monitor full of numbers I didn’t understand. He moved, and Arax’s bruised and pallid face came into view.
Cyrus let out a hoarse sound. I still couldn’t turn to look at him.
“She saved Eleni.” He struggled to get the words out between his raspy breaths. “And Pen, your mother… shit, even me.”
I hadn’t known this and slowly met his eyes. They were red and looked like he was seconds away from throwing up.
“Pen told me when those assholes threw me, Arax saw my wolf coming and shoved her into your mom and out of the way. Rostam landed on her.” Cyrus brought a hand to his head.
“But you should have seen her trying to take the chains off of me.” He coughed.
“She even stopped one of those fucks from getting Dorian.”
His voice broke, and he turned his head away.
“She was so frightened, seeing my wolf for the first time, but it didn’t matter, not to her.
I didn’t put much stock in here. I should have.
” He threw his head back. “And I should have stayed with her. I should have done more to make sure she was safe. It was a bad call. Fuck, Stan, I’m so sorry! ”
I stared at him in silence, a thousand thoughts and emotions running through my mind all at once. “Not your fault,” I eventually was able to say. “Today was a series of bad calls.”
“She’ll make it, brother. She has to,” Cyrus said, trying to regain his self-control.
The machines beeped wildly. I whipped my head around and saw Arax’s body violently shaking, trapped where she lay in a fit of convulsions.
Panic set in and I slammed my palm against the door, cracking the glass.
The doctor shouted for her breathing tube to be removed, and chest compressions commenced.
One… two… three. Annalee breathed into her mouth.
Nothing. And the torturous process started again.
The bond was waging a battle with itself inside my chest. It clawed at its broken threads, trying to grasp the frayed ends as they split and reformed, only to break apart as the weave was stretched too thin.
I could do nothing to aid it. And so I closed my eyes, trying to reach her through it.
Telling her to hold on just a little bit longer.
The nurses were shouting over one another. Directions, numbers, beeps, stats.
Then everything went quiet.
A slow, singular, dreadful hum replaced the beeping, and it overtook my ears.
The monitor stole my attention again. The line was flat, and my stomach lurched.
In my head the humming grew louder. I thought I saw her move and my heart raced, but then the bedding sank a little under her weight, the world around me halted all at once, and Arax was gone.
I felt nothing, not believing what I was seeing. My whole body had gone numb.
“Call it,” Annalee said softly, turning toward the other nurse with tears running down her face.
No.
“Time of death, one forty—”
My fist smashed through the window, and shattered glass went flying. “No!” I shouted, bursting into the room.
“Alpha.” Nurse Annalee faced me, grief-stricken. “We did everything—”
“Bring her back!” I roared and charged toward the medical staff.
They gaped at me with horrified expressions.
“Alpha, please…” Annalee begged.
Cyrus and Doctor Distefano captured my arms, attempting to restrain me.
I grappled with them, tearing myself from the beta who was not up to his full strength.
Doctor Distefano, however, pulled me back.
The veteran warrior was no stranger to a fight, having served as gamma in his youth during my grandfather’s time.
“She did not fucking die! She’s not dead!” I screamed at the room, still wrestling to get free.
“We lost her, Alpha. I’m so sorry,” Dr. Distefano said to me sorrowfully, grunting a little but strengthening his hold on my arm.
“No! No, we didn’t! I would know if we did!”
Everyone stared at me in confusion and shock. I stilled my movements, glancing at one face to the next, and swallowed hard.
I’d waited for the pain from the breaking of the bond, but it hadn’t come. It was clinging to me by its last remaining thread, but it was still there.
“She’s my mate,” I finally managed to choke out.
Their eyes grew wide, but no one said a word.
Dr. Distefano studied me, his face showing no signs of surprise at this revelation. “Everyone except Annalee, leave,” he ordered.
Before they could take a step, Cyrus’s voice boomed, addressing everyone before us. “This information does not leave these four walls,” he commanded. “Am I understood?”
“Yes, Beta,” they said in unison and quickly bowed and left.
I disentangled myself from the doctor and went to Arax, my legs almost giving out from under me.
Her skin was ashen, her hair matted and caked in dust. Her lips were already cracked and peeling.
She didn’t look peaceful; she looked… sinister, like an angry malevolent specter.
She looked nothing like the woman I had come to know. She was not meant for death.
“Konstantine,” the doctor said, not bothering with formalities. “The bond, do you still feel it?”
I didn’t look at him but nodded where I was.
Annalee blinked at the monitors, all of them silent, their screens black. “How can this be?”
“Then listen to me,” the doctor said quickly, an urgency to his voice.
“We don’t have much time. Now I’m a man of science.
I know our kind believes in forces beyond this realm, but I have always preferred science over mysticism.
There may be something to be said, however, about Arax’s unexplained healing ability and the mate bond, especially with an alpha of your bloodline.
Between the two, you might be able to save her. ”
“How?” I asked, trying not to get my hopes too high.
The doctor hesitated briefly but met my eyes with conviction and straightened his shoulders. “Turn her.”