Cardinal House (The Blackwell Brothers Book 4)

9. Wolf

The hospital agrees to a nighttime discharge because that’s the hours my family keeps.

And we paid them off.

It definitely did not have anything to do with me wanting to see Luna.

Our eldest brother, Thorne, not quite a year older than me, is the first one through the door, followed quickly by Archer and Hunter, entering the room in an arrowhead formation.

Thorne is elegant when he enters, dressed in his usual black-on-black suit, shoes shined and polished, hair immaculately swept into place.

Hunter stalks in like a predator. A scowl on his face, a tear in the hem of his t-shirt, dark hair shoved messily back. Hands curled into fists, he glances around the room like he’s looking to pick a fight with a piece of medical equipment.

Archer saunters in last, wearing his usual smirk, hair a mess, slices of it hanging in his eyes, until he tosses it back like he’s in a shampoo advert, grinning wide when he catches my eye.

“He lives!” Archer cackles, his smile all straight, white teeth.

Doesn”t matter that I saw him last night, where I was, and still remain to be, far from my deathbed.

“That’s not funny, I actually almost died, dick’ead,” I frown, scowling at him as he lifts my duffle bag from the floor, and tosses it over his shoulder.

My legs are hanging over the side of the bed, joggers on, sans underwear, I was so out of breath after showering for a whole four minutes and towelling off, before trying to reach my feet to hook my bottoms on, I couldn’t be fucking bothered.

I breathe out hard, everything feels fucking exhausting, all this moving around is not fun. I suddenly wonder if going home alone to Cardinal House is even a smart idea. That huge plot, all those buildings.

Jesus Christ, I’ll have a lot of work to do.

I insisted I’ll be fine, but… will I?

“You need help?” Hunter grunts the question, staring at me through the straight, black hair that’s fallen over his eye.

“Fuck off,” I huff stubbornly, I know I was shot, but I don’t want to need help.

But the door opens at his back, a wheelchair pushing around my brother, his dark eyes on it as the woman steering it just narrowly misses running over his toes.

Luna wheels the chair right up to me alongside the bed, her long fingers curling around the handles. She looks up at me, my chest heaving as I continue to catch my breath, still bare without a shirt, and she lifts her brows.

The action makes me want to laugh.

She doesn’t pull them high, not in the way Haisley would, fast, and lifted on her forehead, arched with wide eyes and pursed lips. She’d demand I get in the chair without any words passing between us at all.

But this, the way Luna is so fucking delicate and blank, but I feel like I can see whatever it is she isn’t showing to the rest of the room, it makes my breath hard to catch for an entirely different reason.

“You need to use this,” she says softly, her voice still that rough little crack.

It’s all I hear in my dreams now.

“And if I don’t?” I challenge, lifting a brow, my heart bangs around inside my healing chest cavity and I”m sure it can’t be good for my health, but I don’t care.

At least I’m not hooked up to any more monitors that bleep when it happens, it was starting to get embarrassing, the dramatic beeping when my heart rate rose high, it only happened every time she entered the room.

She frowns slightly, only just barely enough to create a tiny little crease between her black brows, “You’ll end up back here,” she tells me like I was asking her a serious question, and not just playing around.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Archer purrs, draped like a human sloth in the chair behind me as I peer over my shoulder to scowl at him, my duffle bag on the floor discarded by his feet again. “Don’t you know…” he cocks his head, his sentence only half finished, it’s not a question.

Luna blinks, almost adorably confused, she’s so fucking smart, but she just doesn’t seem to get social cues, banter, jokes, it’s all sort of lost on her.

“Know what?” she asks, genuinely unsure of what Archer could possibly mean.

I stare at my brother harder, his playful grin widening, his eyes still on her, “This is exactly where he wants to be.”

I sigh heavily, scrubbing my hands down my face, before lifting my gaze onto hers, my hands thudding into my lap.

“Why would you want to stay in the hospital?” she whispers, stepping around the wheelchair so she’s in front of me, and she genuinely doesn’t know why.

Despite Archer winding her up, he”s not wrong, I’d stay here forever if it meant I’d get to spend every night with her.

Without thinking, I reach over to cup her face, and she doesn’t flinch this time, she doesn’t step back, she lets me touch her, and my heart sings.

“Because you’re here,” I whisper back.

And it doesn’t matter that my brothers are here. It doesn’t matter that we’ve only just met and don’t really know each other. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t fully trust me yet, not enough to tell me her heartache, her secrets, her joy.

None of it fucking matters because I just know I want her.

I can feel it.

The pull in my core, a tether to my soul, something invisible and overwhelming joining me to her.

Can you feel it too? Tug back, baby girl, tug back and let me see you.

Those crystal blue eyes peer up into my own, her cheek cool in my warm palm. I hold her gaze, licking my lips, and I watch as her eyes drop to my mouth, flicking right back up to mine.

“Let me take you to dinner,” I breathe the words almost over her lips once more, because I tugged on that tether that’s somehow knitted us together with a sparkling silver thread, and she came. “Let me take you anywhere,” I stare into her eyes, “everywhere.” Our lips brush with every word now as she leans into me, letting me rest my other hand on her waist, both of hers coming to rest against my chest.

Luna’s bottom lip trembles, I can’t see it because we’re so close, but I feel it quivering over mine, and I want to draw back, a frown on my face, but when her shuttered lids lift, her eyes glassy with tears, something clenches inside of me and I don’t push. I don’t push her, even though I want to demand something from her.

Someone’s hurt her, I know it, so many little things have been coming together inside of my brain, and I’ve been driving myself insane trying to understand without asking her.

But I’m leaving here now and I don’t want to go with her thinking I didn’t care enough to ask.

“Who’s hurting you, Luna,” I whisper over her mouth, tightening my grip on her waist, just enough for her to feel my fingers flex against her ribs.

Her lips part, her eyes fluttering closed, a breath heavy from her nose. I want to kiss her. Take her away from here. From these people who treat her like shit and whisper about her behind her back.

I want to wrap her up in my arms.

Protect her from the world and everyone in it.

Even me.

Her eyes open, flicking between mine, she closes her mouth, silence loud in the moment, all I can hear is the rapid thundering of my heart.

She steps back, dropping her head and wringing her hands.

“Luna.”

“You need to use the chair, or I’ll get in trouble,” she swallows, bringing her eyes up onto mine from beneath her lashes and all of the air leaves my lungs. “You can get out of it once you pass the entrance doors to the hospital. I’ll be in the hall with your medicines.”

With that, Luna backs away from me, avoiding Hunter as she leaves the room, my eyes following her as she goes.

I breathe in deep, closing my eyes, huffing sharply with a shake of my head, I ball my fists, but there’s nothing I can do.

Well, there is, I could kidnap her from here and lock her up with me. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the Blackwell men has done just that, it’s also highly unlikely to be the last. Blackwells do not think clearly when it comes to their obsessions.

I thought I was immune.

I’ve got two brothers who have found love with their obsessions, and another three brothers heartbroken by theirs. Neither group of them ever really sold me on the idea.

Fuck, this is rough.

Thorne steps between my knees, a white t-shirt gathered up in his hands, he holds it out to me, and I thread my head and arms through so he can pull it down my back.

“Thank you,” I sigh, scrubbing a fist to my eye, I can feel a stress headache coming on already, and I feel fucking exhausted.

“She reminds me of Gracie,” Hunter says with a little less hostility in his voice than usual, he always gets like that when he talks about his wife. When I turn to look at him, his eyes already on mine, the same shade as Dad’s and the rest of our brothers, only my own are different, like Mum’s, he shrugs, “You’ll have to make her an offer she can’t say no to.”

Nobody else says anything as between Thorne and Archer, they get me in the wheelchair, and Hunter manoeuvres me out into the hall. Luna’s there, waiting at the end beside the lift, a green paper bag in her hand and a small stack of papers.

Her blue eyes track me as I’m wheeled towards her, Archer ahead of us, Thorne behind. She passes the paper bag to Archer as he thumbs the call button for the lift and then drops her gaze to me.

I don’t say anything to her as the lift doors slide open, Archer and Thorne both step inside, and Hunter turns us around, wheeling me backwards into the lift so I’m facing outwards.

Luna reaches out, holding out the papers in her hand, but I”m not looking at those, I’m only looking at her.

“Wolf,” she says, and I hate how much I love the way she says my name, all low and rough and almost scolding, it makes me want to laugh. “You need to take these.”

The announcement to signal the elevator doors are about to close calls out, ‘Lift going down.’ So I reach out as though to take the papers and snatch her wrist instead, yanking her into the lift just as the doors close at her back. She stumbles, dropping into my lap as I pull her into me, capturing her around the waist with my arm.

Little loose hairs drift across her face as she exhales sharply, the papers from her hand slowly drifting towards the floor.

“Wolf,” she says breathlessly, and my entire body hums with satisfaction.

Her glacial blue eyes are locked on mine, and I can feel her heart beating like a drumming in her chest.

“I’ll be back here everyday until you tell me yes,” I say softly, speaking into her ear. “Everyday.”

She stares at me with longing, want and fear. And that bottom lip trembles again, the way it quivers, it’s like my undoing. I’m starting to wonder if the fear is all because of me, am I being too pushy, am I frightening her, intimidating, is all of this too much.

“Please,” she whispers, one of her hands coming up to touch the hollow of my throat, her body turning towards me so our noses almost brush. “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not…” Luna looks down, sadness in the pout of her lips.

“Because you’re not what?” I sigh, then breathe her in, her scent sweet and clean.

She looks up at me, her eyes filled with tears, real pain in the slope of her brow, she whispers, “Free.”

I’m scowling, I don’t mean to, but I can”t stop myself, “Luna-”

The lift doors open, dinging as they do, interrupting us. Her head automatically turns towards the hall, and she throws herself out of my lap, stumbling to right herself as a large man dressed in all black is standing there, I assume waiting to use the lift.

“Miss Beaumont,” the man says, “you’re required to return home immediately.”

Her entire body trembles, Archer immediately pushes between her and the man, Thorne is next to separate them, and Hunter pushes me out next, the lift doors clattering closed at our backs.

“What’s this about?” I grunt, pushing to my feet, pain pulses inside my chest, and my legs feel like they’re about to buckle, but I get my arse out of the chair and push Luna behind me.

The big guy blinks at me, his dark eyes roving to the girl at my back, he can’t see her, but he stares at the centre of my body like he can.

“It’s okay,” Luna whispers behind me, stepping around to stand in front of me. “I’ll just go and get my-”

“No, I’m afraid you’re required to leave now, Miss Beaumont,” I glare at the big guy as he ignores the four of us blocking her, his eyes lazy in a way that has alarm bells going off inside my head.

I turn to face Luna, clasping her upper arms and spinning around with her, so I’m all she can see.

“Do you know this guy?” I ask her, her eyes on the floor. “Luna, look at me,” her blue gaze lifts, glassy with tears. “You don’t have to leave with him,” I tell her, meaning it, I’m already planning out our life together inside my head. “I can protect you.” She looks up at me, this fractured, sad smile curling her lips, I decide in this moment, I hate it, it’s all wrong. “I can keep you safe.”

“I know you would,” she smiles again and it feels even worse, even sadder. “I know you want to,” she breathes, her entire body still trembling, she lifts her hands to my wrists, circling them with her long, cool fingers. “But you can’t.” She squeezes them just once before dropping her hands, slipping free from my own. “It was really good to meet you, Wolf,” she whispers, dropping her gaze, she starts to move away.

My hand snaps out, grabbing her upper arm in a tight grip, that on skin as pale as hers, will probably leave a mark. I hate how appealing the idea is.

“Don’t walk away from me, Luna,” I whisper, breathing hard, staring at the side of her dropped head, eyes downcast. “Don’t walk away from me. I’ll find you.”

She swallows so hard I can almost hear the gulp, and then she turns to me, hidden by the wall of my brothers, she whispers, “You won’t,” with that same broken smile, but it feels more like she says, I hope so. “Please, let go of me.”

I release her arm like she burnt me, and I don’t turn around because if I do, I won’t let her go. And it feels important to me that I should. I can’t have a fight in the hospital, I can’t have a fight full stop, I’m in no fit shape to even put on my own socks for fuck’s sake. But Thorne is, he stops her without touch, simply turning to face her as she moves away from me stilling before him.

“If you ever need an unusual favour,” he says calmly, “for taking care of my brother, I owe you a debt,” his voice is low, hushed. “You just call this number and let it ring.”

I turn my head, watching as he slips a plain black card into her hand, the only thing on it is a number in gold foil. I have only ever seen Thorne give out a single other one of those cards, the man does not owe anyone a debt.

“Miss Beaumont,” the man says, summoning her again.

A growl rumbles in my chest. I want to stop her. Kill this man. Kidnap this woman. Tuck her up inside of me and keep her. I would do anything. I already know it. If she told me to put a gun to my own head and pull the trigger, I wouldn’t even blink. But I’m letting her leave anyway.

“Goodbye, Wolf,” Luna whispers and that’s what it feels like.

When I turn and watch her back as she makes her way towards the exit, the man taking her not close enough to touch her, it doesn’t make me feel any better. Her shoulders are pulled back, spine straight, footsteps mechanical.

It looks like a death march.