Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Caleb isn’t allowed to leave the hospital room, not until his shoulder heals. It’s an order I suspect he’d ignore if I weren’t here, glaring at the side of his head whenever he makes a move to get out of bed.
Adam brings continuous updates on the border. The Americans have fully retreated, but their men remain at the border. Regrouping.
The shifters use this time to rest. Seventy-four have been injured, but there are only six losses. It takes more than a few bullet holes to take down a shifter. Caleb estimates the humans are experiencing significantly more losses.
Most of the injured shifters have ruptured eardrums. When I asked Caleb if his ears were injured, he made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and changed the subject.
I’ve started making occasional noises. Chirps. Whistles.
He only seems to hear about three-quarters of them. The ones he has heard, he’s mostly ignored. I suspect it’s out of spite.
I sit beside Caleb, my hand on his thigh as he meets with Adam and other high-ranking shifters. I faintly recognize a few of them, but I don’t know any of them by name. Not yet.
They’re almost always naked.
Caleb is, too, and he seems to be in no hurry to dress.
He cracks a smile and kisses the side of my head when I give in and lay a blanket over his lap, covering him.
The marked women and children are brought in within the hour. They’re rushed immediately to the maternity and pediatric wards. We’re told that they’re in good health, but I’m eager to see it for myself.
Caleb isn’t happy about the wait, either, but he doesn’t argue with the doctors, who tell him to wait just a little bit longer.
Sash enters the room in a flurry of movement.
“Why didn’t you send for me?” she hisses as she storms through the room. “I just spent the past ten minutes in an absolute panic searching for Evelyn, only to learn she’s halfway across the hospital with my injured brother.”
Well, I assumed she already knew. Sash seems to know everything.
She makes a face as she looks at Caleb’s shoulder, then continues. “I thought you’d like to know that the humans are all officially de-chipped. They were horrified to learn they’d been chipped in the first place.”
She touches the skin beneath Caleb’s shoulder, her bottom lip wobbling.
“Please.” Caleb lifts his hand, his attention shifting between Sash and me. “I don’t need two women crying over a single bullet wound. I’m fine.”
Sash smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Don’t be an asshole, Caleb. I’m allowed to be concerned about the health of my big brother.”
Caleb shoots her a look. “You never have been before.”
“Well, I am now. Okay?”
“Okay.” Caleb changes the subject. “How are the women and children from the second group doing?”
I’m eager to know the answer to this, too.
“The babies are doing well. The women are…okay,” Sash explains. “They’re… I don’t know. They’re quiet. They don’t know which, if any, of the infants are biologically theirs. They’ve consented to blood tests to see if there are any matches.”
Sash shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “The humans from the first group weren’t aware of the breeding program, and they’ve been surprisingly… docile since the women and infants were brought in. I think they’re in shock.”
I understand what they’re feeling all too well. It’s horrifying to realize that everything you’ve been taught to believe is a lie.
A doctor steps into the room to examine Caleb’s shoulder. He pokes and prods at the skin, then tests Caleb’s range of motion. Sash and I are quiet as we watch his evaluation.
“You’re good to go,” the doctor eventually says. “Try not to strain the muscle for the next day or so. Come in if you have any worsening pain.”
Caleb is up and out of the hospital bed in the blink of an eye. He holds the blanket I draped over his lap, keeping himself covered as he addresses Sash.
“Can you find me a change of clothes?” he asks her. “Ev and I will do a round.”
A round of what?
A round of the hospital, it appears.
Caleb wraps the blanket around his waist like a towel as he leads me through the hospital corridors.
He checks in on the shifters, confirming injury counts and chatting with a handful of his men.
He keeps his conversations brief, and when Sash comes to him with clean underwear and a pair of pants, he pulls them on midstride. The towel is discarded in a nearby bin.
His hand finds mine, his fingers tangling with my own.
“It seems like Sash has the human adults handled,” he says. “Let’s not interfere. They won’t be happy to see me or, by extension, you, and I don’t want to risk working them up.”
“I agree,” I say.
Caleb squeezes my hand as we walk through the doors leading into the pediatric wing. The lobby is again empty, but I hear commotion through the double doors leading into the back. When we step through them, I hear crying. Babies crying.
I hope Caleb can’t feel how sweaty my palms are.
Nurse June walks past. She’s holding a sealed package of tubing. “They’re being taken to the nursery after examination,” she says over her shoulder. “Somebody in there will be able to help you.”
She disappears into a room, one with a screaming baby inside. I stare at the door, a knot in my throat. Is the baby okay? Nurse June didn’t seem panicked, but she was definitely in a hurry. What was the tubing for?
Caleb clears his throat. “Do you know where the nursery is?”
“Yes.” I blink, turning away from the door. “I’ll show you.”
Caleb follows me to the nursery. There’s only one other person in the room. A nurse. She looks exhausted, her hair pulled into a messy braid and her long-sleeved undershirt pushed up to her elbows. Jess is written on her nametag.
She greets Caleb and me with a slight dip of her chin. “Alphas.”
She’s standing in front of a bassinet. There’s a baby inside, but I can’t see much of it. It’s wrapped up tightly in a swaddling blanket, and there’s a blue hat on its head. It seems to be asleep.
The other bassinets are empty.
“Where are the others?” Caleb asks.
Jess looks up. “They’re in examinations. Most seem to be in good shape, but we’re not leaving anything up to chance. The two youngest are pretty severely jaundiced. They’re undergoing phototherapy.”
I’m not sure what that means.
Jess looks down at the baby in the bassinet, her lips pressed tightly together. I lift on my toes, trying to get a better view as she places her hand on the baby’s soft stomach and adjusts the hat.
The door behind Caleb and me opens. Another nurse comes through. It’s a man, and he looks pleased as he steps into the room with a wiggling, crying mass in his arms. Is he allowed to carry the babies through the hospital? I thought they’d be wheeling them around in the bassinets.
What if he drops the baby? I look the man up and down, taking in his size and surefootedness. Shifters don’t trip or drop things. They don’t need the same safety precautions humans do.
This baby isn’t swaddled. It’s in only a diaper, leaving its chubby arms and legs exposed.
“We’ve got another chunker,” he says. “No fluids or phototherapy needed.”
The baby screams bloody murder. There’s a bandage on its heel, blood already seeping through the white cotton.
I wince.
The doctors need to draw blood. They have no choice, but I hate to imagine these poor little things undergoing any pain. I can only imagine what HPAW was doing to them.
Probably treating them as test subjects.
The screaming baby is placed into an empty bassinet. I’m impressed by the nurse’s patience. I’m fidgety just being in the same room as a crying infant. I can’t imagine being responsible for one.
How do you make a baby stop crying? Will it hurt itself?
I inch forward, desperate to get a closer look.
The nurse looks up. His nametag reads Gilo. “He’s hungry,” he explains. “Do you want to feed him?”
“Me?” I point to myself. “Are you sure?”
I don’t know how—but I’ll figure it out.
Caleb places a hand on the small of my back, gently nudging me forward. I have half a mind to turn down the offer, but the honest truth is that I do want to feed the baby. I’m mildly frightened by the idea, but also excited.
“I need to speak with Adam,” Caleb says. “I’ll be just outside.”
He doesn’t wait for my response before leaving, abandoning me with the nurses and the infants. I linger, watching as Gilo prepares a bottle. There’s a kitchenette beside the supply cabinets—really just a sink and mini fridge.
“I’ll be right back,” Jess says.
She leaves before either Gilo or me responds, abandoning us with her sleeping baby.
My anxiety skyrockets. There are now only two adults and two children in this room.
One is already crying. What if the second one wakes up and cries?
Will I be expected to soothe it? Probably. I’m the only other adult in the room.
I draw in a shaky breath.
Gilo shoots me a look, almost like he can hear the thoughts rushing through my head.
He gestures to the crying baby. “There was no information regarding these infants to be found in the HPAW facilities,” he says.
“Their bassinets were labeled by number and date of birth. That’s all the information we have. ”
He finishes the bottle, then props the baby up using a pillow.
The baby stops crying the second he sees the milk.
“He’s six months old,” the nurse continues, “and he seems to be a pretty happy little guy.”
He brings the bottle to the baby’s mouth. I step closer, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips as the infant wraps his arms around Gilo’s wrist. His legs fly up next, kicking at the nurse’s elbow as he drinks.
No more crying.
Gilo gestures for me to hold the bottle.
I do, swallowing down a nervous laugh as the little guy grabs at my hand. His fingers are small, but his fingernails are surprisingly sharp. On the back of his hand is a tiny, white marking, but it’s hard to make out the details.
I look over every exposed inch of the baby, entirely entranced. It’s hard to imagine that I was once this small and helpless.