Chapter 47
CHAPTER 47
Cyrus
F our of us huddled around Issa’s hospital bed, waiting for her to wake up, to open her eyes, to hear her voice.
According to the ER doctors and nurses, she’d only broken two fingers, had a crap load of road rush, and would be extremely bruised.
Other than that, she had zero brain damage according to the scans, and no other broken bones.
I counted that information as nothing short of a miracle. No way that car had been going any slower than fifty or so miles an hour before the door was shoved open and her petite body came rolling out.
“Jumped out of the fucking car,” I muttered, running both hands roughly over my face.
We were all exhausted. We’d been in this hospital for hours, in this room for nearly as long. Amir continuously had to swallow back whimpers and whines as he clung to Issa’s small hand.
Ax and Enzo …
I would have thought Enzo would have at least been able to keep his shit in check being pack lead and all. Ax was the one who was led by his emotions more often than not.
But both men couldn’t sit still, pushing to their feet to pace the length of the larger pack room before dropping onto their chairs again.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
“I’m a badass,” Issa muttered.
All four of us stiffened and turned wide eyes on her.
Amir leaned forward. “Issa? Are you talking in your sleep?”
“Open your eyes, beautiful,” I said, looming over her opposite from where Amir was hovering.
Her lashes fluttered and it took a few tries, but she eventually opened her eyes then squeezed them shut.
“Too bright,” she muttered, her brows furrowing and causing a crease between them.
Enzo quickly moved across the room and dimmed the lights so she could still see us without being bombarded with the glaring fluorescent lights overhead.
“Better?” he asked when he returned.
She opened one eye tentatively, then finally opened the other and sighed.
“Were you talking in your sleep?” Amir asked again.
“No. I’m a badass. I jumped out of the car like in the movies.”
Her voice was a little hoarse since she’d been asleep for so long. Or unconscious.
We were warned she had suffered a concussion, but they’d monitored her the entire stay and reassured us she wouldn’t suffer from any lingering effects.
“You could’ve gotten yourself fucking killed. You should have waited for us,” Ax growled from the foot of the bed.
I shot him a look, but he was busy staring at our beta.
“If I’d waited, you could have gotten killed. Did you think he would just pull over and let me out when he saw you? ”
Ax opened his mouth, his lips moving like a fish, before he closed it and scowled at her.
None of us liked the fact she’d done something so stupidly reckless and potentially deadly, but she had a point. Even if we or one of Bain’s men had started firing at Antonio or whoever that fuck was in the backseat, we could have risked hitting her, or getting her killed when the car lost control.
Whether she was right or not didn’t make the whole situation any less terrifying. We’d come far too close to losing her.
“What about Antonio?” she asked.
When she tried to sit up, Amir climbed into the bed beside her and coaxed her onto her back, resting his chin on her shoulder and nuzzling her cheek as the softest whimpers left his chest.
“Bain’s dealing with him,” Enzo said. Or rather growled since neither he nor Ax had stopped since we’d felt her fear through our bonds.
“And the other guy? There was another alpha.”
“He’s dead,” Enzo said, his arms crossed over his chest.
“So why are you looking at me like you want to throttle me?” Her voice grew smaller, and it took every ounce of control to keep from lunging at our pack lead and beating the shit out of him.
But Enzo’s face instantly softened, and he sighed heavily. “I don’t want to throttle you. You know damn well I would never hurt you.”
“Then why do you look so pissed?”
“You jumped out of a moving car on the fucking highway. It’s our job to protect you , not the other way around,” Ax answered on Enzo’s behalf as though they were currently two halves of one brain.
“Can we talk about this when we get home?” Amir asked through a whine.
He nuzzled his cheek against Issa’s, pressing kisses to her throat, her cheek, her temple, anywhere he could get to without overwhelming or smothering her .
It was two more days of monitoring before the doctors agreed to release Issa to us to go home. I was more than ready to have her back in our house, behind closed doors, and lying in the pack bed surrounded by her omega and alphas.
It had been quick thinking on Amir’s part to shove his phone down the back of her pants. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to track her the way we had. Who knows where that fucker might have taken her or what he might have done to her.
She’d still gotten hurt, but it had been her own doing when she’d lunged from the fucking passenger side door.
I still couldn’t believe she’d done that. Ax and Enzo growled any time it was brought up, so she threatened to sleep in her own bed alone if they didn’t chill out.
Not that I believed that threat for a second. Though she was a beta, she’d been more affectionate, even more so than before. She was constantly touching one of us, asking one of us to snuggle or hold her.
And none of us had a single fucking complaint. The three of us alphas had taken off a few days to watch over her and make sure she didn’t get up and move around too much.
Just because she’d only broken the two fingers didn’t mean she needed to put too much stress on her battered body. She didn’t have the accelerated healing of an alpha or an omega.
And just like when we’d first had contact with her, her bruises, cuts, and scrapes would take a few weeks to be fully healed.
We had nothing but time now.
That fucker Antonio wasn’t dead, not yet . But he was no longer a threat. Bain and his pack were taking their time punishing him with the promise that one of us had the pleasure of pulling the trigger when it was time to put him down like a rabid fucking animal.
At the moment, we were all crammed into the pack bed, some eighties sitcom playing softly in the background, takeout containers littering the end of the bed and nearby surfaces, while Issa and Amir snored softly.
That had been too close. In a span of moments, we had come so close to losing Issa .
Fuck. We could have lost them both had Abdel not kept his head and focused on protecting Amir. A small fact that had pissed Amir off enough that he’d demanded his father fire him.
Didn’t happen. In fact, we had personally hired him on full time to stay in the house until he found his own pack.
And Oscar didn’t die, nor had he suffered any damage to his brain. His recovery would take longer than Issa’s being as he’d been shot in the head, but, thankfully, the bullet had missed his brain and the bullet hadn’t gotten lodged in his skull.
“We should see if they’ll push up the wedding,” Ax said out of the blue.
Both Enzo and I frowned at him.
“Put it off longer?” I asked.
“Nah. Sooner. I want them married. I want to celebrate and have a fucking party. And put all that bullshit behind us.”
I glanced in Enzo’s direction, but he was staring down at Issa with nothing short of love in his eyes.
“She’ll want to go back to work as soon as possible,” I said.
We’d discussed possibly asking her to quit working at the club, but we also knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she would give up the sense of independence without a fight.
Hell, she’d only been away from her part time job just over a month while we’d looked for Antonio and had been going out of her mind with boredom.
Hence her and Amir’s constant shopping trips, manicures, and visits with his parents.
Ghazi, Myer, and Athena had come to the hospital the moment they’d figured out where the ambulance was taking her and then came here every day since we’d brought her home, bringing home cooked meals or takeout while Amir’s sisters busied themselves with tidying and minor household chores as though the four of us couldn’t leave her side long enough to run the dishwasher.
There was nothing physically keeping us from leaving her side – we just didn’t want to.
The wedding was planned for about a year from now, but I could see why Ax wanted to move shit up; that had been entirely too close for comfort.
Not that Amir and Issa having a wedding or even a marriage certificate would change a damn thing about our relationships or her place in the pack.
But we… she absolutely deserved something beautiful, a celebration, a big ass party complete with a DJ, flowers, and any kind of food she wanted.
Fuck, I would have a variety of food trucks parked along the curb if that was what she wanted.
“We’ll bring it up to them, see if that’s what they want.” Enzo lifted a hand, halting whatever Ax was about to spout. “Their choice, Ax. I’m fucking serious. Don’t start pressuring her about anything.”
“What about talking one of them into carrying a pup for us?” Ax said, a wide, shit eating grin on his face.
My nostrils flared as I inhaled deeply before blowing it out slowly. “She has no desire to be a mom. Or at least to get pregnant. And it’s still pretty early to start talking about adding kids to our pack.”
Not that I wasn’t dying to see either of their bellies rounded with one of our babies, or that I wasn’t more than ready to see little pink or blue toys littering the house.
But no way in fucking hell would any of us push that on her. We understood. We truly did.
Conversation ceased and I swore all three of us focused all our attention on the sleeping duo, on the way Issa’s dark lashes fanned over her cheek, on the way Amir kept a tight hold on her even in his sleep.
He was still beating himself up that she was taken instead of him. Didn’t matter how many times we all told him how well he’d done by putting the phone in the back of her pants, or how he’d remained calm and had been able to help us track her.
There had to be a way to reassure him, but we all knew it wouldn’t come from us. It would be up to Issa to convince him he’d done exactly as he should have by ensuring they both remained alive and that we were able to get to our beta before it was too late.