Chapter 21 #2
The glare on Calder’s face could peel paint.
I’m reluctantly impressed by his ability to push back against Dax’s anger.
“Relax. It’s not like we cut it off. I told you we need to keep him stable.
Not just physically, but emotionally as well.
The more you two were freaking out, the faster his heart was racing, and the harder it was to stabilize him. ”
Dax narrows his eyes and takes a threatening step forward. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s like putting a pillow over the face of a screaming person. We didn’t kill it, we’re just managing the volume. We can’t have him constantly affected by your testosterone-laden Alpha anxiety party.”
Dax’s lips peel back from his teeth. His fangs drop—long, sharp, and gleaming in the flickering overhead light.
The sound that rolls up from his chest is primal and lethal.
This isn’t simply a pissed-off friend. This is an Alpha responding to a direct threat to his pack.
This is a warrior reminding everyone around him what it means to feel like prey.
Lenora takes two giant steps to the side—without looking up from her charts—to get out of the splash-zone.
Smart woman.
I press my hand to my chest. Before, I only had to think about our Bond to see it in my mind’s eye. Now, though, I have to really concentrate. It’s there, but the threads seem flimsy. Almost see-through.
My stomach rolls with nausea. I wipe clammy hands down the front of my jeans and try desperately not to throw up. I know, logically, that I haven’t actually lost anything, but it feels like I have. It feels like someone stole a part of me and locked it away somewhere I can’t reach.
I genuinely have no idea how Calder manages to ignore Daxen’s outburst, but he does.
“We’ve healed the silver burns on the outside, but the inside is a different story.
There’s still residual silver in his kidneys and liver.
The good news is that the damage is reversible.
If we can keep him stable long enough to let his body heal. ”
“How long are we talking here?” Gav scrapes a palm down his face.
“If we’re lucky, days. But I’m leaning more toward weeks. Possibly a month or more.” The moment Calder drops that bomb, my panic skyrockets.
A month?
I’m supposed to be without my best friend, my brother, my fucking pack mate for a month?
I’m somehow supposed to go four fucking weeks without feeling him in the Bond, without hearing his voice, or his laugh, or his godsdamned lectures about protocol.
A month spent wondering if he’s going to be okay. If he’s going to live.
The days extend before like a nightmare I’ll never wake up from. A future’s full of nothing but anxiety and terror.
Sweat beads on my brow. My vision tunnels. Next to me, Dax has gone very still. Instinctively, my hand snaps out, and my fingers grip onto his arm. I need physical contact. I need something to anchor me to reality.
I cant— I can’t handle this right now.
My pulse roars in my ears. I don’t remember making the decision to move but the next thing I know I’m striding through the hall, making a beeline straight for Caelan’s hospital room.
I ignore the questions and sounds of protest that follow me.
My mind blanks. One second I’m next to Dax, and the next I’m hovering at the edge of Caelan’s bed, staring down at his damn near broken body.
He’s…. not right.
This whole thing is not fucking right.
There’s something so unnatural about Caelan in a hospital bed. He’s shirtless, surrounded by lines and tubes and machines all screaming symbols and numbers I don’t understand. He has an oxygen cannula, and his eyes are shut. No movement flickers under his eyelids.
His coloring’s off. Too pale, none of the healthy glow he usually has.
He doesn’t look like he’s in pain, at least.
He looks like he’s sleeping.
Don’t lie to yourself. He looks like he’s dead.
The thought pops up out of nowhere, unbidden, unwelcome, and fucking wrong.
Before the tears building behind my eyes can fall, before I let myself break apart completely, I whip around and smash my fist into the nearest piece of furniture—the shelving unit splinters apart with a satisfying crack.
Wood snaps and shelves fall, landing on the floor in a clatter.
The top splits into two jagged-edged pieces.
I stare at the destruction, unable to pull my eyes away from the sharp, broken wood. It’s no longer solid and gleaming with polish. Now, it looks just like I feel.
Blood drips down my knuckles and onto the floor, but I ignore it. I’m already healing, my skin knitting back together nearly too fast to register the pain.
Dax appears silently behind me. He stares at Caelan, then flicks his eyes to me. There’s no judgment in them. No pity.
“You good?”
I clear my throat and steel my spine. “Yeah. All good.”
He nods once, then folds himself into a chair next to the bed. I pull up a chair of my own and position it next to him. I slump down, swallowing hard to force down the scream hovering in my throat.
“He’ll be okay, yeah?”
I need reassurance. I need Dax to tell me, with that genius mind of his, that this new form of unnatural torture Caelan was subjected to isn’t going to permanently fuck him up.
Dax rolls his head to the side to look at me and props his ankle on his knee.
He stares at me in silence, searching my eyes.
I’m almost positive he’s just going to stay silent, refusing to give me what he believes might be false hope.
He must see my desperation, though. He reaches over and clasps my upper arm in a mirror of how I reached for him earlier.
“He’s going to be fine, Vae.” His voice is laced with confidence I wish I felt.
“Calder is the best doctor our species has. No one on Earth is better than him. No one else has studied the effects of silver as he has, and no one else would know how to treat internal silver poisoning as well. If he says he’ll be alright in a few weeks and all the damage is treatable,” he shrugs.
“Then I believe him. And you should too.”
It doesn’t escape my attention that our positions have both done a one-eighty now that Dax has all the facts. Now I’m the one panicking, and he’s the calm one.
He releases my arm and falls back, settling in like he’s going to be there for a while. Neither of us has changed yet, still dressed in black utility pants and matching Henleys. Dax’s raven hair is a wild mess from running his hands through it over the last few hours.
“Caelan’s a tough asshole. No one else could make it through this shit. He’ll come back from this.” He hesitates, then smirks. “Bleeds like a godsdamned faucet, but he always gets right back up.”
I feel an answering smile tug at my lips.
“Remember when he got shot in the chest, and managed to get Ford and Silas out of a burning building rigged to explode and didn’t say shit to anyone about it?” Dax grunts in amusement. “Asshole leaked all over my car, then looked confused when Silas asked why he was coughing up blood.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then tells me, “I watched him take a silver blade to the shoulder, rip it out, wrap it in gauze, and then ask for the best place to pawn the fucking thing less than thirty minutes later.”
I bark out a shocked laugh. “You never told me about that.”
Dax shrugs, looking sheepish. “Took us two days to find a guy who would take the thing because some asshole spread a rumor that it was cursed. Caelan kept forgetting it was silver and palming it like an actual blade. Burned the shit out of himself.”
Shaking my head, I try to think back. “Why don’t I remember that?”
Dax smirks. “He used the money to enroll in an online course for stage magic. Terrorized Silas by following him around HQ, pulling random shit out of his ear and pockets. Told him his ‘aura was leaking.’”
I can’t help it. I laugh. I laugh so hard that tears spring to my eyes. The sound echoes through the silent room, out of place but somehow completely appropriate at the same time.
“Oh, damn, that’s right. Wasn’t that the month Silas spent $700 on crystals and kept asking Ford if he would ‘check his chakra alignment’?”
Dax snorts, swiping a tear from under his eye. “Shit… I still find those damn crystals in the most random places.”
Our laughter shifts into companionable silence as we bask in the shared memory.
He’ll be okay. He has to be.
Eventually, I sigh, knowing I need to ask the question, but hating to bring it up right now. “What are we going to do about the Omega?”
It’s like a switch is flipped.
Dax’s eyes blaze with fury. His head snaps to me, nostrils flaring.
He looks like a predator scenting prey.
“We fucking ruin her,” he snarls.
“We need to be sure, Daxen.” I raise a hand when he starts to argue. “We can’t just assume anything. You didn’t see her.”
The image flashes in my mind. When they brought her in, the Omega was soaking wet, shivering from the cold, and covered in bruises. She looked malnourished, sick, and so damn small in Silas’s arms.
“She looked like a victim, Dax. Not a villain.”
“Victims don’t set traps,” Dax snaps. “They don’t stand by silently while their father brags about how she played Caelan for a fool.”
The door opens, and Gav and Silas walk in, joining our vigil around Caelan’s bed. I’m not going to have it out with an audience, so I keep my mouth shut. A heavy silence settles into a tension that wasn’t here ten minutes ago. It feels ominous.
Silas is the first to speak, clearly having heard the end of our conversation about the Omega.
“You don’t need to go out of your way to be sure,” he says, glancing at Dax. “About her being guilty or not.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
He doesn’t answer right away, staring down at his hands like there’s something on them.
“Silas,” Dax prompts, voice sharp.
“She fucking confessed.” Silas’s voice sounds empty, so different from his usual upbeat tone.
“When we found her—Gav and I—she confessed.”