Forty-Three
FORTY-THREE
Zalen
IT HAD TAKEN WAY TOO long to extricate myself from the police interview, and I still wasn’t sure there wouldn’t be legal consequences for my decision to throw the truth to the four winds by manufacturing a story to get the cops to the warehouse as fast as possible.
The thing was, I didn’t care.
All that mattered was Luca, Byron, and Mia’s husband. I hadn’t been able to talk to them before they were whisked off to the hospital, but they were all alive. I had seen two body bags and an additional stretcher carried out as I was being questioned at the scene, though. I wasn’t proud about how much I hoped one of those body bags contained Blake Berlusconi.
Barnes Jewish Hospital never slept, but at this time of night, parking wasn’t hard to find. The front desk directed me to Luca’s room despite the late hour, thanks to the magic of waving around my status as both his pack leader and emergency contact. I slapped the pass onto my jacket lapel and hurried toward the correct wing, taking the stairs two at a time when the elevator didn’t arrive fast enough.
The floor nurse looked up with disinterest as I passed her desk, flashing the pass and offering her a strained smile. The door of Luca’s room was open a few inches. Stress-soured omega pheromones wafted out, setting my alpha instincts on edge.
I consciously calmed my scent, slowing my breathing and shaking the tension out of my shoulders before I quietly pushed the door farther open. Two figures were jammed into the too-small hospital bed. Mia looked up sharply at my appearance. Soft snores emanated from the pale, tousled form curled against her side.
“Zalen!” The exclamation was barely more than a whisper.
Luca’s arm was in a sling. He didn’t wake up.
My hindbrain stirred restlessly, convinced that I needed to be in that bed holding both of them. I shoved the impulse down violently.
“Is he all right?” I whispered back.
“Not really,” Mia said. “I’m trying to get him a victim advocate for when the police show up to interview him.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, relieved by Mia’s presence and her practicality. “Can you stay with him for now?” I asked.
She nodded, stroking soft fingers through his messy hair. “Yeah. Emiel’s with Nat. Byron was in surgery—you should go see him if they’ll let you.”
“I’ll go now. Thank you, Mia,” I told her, still wishing I could get my arms around both of them somehow.
She bit her lower lip, rolling it between her teeth before letting it slip free. Her eyes were huge and sad. “Don’t thank me . You were the one who found them.”
Tony had been the one who found them. But I couldn’t afford to ruminate on the what-ifs.
“All that matters is that they’re safe now,” I said quietly. “I’ll check back when I can, or you can text my phone if you need me.”
She tried on a watery smile for me. “Okay.”
I withdrew from the room, even though leaving them alone felt like pulling against a full-body resistance band at the gym. When I turned, Emiel was approaching.
“They doin’ okay?” he asked.
A bit of the tension leached out of me. “As okay as can be expected.”
“ You doin’ okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, not completely truthfully. “What about Nat?”
“The cops came to talk to him and kicked me out.” He lowered his voice. “Might’ve given him a few suggestions earlier regarding what to tell them if they start asking questions about you being there.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure he’s the type to lie to the police, but I appreciate the thought.”
Emiel shrugged. “Who said anything about lying? Anyway, I just wanted to warn these two that the cops’ll probably come here next. You going to see Byron?”
“If they’ll let me.” Since I wasn’t listed as his emergency contact or next of kin, I wasn’t sure if they would or not, given the late hour.
“I’ll tell Mia and Luca what’s going on. Then I’d best get back to Nat,” Emiel said. “He’s a bit of a mess after all that.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “I told him he should come stay with us for a bit while he recovers. Mia’s all right with it.”
I blinked, not having seen that coming. “I don’t have any objections,” I told him, unsure how that dynamic would work, but not averse to finding out after everything that had happened.
Emiel reached out a large hand and patted my upper arm. I stared down in shock for a moment, trying to remember if he’d ever initiated physical contact with me before.
“You did good, Zalen,” he said. “Got ’em back safe, didn’t you? Go on and see Byron now.”
I swallowed a protest that if Byron was hurt badly enough to need surgery, he could hardly say I’d gotten them back safe .
“Thank you,” I said instead.
As I’d feared, the duty nurse was less forthcoming about giving me Byron’s room number. Fortunately, he was finally swayed by the magic words, “I’m his pack leader.”
Byron was in an entirely different wing for post-op, and when I eventually managed to get to the right place, I discovered that someone else had beaten me here. Beatrix Delgado was looming over the nurses’ station in full old-lady armor, including a handbag that looked heavy enough to cave in someone’s skull.
“I know perfectly well how late it is, young woman!” she was saying. “Do I look like I want to be driving at this time of night? Now check again; I’m listed as his next of kin!”
“Mrs. Delgado?” I said.
She turned around, peering at me. “Oh, it’s you! I told you, call me Bea like everyone else does.” She turned back to the nurse. “Here now. This gentleman is Byron’s pack leader. So, kindly tell us where he is.”
Defeated, the nurse turned back to her computer and tapped at the keyboard. “Yes, of course, ma’am. The patient is in Room 487. He’s likely to be woozy, though.”
“Thank you,” Bea said crisply, and led the way toward the room in question.
“Tony isn’t here with you, is he?” I asked, once we were out of range of the nurses’ station.
Bea scoffed. “Course he isn’t. I may be old, but I’m not a fool, Zalen. Now, do you know what happened? They told me, ‘ leg laceration with significant blood loss ,’ but nothing about how it happened.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much,” I said. “He and the others were being held in a warehouse, and three of the bad guys didn’t walk away after the SWAT team arrived. What happened between those two things is still a bit of a mystery, though.”
“Hmph,” she said, eyeing me sideways. “Tony told me he snooped around to get you the address. Under the circumstances, I can’t bring myself to fuss at him about it.”
“Agreed,” I told her.
She lifted her chin. “Not planning on dragging him back to his parents, then?”
I met her rheumy gaze. “Dragging who back to what parents? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
Bea gave a sharp nod of approval and headed for the door marked 487. “Good answer.”
She tugged it open without knocking, revealing a gray-faced figure lying in a critical care bed with a female nurse leaning over him.
The nurse turned. “Hello?”
“We’re here to see Byron,” Bea said with finality. “How is he doing?”
“How does it look like I’m doing?” a weak voice shot back.
“Mr. Harper is just out of surgery,” the nurse said primly. “The doctor will be in later to discuss his case in more depth, but the wound has been sutured and he’s had several units of blood. We’re starting him on IV antibiotics to combat infection.”
“The others are safe, Byron,” I said, unsure if he was aware of that fact or not. The way his eyes slipped closed and the breath sighed out of him made me think he probably hadn’t been.
“I know you need to rest, but we wanted to check on you first,” I continued. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” he said.
“Can you tell us what happened?” I asked.
He made a bitter little noise in the back of his throat. “Got stabbed, laid around bleeding for a while, and let them take Luca off to be gang-raped. Next question?”
Bea dragged a chair over to the side of the bed and flopped into it. “You let them, eh? So, they asked your opinion about it first?”
I came and stood behind the old alpha’s shoulder, ignoring the vaguely disapproving look the nurse was throwing us.
“I’m his—” Byron cut himself off with a frustrated growl. “I’m an alpha. If I can’t even protect an omega because I freeze whenever someone pulls a gun, what the hell am I good for?”
It was his resigned tone that scared me the most. I drew breath, not sure what I could actually say in response to that, but Bea beat me to it.
“Oh, listen to yourself, whelp. Did someone ask you to be superhuman?” She huffed. “How about worrying about the best way to support your omega going forward, since you don’t have a time machine to go back and change the past?”
“Omegas,” I murmured unthinkingly. “Plural. Byron, we’re going to make things right with the pack. We’re going to make this work . All of us. Properly . But for now, you need to rest and recuperate.”
“You’d all be better off without me,” Byron rasped.
I leaned forward, resting a hand on the back of Bea’s chair. “Better off without the man who rescued a teenager from his own personal hell, and didn’t even take any credit for it afterward? You’ll excuse me if I disagree.”
Byron’s red-rimmed eyes shot to his adopted grandmother.
Bea shrugged. “Yeah, he knows. Don’t worry, it’s fine.”
“It is fine. Better than fine,” I agreed. “Oh, and one more thing. Emiel and Mia have invited Nat to stay with us while he’s recuperating. Thought you might want to know, given your, erm, history with him.”
The way Byron’s exhausted eyes went wide and round was its own reward.