Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Jez
NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL Hospital was a madhouse.
Back at the destroyed hotel, the EMTs who’d loaded Gage and Tony into one of the first ambulances to arrive at the hotel had tried to tell me I couldn’t come with them.
I’d showed them the bloody scrapes on my hands and feet, and they’d relented, squeezing me onto a jump-seat in the gap between the patient area in the back and the place where the driver sat.
The sirens hurt my ears as we hurtled down the road, Gage’s pain battering at my nerves like fire.
It didn’t look like the ambulance was designed to hold two injured people; much less three.
But there had been dozens of casualties in the demolished banquet room, so I guessed they were bending some rules to get everyone to the hospital as fast as possible.
Gage was on the gurney in the back. They’d braced Tony—still on his stretcher—crosswise across the cabinets set on either side of the work area.
“Broken femur,” the EMT reported, prodding at Gage’s unmoving body. “Possible cracked ribs, possible cervical spine injury. Good thing he’s an alpha.”
“What about Tony?” I asked, my voice wavering.
The nicer of the two men—the one who’d let me on the ambulance—glanced at me. “His vitals are stable. Looks like a head injury, but they’ll check him out properly once we get to the ER. Try to stay calm, miss.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, the sting of my raw palms disappearing into the overall throbbing agony of the bond.
I bit my lips to keep from bothering them while they were trying to work.
The ambulance jounced around a curve at high speed, and I nearly cried out as Gage’s injuries flared white-hot.
When we arrived, two other ambulances were already unloading patients.
The EMTs flung open the doors and started readying Gage’s gurney for transport.
I stood up, only to fall to my knees with a poorly stifled scream when they lowered the gurney to the ground, jolting Gage’s battered body with the impact.
The nicer EMT cursed under his breath. “Miss? What’s wrong? Is it your feet?”
I tried to speak and couldn’t.
The man’s partner hopped back up, ducking under Tony’s stretcher to get to me. “She’s got a recent mating bite. Ma’am... is alpha this your mate?”
I managed a wordless nod, tears of pain squeezing from the corners of my eyes.
“Christ, how are you still conscious?” he muttered, low enough that maybe I wasn’t supposed to hear it. Then he spoke in a more normal tone. “You should have said something. Bill, let intake know about this. They’ll want her nearby to keep him calm.”
“Will do,” the other EMT said briskly.
Things got confusing after that. Strong arms helped me out of the ambulance. Orderlies showed up to move Tony’s stretcher, but I lost track of him in the press of bodies inside.
I didn’t want all these people touching me, but they were helping me stay near Gage. Someone deposited me on an uncomfortable chair in a treatment room. Someone else—probably a nurse—glanced at my hands and the soles of my feet.
“She’ll have to wait,” she said. “This is a mass casualty event, folks. We’re about to get slammed like you’ve never seen before.”
They hooked Gage up to a bunch of beeping and pinging machines. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing with so many people coming and going, but I sure as hell felt it when the unrelenting pain pouring across the mating bond was abruptly snuffed out, leaving echoing nothingness in its wake.
I shot to my feet, aware of the pain of my own injuries in a way I hadn’t been before. “Gage!”
Hands grasped my shoulders and urged me to sit again. I resisted, trying to look past the body looming in my field of vision and see what was happening.
“Please calm down, ma’am,” said the nurse. “Your mate is unconscious, but we’re taking good care of him. He had ID in his wallet; can you please confirm that his name is Gage Huxley?”
I stared at her. I was mated to Gage, and I hadn’t even known his last name. Slowly, I nodded.
“Thank you. And does he have medical insurance?” she went on, oblivious to the stillness in my mind where there was supposed to be pain.
“I... don’t know?” I rasped. “Probably?” His pack leader was rich... but maybe rich people didn’t need to bother with insurance?
She let my shoulders go and picked up a clipboard. “Okay, we’ll deal with that later. What’s your name, please?”
“Jez,” I whispered. But that wasn’t right anymore. “I mean... Jess. Jessica.”
“Jessica what?”
I couldn’t remember the last name Knox had told me. It hadn’t seemed real then; it didn’t seem real now. Or was I Jessica Knockley already? But that wasn’t Gage’s last name... or Heath’s.
“I... I don’t...” I stammered, beginning to panic.
The doctors leaning over Gage backed away, and orderlies started pushing his gurney toward the door.
“Wait!” I cried, trying to push past the nurse and follow them. She grasped me by the shoulders again.
“Jessica!” she said sharply. “Please try to stay calm.”
“Let me go!” I yelled, shoving at one of her forearms, then yelped as the pain in my palm flared.
“Ma’am!” Her grip tightened. “You need to calm down! If you try to get physical with me, I will have you sedated! We’ve got enough to deal with already!”
I reared back, my panic overflowing at the idea of being drugged and helpless in this unfamiliar place, with Gage and Tony being taken who-knew-where, to have who-knew-what done to them.
“Dan! Jorge! I need some help over here!” The nurse’s voice grew alarmed as I tried to jerk myself free of her hold.
Two large men turned toward us. One of them was an alpha. A whine of fear lodged in my throat.
A protective presence stirred in the back of my brain, someone else’s alarm joining my growing terror. Not Gage. Heath. I drew in a sharp breath, straightening and leaning toward the door like a dog testing its chain.
A pair of tall figures appeared in the doorway—one limping heavily, both coated head to toe in dust. The smell of cedar and campfire smoke, whiskey and oak tickled my senses.
“That’s our pack’s omega,” Knox called, his voice still hoarse, but pitched to carry across the confusion in the room. “Please step away from her.”
The two orderlies hesitated. The nurse’s grip on my arms loosened.
I took the opportunity to twist free and duck past her.
There wasn’t a rational thought in my head as I shoved through the crowd of medical personnel and threw myself at the source of fierce protectiveness coiled on the other end of my mate-bond.
Heath caught me with a small oof of surprise. He tensed for a moment, then his arms tightened, pressing my face against his battered tuxedo jacket to shield me.
“We’ve got her,” Knox said, still with infuriating calmness.
“I’m Matthew Knockley. You may recognize the name from the new wing in the biomedical research center, which I paid for three years ago.
We’ll need a private room suitable for a pack of five people, and regular updates on the status of Gage Huxley and Anthony Scalise.
Aside from that, we’ll stay out of your hair. ”
Everyone in the room went quiet and still.
“Um...” said the nurse who’d tried to restrain me. “Yes, sir. I’ll, uh, see what I can do. If you’ll follow me to the nurse’s station, please?” She eyed Knox warily. “Do you need medical assistance?”
“Not badly enough to take personnel away from the seriously injured,” Knox said. “Thank you. Please lead the way.”
Heath started to lead me after Knox and the nurse, but at the first step, my injured feet screamed a protest at me. Heath flinched in sympathetic reaction, then promptly scooped me up in his arms and carried me.
I wanted to hate it... to resent this bad-tempered alpha who’d never asked to be mated to me. Instead, I curled into him and pressed my nose to his neck, breathing in the scent of aged oak barrels even though the dust on his clothes made me sneeze.
In a shockingly short time, we were taken to a large room with two futuristic-looking medical beds, a scattering of chairs, and one large, normal bed that looked like something you might find in a hotel room. The harried nurse dropped off a load of first aid supplies and then made a quick exit.
“Get cleaned up, you two,” Knox said. “I’m going to get a proper update on Gage and Tony, even if I have to extract it with a pair of pliers.”
He limped out again, the door swinging silently shut behind him.
Alone with me, Heath cleared his throat awkwardly. It sounded like he had gravel stuck in there. I could relate.
“There’s a bathroom with a shower,” he said. “Do you want me to look at your feet first, or...”
I shook my head. He carefully set me down.
“What you did back there in the hotel,” he went on. “It was...”
“Reckless?” I offered in a small voice.
“Awe-inspiring,” he said. “You saved them, Jez. If not for you, Gage and Tony would be dead.”
“I can’t feel Gage,” I blurted out, my voice breaking on his name. “Like, at all.”
Big hands framed my face, the familiar buzz of warmth spreading outward from the contact.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “He’s your scent match. If he were dead, you wouldn’t be able to feel anything else except the pain of the broken bond. He’s just unconscious. Probably because they anesthetized him for surgery.”
I gave a reluctant nod. “Okay.” Now that the panic had abated a bit, something else was bothering me, though. “How did you and Knox find me? It’s a big hospital.”
Heath’s green eyes slid away from mine for a moment.
“I couldn’t feel where Gage was, like you could,” he said. “But it turns out, when I’m not blocking out the bond, I can track you.”
I thought about that for a few moments. “Is it... because of the scent match? You said earlier that bonds aren’t supposed to work like that.”
“I think it must be,” Heath said, with a helpless shrug. “Right now, let’s just be grateful for it, whatever the cause.”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”
He let out a slow breath. “Go wash off the dust. You’ll feel better. There are hospital gowns with the first aid stuff. When you’re done, I’ll bandage your hands and feet.”
I poked at the empty blankness where Gage was supposed to be.
“We can both shower. It’ll be quicker.” The words were out before I could stop them.
I felt Heath’s thoughts stumble to an abrupt halt.
“Please,” I forged on. “I don’t want to be alone.”
There was no room for misunderstanding through the mental link.
He knew I wasn’t talking about sex, or anything like that.
I meant exactly what I said—I wasn’t sure I could hold onto my sanity if I was left alone with Gage’s emptiness.
As strange as it felt to even think it, Heath was all I had left right now.
After a beat of complete stillness, a faint shudder went through him.
“All right.” He gently took my shoulder and turned me toward the bathroom door. “Come on. Let’s be quick. Knox’ll be back with news on the others before long.”