Chapter 24 Wren
Wren
There were eyes on him. Tracking his every move. There were people carrying files, walking past him as he screamed silently for someone to stop them. For someone to do something because there was information being stolen. Dangerous people were getting their hands on it.
There were pings on his phone. Message after message after message.
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Taunting him. Goading him into playing this game of cat and mouse where he ended up losing every single time. He wasn’t one step behind. He hadn’t even started the journey, while their train had reached the final station.
He’d lost. They’d lost.
And he couldn’t do anything about it.
He woke with a silent scream, sitting up in bed and twisting around, looking for that smirk, that wrist tattoo, that man who’d played them all.
He was met with a pitch-black room, the moon high in the sky, painting the carpet and the bodies scattered all over the floor silver.
He panicked for a moment, until he turned to his left and realized there was another bed there and Teddy was sleeping in it. He was hooked up to machines that monitored his vitals and pale, but alive. Still there.
And the bodies.
His team.
Teddy’s team.
A sea of protection at their feet.
“Wren,” a small chirp came from the foot of his bed and Blu hopped up the length of his leg to nuzzle his cheek. “Man gone. GONE!”
“It’s okay, Blu.” Wren cradled him in his palm and lifted him toward his heart. “You did good.”
“Blu good.” Blu snuggled into Wren’s warmth.
“You’re awake,” Black said, his face illuminated by the light from his phone. Always awake. As usual.
His voice woke Hart, who sat up from his sprawl in an armchair, his cheek sporting a red spot where he had been leaning against his knuckles. He looked at Wren with concern in his eyes before standing up and coming to sit at the foot of his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“We need to call PUMA,” Wren said, his voice a reedy croak.
Hart frowned. “It’s four in the morning, Wren.”
“Oh, Cyrus is up.” Black wiggled his phone. “I was sending him pics from the scene. He said good job!”
“He did not say good job!” Ash whispered from somewhere under Wren’s makeshift bed where he had rolled in his sleep. He pulled himself out.
“That’s how I interpreted it,” Black said.
Ash reached out and snagged the phone from his hand.
“‘Go to bed, you fucking lunatic,’” Ash read, giving him a sardonic glance. “That was a very loose interpretation.”
“Can you just call him?” Wren snapped. They stopped their bickering, but not before Fix woke up.
“Wren, what happened?” Fix asked, nudging Midas along the way and signing to him to catch him up and keep him in the loop. Black got up from his pile of blankets and caused a ruckus that woke up Teddy’s team, and they all crowded around his bed, eyes bleary and half-open but alert.
“When we were leaving with Teddy,” Wren said to all of them, “a man walked by the car. He had a stack of files on him.”
Saint nodded. “Yeah, people were taking all the shit Kellan had in that lair of his.”
“He was wearing a PUMA jacket,” Wren said.
“Several officers were called in to help,” Trace said. “But I have a feeling that isn’t where this stops.”
“He walked right by the car and waved his phone at me. He had the eye tattoo.”
“Someone inside PUMA is in the eye cult?” Echo asked, reaching back into the darkness. Wren spotted Sable as he rushed to their side, pushing his head under Echo’s hand and letting them grab on to the short fur.
“Are we surprised?” Eerie asked, voice bored.
“Yes.” Heir sounded tired. “None of this makes sense anymore.”
“He texted me,” Wren said finally. “It’s the same person who’s been texting us since Morgan’s case. Since the cursed house. It’s the unknown we thought was on our side this whole time.”
“Shit.” Ash ran a hand over his shorn hair. “That can’t be possible!”
“What the fuck?” Saint asked. “Why would he help you this whole time?”
“Looks like he was just biding his time until he could get his hands on something he could use,” Wren said.
“Or maybe he knew,” Eerie said.
“Knew what?” Trace asked.
“What Kellan was doing, what his plan was, what the endgame was,” Eerie said. “Maybe this whole time they were using all of you to get to that research.”
“Shit,” Ash said again, and Black nodded, eyes wide.
“Call Cyrus,” Wren said, heart lodged in his throat as he looked to the side to see Teddy’s chest rising and falling slowly. The monitor beeped steadily with each heartbeat. It gave him hope. He’d come through eventually. He’d come back to Wren.
He’d get to keep him this time.
Black called Cyrus and they filled him in. Wren gave him as detailed of a description of the man as he could manage, what with having been drugged up and out of it at the time.
Cyrus said he’d see what he could do, but they all heard it in his voice.
They had nothing but a vague description of the most generic person.
Dark hair, dark eyes, short. Cyrus promised to get a sketch artist to work with Wren and see if they had a match in any of their databases, but Wren’s gut told him they’d find nothing.
Whoever that man was, he’d used them and left with what they were after. Just another person pretending to be a friend while holding a knife at their back.
Exhaustion swept over Wren like a tidal wave. He tuned out the voices of their teams trying to come up with solutions or plans, going over everything they knew from every imaginable angle.
He got out of his bed, Blu cradled to his chest, and inched toward Teddy’s. Careful of the tubes and the wires stuck to him, he lifted himself onto the bed and curled into a ball with his forehead against Teddy’s bicep.
His pinky extended, he touched the delicate skin on the inside of Teddy’s wrist, tracing a pale blue vein as he closed his eyes.
“Come back to me,” he whispered. “I’m waiting. I’ll always be waiting.”
Teddy
He awoke to the quiet sound of repetitive beeping and soft, steady breaths against the side of his neck, a warm figure filling the space next to his left arm.
He twitched his finger and felt pain spark, radiating through his entire body.
He fought back a pained sound and ended up coughing, trying to catch his breath.
The figure next to him shifted, bolting upright, and then there was a cold glass pressed to his lips and cool water entering his mouth as his head was lifted.
He glugged it, letting it soothe his damaged throat, some spilling over the corners of his mouth in his haste.
A familiar voice shushed him, a hand petting his hair back from his sweaty forehead and dabbing at his chin as they helped him lean back among fluffy pillows.
When Teddy could finally unstick his eyes, the dim, familiar room bled into focus. This was his room. His floor. His ceiling. His walls. He turned his head. And right next to him, his little bird.
“Wren?” His voice was wrecked, hoarse and painful, but he didn’t care. He reached out to cup Wren’s cheek, to make sure he was real.
A solid, scarred hand gripped his own and Wren’s beautiful face became clearer. Tired, with purple bruises under his eye and cursemark, sunken cheeks, and chapped lips. Dressed in one of Teddy’s tops, white lock of hair unbraided and mixed with the black. But real.
“It’s me, Teddy. I’m here.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Wren shook his head, looking both adoring and incredulous. “That’s always the first thing you ask.”
“It’s always the first thing I think.”
“You’re the one laid up in bed and you’re worried about me?”
Teddy hummed. There was no point confirming a fact so obvious. “You didn’t answer the question, Little Bird.”
Wren moved his fingers over Teddy’s like he was self-soothing. “I’m fine. Better now that you’re finally awake.”
Pieces started to come back to Teddy slowly, horror and trauma that he would rather leave forgotten in the deepest recesses of his mind. His hand started to shake. “How long has it been?”
“You were out for about four days,” Wren said. “They had to burn all the venom out of your system and you were in that machine longer than I was. They weren’t sure if you were going to wake up.”
Teddy could hear the tremor in his voice, and he stroked his thumb over his cheekbone. “Of course I was going to. I wouldn’t go anywhere you couldn’t follow ever again. I promised you too many things.”
Wren swallowed thickly, lashes fluttering down before he rallied with his usual bravado. “That’s what I told those stupid quacks.”
Teddy smiled, his eyelids drooping. “That’s insulting to ducks.”
Wren blinked, then smiled, then laughed. “You’re right. Ducks are much more intelligent than those guys. I’ll apologize to the flock when I see them next.”
“Mm.” Teddy kept playing with the hair around Wren’s ears. “How did you get them to discharge me from the hospital?”
“You didn’t go there in the first place. We told them that they had to come here and bring their equipment too. Especially if they wanted a hope of us not reporting their shitty establishment for faking you being there the first time around.”
“Are you going to report them?”
“Of course.”
Teddy laughed, then winced, curling in on himself a little and yanking on some of the wires attached to him. Wren got to his knees to hover over him worriedly, making him lie back again. “Don’t push yourself.”
“Are you going to nurse me back to health?” he teased despite the pain.
“If you’re lucky. I’ve been told my bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”
“As long as you wear the uniform, I’m good.”
Wren narrowed his eyes. “You’re so lucky I can’t punch you right now.”
Teddy tugged at the bottom of his shirt. “That’s not a no.”
“Since when are you into role-play?”
He placed his hand over Wren’s stomach, spanning from hip to hip in a warm reminder. “It’s a new development.”
It was Wren’s turn to blush, pink and pretty and altogether too much for Teddy to handle. “The doctor said you should avoid any strenuous activity.”
“I thought he was a quack?”
“Language.”