Chapter 51 – VALEK
Chapter
Fifty-One
VALEK
My rental car purrs as I drive through Northwyke.
Black, of course. I've always preferred vehicles that disappear into shadows, that don't draw unnecessary attention like I do with my nearly white hair and silver eyes.
Though in this quaint town with its perfectly maintained storefronts and colorful cars and cheerful pedestrians, a sleek black sedan stands out in another way.
Like a raven among pigeons.
My fingers drum against the leather steering wheel. The situation is deteriorating faster than I anticipated. Falling apart at the seams, really.
She's not going to make this easy.
I know that much.
My jaw clenches hard enough to make my teeth ache. The butterfly bandages on my temple pull with the movement as I accelerate through a yellow light, earning a loud honk from a truck and my own middle finger in return.
I ignore my phone buzzing in the cupholder. I'm sure it's the coach again. He's been up my ass since I left the Ghosts' pack house. Wants to know where I am and what I'm doing.
Little does he know I don't answer to him.
Or anyone, for that matter.
The hospital comes into view through the leafy trees ahead, its H-sign glowing blue against the gray sky. I pull into a spot near the emergency entrance and take a moment to collect myself and arrange my hair so the stark strands fall forward over the small white bandages at my hairline.
Here goes fucking nothing.
The hospital's automatic doors whoosh open and the receptionist does a double take when she sees me.
I shift the small white box in my hands, careful not to jostle its contents.
The last time I was here when I was just a whelp, I knocked out their security guard.
In fact, it was the very one leaning against the desk, talking the receptionist's ear off.
He still has the same thick mustache that looks like a furry caterpillar.
Quaint.
I slip through the doors leading to the hospital rooms when a CNA comes through them, ignoring the bitching from the guard on my way to the elevator.
The numbers blur together as I punch the button for the third floor, bracing my other hand on the sleek metal wall to steady myself.
Guess I'm still getting occasional double vision from getting my skull smashed by a fire extinguisher.
The thought makes my lips curve into a slight grin. At least the persistent ache makes me feel like I'm not an entire country away from the omega I can't stop thinking about, even now.
The elevator ride feels endless. An elderly couple gets on at the second floor, the woman clutching her husband's arm as they talk quietly about a friend they're here to visit.
They both step subtly away from me, that instinctive recognition of a predator even when it's dressed in designer clothes and standing perfectly still.
The third floor is busier. Voices drift from various rooms. Some laughing, some crying, all that messy human emotion that hospitals concentrate into a thick miasma. I navigate through it like swimming through syrup, each step deliberate.
My pulse picks up in the enclosed space, surrounded by scents and sounds that bring me back to darker days. The wound on my head throbs with every heartbeat.
Every throb reminds me of her.
So does every fucking fire extinguisher.
Room 314. The door's ajar, and I can already hear the argument from the hallway.
"—absolutely ridiculous policy!"
"Ma'am, hospital regulations require—"
"Don't you 'ma'am' me, young lady! I've been walking on my own two feet for twice as long as you've been alive!"
I push the door open to find chaos.
My adoptive mother, all five-foot-nothing of her, sits propped up in a hospital bed with her left wrist and hand encased in a temporary cast. Her brown hair, usually carefully styled, sticks up at odd angles like she's been running her good hand through it in frustration.
She's wearing a pale teal hospital gown I know they had to force her into.
"Val! Perfect timing!" Her anger-reddened face lights up when she sees me, and something in my chest does that uncomfortable thing where it tries to feel emotions I'm not made for. I shut it down. "Oh good, you brought the eclairs! Caleb makes the best eclairs in the province, I swear."
Caleb looks up from where he's standing by the bed, still in his baker's apron that he must have been wearing when he rushed here hours ago. "Thanks for closing up the shop for me," he says to me. "I didn't even think about it when I got the call."
I shrug, setting the white box of eclairs on the bedside table beside the water pitcher. "Flipped the sign and locked up. You had customers waiting outside but they'll survive."
The nurse shoots me a desperate glance. "Mr. Carter, perhaps you could explain to your mother that she can't go home before surgery?"
"I am going home," my mother corrects her. "I'll come back tomorrow, but there are things I need to do and I'm not going to let that cow ruin my day."
"Jenny Thomas?" I sigh, already knowing where this is going.
And like I've pulled the pin on a grenade, my mother explodes into the tale.
"That conniving, underhanded, jealous bitch!
" She waves her hand dramatically, cast and all, nearly knocking over the water pitcher on her bedside table.
Rae, my beta adoptive sister, catches it without fanfare.
She's been doing this dance longer than I have.
"We're at the bake-off—the annual church bake-off, you know the one—and I'm carrying my three-tier maple cake.
Three tiers, Val! Do you know how hard it is to balance three tiers? "
I move into the room properly, noting everyone's positions.
My beta brother Caleb by the bed, solid and patient in his baker's apron.
My younger beta brother Finn in the corner chair, nervously fidgeting with a partially deflated balloon in the shape of a pink starfish.
Rae leaning against the wall, arms crossed, her face pinched as if she's three seconds away from rolling her eyes and getting an earful.
"Maple cake," I echo, settling into the too-small visitor's chair beside the bed. I'm well aware in this room full of betas, I look like a giant trying to sit at a child's tea party.
"Not just any maple cake," my mother continues, warming to her theme. "This was my grandmother's recipe, the one that won the county fair seventeen years running. The layers were perfect, Val. Perfect. The Swiss meringue buttercream alone took me four hours."
The nurse tries again. "Mrs. Carter, about your surgery—"
"And there's Jenny Thomas, lurking by the display table like some kind of pastry vulture. She sees me coming with my cake—my beautiful, perfect cake—and what does she do?"
"She bumped you," Caleb supplies wearily. We've clearly been through this story multiple times already.
"She assaulted me!" our mother's voice rises to a pitch that makes the monitors beep in alarm. "Deliberately! With malice aforethought! Her hip-check sent me stumbling, the cake went flying, and I went down trying to save it."
"And broke your wrist," Rae adds from the window. "Because you tried to catch a three-tier cake instead of catching yourself."
"It would have won," our mother insists, then turns those brown eyes on me.
The same warm brown all my siblings inherited from her, same as her dark chestnut hair, while I remain the obvious outlier with my silver-on-silver.
"Her maple walnut squares lost to mine at last month's church fundraiser, and she simply couldn't stand the thought of losing again.
She even had the nerve to spread gossip that I only added those cute little sugar rainbows to win extra brownie points with Pastor Beth because she'd just married her girlfriend! Can you believe that?"
I can believe that, but I keep my mouth shut.
To be fair, Olivia Carter is a staunch ally of the vulnerable and has never missed a Pride parade, so her intentions very well may have been pure.
I don't miss the gleam in her eyes, though, and when I arch an eyebrow at Rae to see what she thinks, her lips twitch in subtle amusement.
"Mom," Finn pipes up from his corner, "I'm pretty sure Jenny Thomas doesn't care that much about—"
Our mother scoffs loudly. "Oh, she cares!"
I catch Rae's eye again. She mouths "help me" with the desperation of someone who's been dealing with this for hours.
"When is the surgery?" I ask, cutting through our mother's building tirade about Jenny Thomas's various crimes.
The nurse jumps on the opening. "Tomorrow morning at eight. It's a simple procedure to properly set the bone—"
"Absolutely not." Our mother tries to cross her arms, realizes one is immobilized, and settles for hanging it off the side of the bed.
"You can't bake with a broken wrist," Rae interjects.
My mother's eyes narrow. "No?"
"Mother," I say quietly. I've never been able to bring myself to call her Mom, even if I've never doubted her love. "You need the surgery."
She turns that normally warm glare on me, puffing herself up. "Don't you start with me, Val. You're supposed to be on my side."
"I am. That's why you're staying for the surgery."
"I most certainly am not—"
"You are." I keep my voice level, matter-of-fact. "Because if you leave now, against medical advice, you will heal wrong."
That makes her hesitate.
"And then you'll be useless in the kitchen," I continue, watching her face shift from defiant to contemplative. "How will you defend your title at next month's harvest festival if your wrist sets wrong?"
Our mother's eyes narrow. "That's not fair. You're using logic against me."
I shrug, offering her my best attempt at a real smile. Feels like a beast baring its teeth at a doe.
"You learned that from your father," she mutters, but I can see her resolve weakening. "Speaking of which, where is that man? He said he'd bring me coffee from that place I like, not this hospital swill."