Valek
Istole Plague's flu mask.
I found it in the kitchen junk drawer, still sealed in plastic, and pocketed it on my way out the door while the rest of the pack was unconscious in a puppy pile in their nest.
Most of them, anyway. Whiskey was off… doing whatever it is Whiskey does in the middle of the night. Crafting war crimes with nachos and whichever questionable ingredients he can find in the fridge, usually.
Although I must admit honey on nachos does, as he puts it, "slap."
Plague will surely notice the mask is missing. But that's a problem for future Valek, and future Valek has proven remarkably adept at not giving a shit about consequences when it comes to matters regarding the safety of a certain omega.
The hospital corridors are nearly silent at the witching hour. It's a skeleton crew, and none of the skeletons look twice at me. Not even the lone security officer I passed in his booth by the waiting room, playing a loud Match-3 game on his phone.
People see what they expect to see. A tall alpha in a crisp dress shirt and a flu mask walking with purpose through a hospital doesn't read as psychopath here to terrorize a patient.
Perception is a beautiful thing.
I've already memorized the layout. Checked the floor plan on the hospital's website and cross-referenced it with the news reports and leaks about Wade's admission. Second floor, east wing, Room 288.
A private room, of course, the door slightly ajar.
I push it open and step inside.
Wade Kelly looks like the pathetic alpha he is in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines and IV tubing. His shoulder is packed in layers of gauze so thick his entire arm is immobilized, and so is his knee.
Wraith did a number on him.
And so did I.
Career-ending, Eliza had said.
Heh.
I settle into the visitor's chair beside the bed and lean back, cross one ankle over the opposite knee, and pull out my knife.
Snick.
The blade shines in the blue light from the monitor beside his bed.
Wade's eyes crack open.
The painkillers have him swimming, pupils blown wide, his gaze unfocused and drifting. But when I lean forward and let the monitor light fall across my face, those glazed eyes snap to me.
"Evening," I say pleasantly.
His mouth works. No sound comes out except for a wet, strangled noise in the back of his throat. His good hand twitches toward the nurse call button on the bed rail.
I reach over and slide it just out of reach.
"We won't need that," I tell him, smiling. "This is a private conversation."
Wade makes another sound.
"Thank you for understanding. I'm here to serve you the terms of the rest of your sorry life," I begin, turning the knife in my fingers.
The blade rotates lazily, catching light, losing it, catching it again.
"You won't think about Ivy again. You won't speak to her.
You won't text her. You won't email her.
You won't send intermediaries, private investigators, family members, teammates, agents, lawyers, fans, or anyone else to contact her on your behalf. "
Wade's eyes follow the knife with a thin, reedy whimper.
"You won't mention her name in interviews.
You won't play the betrayed fiancé for the cameras.
You won't post about her on social media.
You won't allow anyone else to post about her on your behalf.
If a reporter asks about her, you'll say 'no comment' and change the subject, and you'll do it convincingly, awkwardly, to make it clear you know you fucked up, because I'll be watching.
" I tilt the knife so the flat of the blade sends a blue line across Wade's face.
"And I'm always watching, Wade. Even when you think I'm not. "
His breathing has gone shallow and rapid. The heart monitor picks up, beeping faster.
"If you violate any of these conditions," I continue, "I will find you. And I won't come to talk."
I lean forward.
"I'll start with a finger."
The knife spins. Click. Catch. Click.
"Ivy already took one. Symmetry is beautiful, isn't it?
So I'd take the matching one on the other hand first. Then perhaps the ring fingers, since you'll never need those.
" I pause, considering. "Then the index fingers.
Those are useful. You'd miss them. It would be funny if you only had the middle ones left, considering those are your favorites. "
Wade's IV arm jerks against the bed rail.
"It might even be ironic." I let out a low chuckle. "Is that the correct use of that word? English isn't my mother tongue, and Plague would bitch if I'm wrong," I muse. "Anyway." I spin my knife again. "After the fingers, I'd move to—"
Scrrrape.
I stop.
The sound comes from the window on the other side of the curtain.
Thump.
I keep my eyes on Wade.
"I'd move to your face. Carve your mouth just like Wraith's."
THUMP.
Louder this time.
I ignore it. Must be a raccoon.
"Only you wouldn't look nearly as impressive, what with the… general state of your teeth after I—"
The screeching sound of metal dragging across glass cuts through my perfectly prepared monologue like a chainsaw through a violin concerto.
I pause.
Turn my head.
The small hospital window is occupied by a silhouette the approximate size and shape of a bull.
The screeching sound is a belt buckle against glass.
Whiskey is wedged halfway through the gap, his massive shoulders jammed against the frame, one arm through, one arm pinned behind him. He grins at me like the idiot he is.
I fucking loathe this alpha.
"Hey," he wheezes. "Fancy seein' you here."
I stare at him, at a loss for words, the knife still in my hand.
Wade makes a new sound. The sound a balloon makes when you sit on it.
"One moment," I tell Wade with a flat smile.
The window frame groans. Whiskey grunts, twists his shoulders, and shoves. His body lurches through the gap with the grace of a boulder rolling downhill. He clears the frame, catches his belt on the latch, hangs there for one spectacular second, and then gravity takes over.
He lands on a supply cart.
The cart rockets across the linoleum. Folded towels explodes into the air. I catch a wheel on my shoe just before it rams into the door and alerts every staff on the floor as Whiskey pops up with both arms spread wide.
"Nailed it!"
Wade makes the deflating sound again.
I tap the cart away with my shoe and stare at Whiskey. "I thought I destroyed that coat in Canada," I say flatly.
"Yeah, well, Martha's the best tailor in town and I'm her favorite customer. She says so herself, every time. She worked some extra magic. So."
He kicks a bedpan off his foot with a noisy clatter and looks around the room, taking in Wade's broken body, and me sitting in the visitor's chair with a knife.
His grin doesn't falter. "You know, I was gonna do the whole threatening monologue thing, too. Had it all planned out in the shower."
"You planned a threatening monologue in the shower."
"Bro, where else do you plan monologues?"
I don't have an answer for that.
Rolling my eyes, I pocket my knife and get up to kick the rubber doorstop into the bottom of the door. If the staff somehow didn't hear the crash, surely they heard him kick a fucking bedpan.
He'd better make this quick.
Whiskey grabs a plastic chair from the corner, drags it across the floor with an even louder screech, and drops it beside mine. He sits down, props his elbows on his knees, and leans forward to fix Wade with a stare that is, for once, completely devoid of humor.
"Hey, Wadey boy," he says. "Remember me?"
Wade's eyes, already wide with terror, somehow get wider. His good hand claws weakly at the sheets. The heart monitor is doing double time now.
"Cool. Good talk." Whiskey cracks his knuckles. "So here's the thing. My buddy Val here is great at the whole serial killer threat thing. Really. Top tier scary shit. But I'm more of a freestyle guy, so I'm actually gonna improvise."
He leans closer.
"If you ever go near Ivy again, I will personally rip your spine out through your asshole.
You'll have to shit through a straw. And I know that sounds anatomically impossible, but I spent four years in the Marines and I've seen some wild shit in the field, Wade.
Shit that would make your chewed-up shoulder and your smashed knee—" He flicks Wade's foot.
"—look like cute lil paper cuts. I could make it work. "
Wade croaks in fear.
I hear voices in the hall. I brace my hand on the door for good measure, spreading my fingers against the wood. "The spine thing is a bit much."
"Not if you shove your arm up there like Kermit the Fuckin' Frog, get a good grip on the coccyx and just—" He mimes a yanking motion with his thumb and fist with a slurping sound that ends in a loud POP.
Wade screams into his own mouth.
The door rattles agaisnt my hand.
"Hello? Mr. Kelly? What was that sound?" A muffled voice. Female, beta, and more irritated than distressed.
The handle jiggles. The nurse on the other side puts her weight into it and accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Knock knock knock.
"Mr. Kelly? Can you hear me? Are you alright?"
Wade opens his mouth.
"He's fine," Whiskey calls out cheerfully. "Just having a nightmare about his spine getting yoinked through his ass, Mortal Kombat style. You know how painkillers are."
"Does that even happen in Mortal Kombat?" I ask him, frowning.
Whiskey waves me off. "Details, schmetails."
"Who is that?" the nurse demands.
"You should probably hurry this up," I tell Whiskey.
He ignores me.
"Where was I?" He taps his chin, looking at the ceiling. "Oh, right!"
He leans so close to Wade's face that their noses are practically touching, and Wade tries to shrink into his pillow so hard I'm surprised he doesn't manage to phase through the mattress.
"After your pro-bono spine removal surgery, I will make your life so fucking miserable, you'll wish you'd fucking died.
Every time you try to rebuild your reputation, I will be right there with a highlight reel of every shitty thing you ever did in your sad little life.
I will humiliate you until we're a hundred years old and you give up the ghost, and the last thing you'll hear isn't angel choirs, it'll be me.
With a fucking megaphone. Chasing your ass into hell. "
His voice has been climbing steadily throughout this speech. Whiskey has one volume setting, and it's bouncing off every sterile surface in this hospital room like he's performing for the cheap seats.
He doesn't need a fucking megaphone.
More rattling from the door.
"Are you finished?" I ask Whiskey.
"One more thing bro—"
"No."
I step away from the door, grab the back of Whiskey's coat collar with my free hand, and haul him off the chair.
"Hey—HEY! I wasn't done!" Whiskey protests as I drag him toward the window. "I had a whole bit—"
"Out."
I shove him headfirst through the window.
To his credit, he doesn't scream.
He does, however, make a sound like a Saint Bernard being squeezed through a mail slot.
The loud thud from outside is deeply satisfying.
Behind me, the door stutters open, slowed down by the doorstop. I don't turn around as I grip the window frame, swing my legs through the gap, and drop two stories into the landscaped hedge below.
The landing is clean. Knees bent, weight distributed, barely a sound. Years of practice.
Whiskey is not so fortunate.
He's sprawled facedown in the mulch bed beside the hedge, groaning into a decorative shrub. One arm is tangled in the branches. The newly repaired coat I had filleted in Canada is now ripped from collar to mid-back where the window latch claimed its pound of flesh.
"Ow," he says into the dirt.
I straighten my shirt, brush mulch off my sleeve, and start walking.
The hospital property backs up against a thin strip of woods that separates it from a residential street. I slip between the first row of trees without looking back, my stride long but unhurried despite the distant sound of voices from the window above us.
Whiskey scrambles to his feet behind me. I hear the crash of him extracting himself from the hedge, the heavy thump-thump-thump of his boots as he jogs to catch up.
He falls into step beside me like we're out for a casual evening stroll and he didn't just squeeze through a hospital window twice to threaten to extract a man's spine through his ass.
"Dude," he pants, grinning so wide I can see every one of his teeth in the moonlight. "That was fucking sick."
He holds up his fist.
I look at it.
Look at him.
Keep walking.
His fist hangs in the air between us. He keeps it up, jogging beside me with his arm extended, the fist hovering in my peripheral vision like an overeager satellite.
"Come on, man! Don't leave me hanging."
I leave him hanging.
"That's cold, bro," he says, finally dropping his hand, but the grin doesn't fade. He shakes out his arms and rolls his neck, cracking it. "How the fuck did you get here, anyway? I didn't see your car in the lot."
"I walked."
"You walked?" He stops mid-stride, then catches back up. "That's like… three miles from the pack house."
"I grew up in a walkable city."
"It's freezing out."
"A significantly colder walkable city."
"In the middle of the night."
"I prefer it."
"To what? Daylight? You a fuckin' vampire bro?"
"To being seen. To leaving evidence." I stop walking and turn to face him. "Did you drive? They'll have your license plate on the security cameras."
Whiskey waves a dismissive hand. "Nah, man. I took a taxi. I'm not stupid."
"You took a taxi," I repeat slowly, "to a hospital where you planned to threaten a patient, and then you climbed in through a second-story window."
"Yeah. I paid cash though, and the taxi dropped me off at the gas station across the street.
And to be fair, I had the help of a maintenance ladder.
Which, by the way, was way easier than the window.
They really gotta make those windows bigger.
Those are omega-sized windows, betas at best. I feel discriminated against. I'm gonna file a complaint. "
I close my eyes, squeezing the bridge of my nose.
The headache that's been building since this alpha first opened his mouth in my general vicinity on the first day we met pulses behind my left eye.
It's no wonder Thane suffers from migraines.
The truly horrifying thing is that it's not the worst plan I've ever heard.
Whiskey is, unfortunately, not stupid.
He's just Whiskey.
And somewhere in the past five minutes, something changed. A hairline fracture in the wall I keep between myself and everyone else.
There's a strange tugging feeling at the base of my sternum. It's warm and foreign and deeply fucking unwelcome, like a fishhook sinking into muscle I didn't know I had.
The beginning of a pack bond.
Wonderful.
I open my eyes.
Whiskey's still grinning at me, leaves stuck in his collar, his coat flapping open to reveal red plaid flannel that matches the stupid pants he wore to the fucking PR meeting.
"So," he says. "We walkin' back together, or what?"
I turn and start walking.
He bounds after me.