Chapter 19 Knox
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Knox
I dropped to my knees beside Lina’s unconscious form on Noah’s kitchen floor, my legs giving out at the sight of her. Gray skin, black veins spreading from the bite on her shoulder, heartbeat so faint I had to strain to hear it. She was dying. My mate was dying right in front of me.
But that wasn’t what destroyed me.
Two small children pressed against her sides, shaking her limp hands and sobbing with the kind of abandonment only children could produce. Raw, desperate sounds that tore straight through my chest.
“Mama won’t wake up!” the little girl wailed, dark hair falling across her face as she pulled at Lina’s arm. “We tried so hard but she won’t wake up! Mama, please!”
The boy was quieter but no less devastated, clinging to his mother’s other arm with tears streaming down cheeks that had my exact bone structure. My jaw. My nose. My gray eyes staring back at me from a tiny face twisted with grief.
“Mama is not waking up,” the girl continued, her voice breaking on each word. “She - she doesn’t open her eyes. Why won’t she open her eyes?”
The scent hit me then, cutting through the poison and fever and fear. Coffee and vanilla I knew so well, Lina’s signature that had haunted me for years. But mixed with it were two other scents that made my wolf go absolutely feral with recognition.
Pine and rain with hints of honey from the girl. Earth and woodsmoke with vanilla from the boy.
Our scents. Mine and Lina’s combined into two perfect little beings who were crying over their dying mother.
OURS. CUBS. OURS.
My wolf’s roar nearly brought me to the floor completely. The math destroyed what was left of my sanity. They looked about four years old, maybe a few months more. Born nine months after that night. Nine months after I’d called her a warm hole and walked away.
“Are you the doctor that will make Mama better?” the girl whispered, turning those dark eyes to me with desperate hope.
I couldn’t speak. My throat had closed completely, choked by the magnitude of what I was seeing. What I’d done.
“Please,” the boy finally whispered, those gray eyes fixed on me with trust I didn’t deserve. “Please Sir help our mama. She’s all we have.”
She’s all we have.
The words shattered me completely. These were my cubs, my children, and they didn’t even know I existed. To them I was just some stranger who might save their mother. Their whole world was lying unconscious on this floor and I was the reason for all of it.
“Oh god,” I breathed, the words barely audible. Oh god, I left her pregnant. I have cubs and she never... I never knew... Twins...
Noah scooped Lina’s unconscious form from the floor without ceremony, and my wolf snarled possessively. OURS to carry, OURS to protect, OURS to save. But my body wouldn’t move, still frozen by the reality of two small children who carried my blood and didn’t know my name.
“Come on,” Noah said to the twins gently. “Let’s get Mama somewhere more comfortable.”
I followed on unsteady legs, unable to look away from how Lina’s head lolled against Noah’s chest, how her skin had gone gray with poison. The children trailed behind us, the girl clutching her brother’s hand with white knuckles, both refusing to be more than inches from their mother.
“Mama needs the soft bed,” the boy told his sister solemnly, and my heart cracked clean through. My son was trying to be strong for his sister. Trying to be the man of their little family because I hadn’t been there.
Noah settled Lina on the guest bed with care. The children immediately climbed up beside her, curling into her sides as if they could keep her alive through sheer proximity. Their little hands petted her face, smoothed her hair, straightened the blanket over her fever-hot body.
“We’ll be right back,” Noah told them gently. “Watch over your mama, okay? Can you do that?”
They nodded, tears still streaming, and I had to force myself to follow Noah into the hallway when every instinct screamed to stay. To never let them out of my sight again. To somehow make up for four years of absence in the next four minutes.
Noah closed the door and his entire demeanor changed. The gentleness evaporated, replaced by fury that had been building for years.
“I told you,” he snarled, keeping his voice low so the children wouldn’t hear. “She was your mate. But you knew better, didn’t you? The great Alpha Knox, too noble to take a human mate.”
I reached desperately for the mate bond, trying to gauge how much time we had. It flared weakly, barely there, more like an echo than a living connection. The poison was winning. One day since the bite and she was already at death’s door.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” The words came out broken, pathetic. “If she knew she was pregnant, why didn’t she-”
Noah’s laugh was bitter as the poison killing her. “Tell you when? During the five minutes after you fucked her before disappearing? Or maybe she should have tracked down the man who called her a warm hole? Who rejected her like she was nothing?”
Each word hit its target with surgical precision. He was right. Of course he was right. What exactly would she have said? ‘Hey, I know you think I’m worthless, but surprise, I’m carrying your cubs’?
“Maybe she should have sent a birth announcement,” Noah continued, tears making his green eyes bright. “To Matthias Reed, the fake name you gave her? Or should she have shown up at our borders with newborn twins, hoping the pack that keeps humans out would let her in?”
I saw it then, why Noah was so destroyed by this. My brother who’d dreamed of finding his mate since we were pups. Who’d talked about the cubs he’d have, the family he’d build. And here I was, having thrown away everything he’d ever wanted.
Twins. Just like him and Blake. The parallel was too cruel to be coincidence.
“I know,” I whispered, my own eyes burning. “God, Noah, I know. I threw away everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Noah’s green eyes filled with tears he refused to let fall. “Twins, Knox. She had twins. Do you know what I’d give to have that? To have my mate, to have cubs, to have a twin survive?”
His voice cracked on the last word, and the connection between Blake’s death and Lina’s twins hit with physical force. Noah had lost his twin, his other half, and here I’d been blessed with twin cubs I hadn’t even known existed.
“Every day I watch you waste away from the broken bond while somewhere she was raising your babies alone. Every day I...” He stopped, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth.
Through the door, we heard small voices that destroyed what was left of my composure.
“Mama, please wake up. We’ll be good. We promise.”
“We’ll eat all our vegetables and clean our room and everything.”
“Please don’t leave us.”
I couldn’t breathe around the guilt crushing my chest. My cubs were in there begging their unconscious mother to live, bargaining with promises of good behavior, and it was my fault. All of it.
The bond flared again, weaker than before, and pure terror shot through my veins.
“She’s dying now,” Noah said flatly. “Your cubs are about to be orphans. So get your shit together and fix what you broke. You can hate yourself later.”
He was right. I could fall apart after she was safe. After my children weren’t facing life without their mother because of my choices.
I pushed back into the room and carefully gathered Lina into my arms. She burned with fever, her heartbeat erratic and too fast. The children pressed close immediately, the girl petting their mother’s hair while the boy held her limp hand.
“Is she going to be okay?” my daughter asked, those dark eyes so much like her mother’s it hurt to look at them.
“I’m going to help her,” I managed, arranging Lina more securely against my chest. Her head fell back, exposing the column of her throat, and my wolf whined at how vulnerable she looked.
The boy suddenly tilted his head, studying me with unsettling intensity. “Why do you smell like family?”
The innocent question shattered what was left of my control. Before I could answer, the girl added with heartbreaking hope, “Like Daddy?”
“Save her first,” Noah interrupted from the doorway. “Family reunion later. You know what has to be done.”
An Alpha’s bite to counteract the poison. It was the only way, had always been the only way with humans. But this one... It would also be a claiming bite. We were mates, it would immediately restore the broken bond I’d left to die. Fuck.
My hands shook as I brushed Lina’s hair back from her neck. What if it didn’t work? What if the mate bite killed her instead of saving her? She was human, already weakened to the point of death.
“She can’t consent,” I said desperately, looking for any excuse to delay what might be her final moments. “She’s unconscious-”
“She’ll be dead!” Noah roared, making both children flinch and start crying harder. “Your mate will be dead, and these babies will grow up without their mother! Stop being a fucking coward!”
He was right. I was being a coward, just like I’d been five years ago. Looking for excuses, finding reasons to walk away, too scared to take the risk.
“Please help Mama,” my son whispered, still clutching her hand. “Please.”
“We need her,” my daughter added, tears dripping onto Lina’s fevered skin.
There was no choice. There had never been a choice. From the moment I’d scented her in that coffee shop, our path had been set. I’d just been too much of a coward to walk it.
I looked at my children’s tears, at their desperate hope that a stranger could save their mother, and knew what I had to do. My canines extended, sharp enough to pierce skin and deliver the bite that would either save her or finish what the rogue had started.
“I’m sorry, Lina,” I whispered against her throat, knowing she couldn’t hear me. “For all of it. Please... please survive this.”
Then I bit down, tasting copper and salvation and the future I’d thrown away.