Chapter 12 Silas
Silas
The call came through at oh-seven-hundred, just as the sun was breaking through the storm clouds and making everything look deceptively peaceful.
“Medical One, this is Riverside Shelter. We have a priority case. Male alpha, approximately seventy years old, complaining of chest pain and difficulty breathing. Onset five minutes ago. Patient is diaphoretic and requesting transport.”
I was already moving before the dispatcher finished talking, grabbing my jump bag and signaling to Owen, my beta partner for the shift.
“Tell them we’re rolling. ETA six minutes.”
Owen got on the radio while I did a mental inventory. Cardiac event, elderly patient, high stress situation from the storm evacuation. Classic presentation. We’d need the defibrillator prepped, oxygen ready, IV access established immediately.
The exhaustion I’d been fighting for the past twelve hours sharpened into focus. This was what I was good at. Not the jokes, not the flirting, not the performance I put on to keep people from seeing too much. This. Saving lives when seconds mattered.
Beau appeared in the doorway to the equipment bay. “You good?”
“Always.” I checked my watch. “Storm’s mostly clear, roads should be passable. How’s Sable?”
Something flickered in his expression. “She’s getting ready to leave. She hasn’t slept yet.”
“None of us have.” I shouldered my bag. “Keep an eye on her. Her suppressants are failing.”
“I know.”
Of course he knew. We all knew. Every alpha in a hundred-yard radius knew, because Sable’s scent had been getting stronger all night.
Cedar smoke and autumn rain and something underneath that made my scent-sensitivity go haywire.
I could feel her exhaustion like it was my own, could read the stress and determination and stubborn refusal to acknowledge that her biology was fighting her.
Being scent-sensitive was exhausting on a good day. During a crisis, with seventy alphas in close quarters and one omega whose suppressants were failing, it was like being underwater with weights tied to my ankles.
But I couldn’t think about that now. I had a patient who needed me.
“Six minutes,” I told Beau, and headed for the ambulance.
The drive to Riverside Shelter was slower than I wanted, debris still scattered across roads, but we made it in seven minutes. Not bad, considering.
The shelter was chaos in the controlled way that happens when disaster response is working but stretched thin.
Red Cross volunteers managing supplies, families clustered on cots, children crying from exhaustion and disruption.
I spotted my patient immediately, an older alpha sitting upright and clutching his chest while a volunteer tried to keep him calm.
I dropped my bag beside him and went into assessment mode.
“Sir, I’m Silas Vance, paramedic. I’m going to take care of you. Can you tell me your name?”
“Robert. Robert Thompson.” His voice was strained, breathing shallow. “My chest hurts. Feels like someone’s sitting on it.”
Classic. Textbook MI presentation.
“Okay, Robert. I need you to stay as calm as possible. We’re going to get you sorted out.” I pulled out my stethoscope while Owen set up the portable monitor. “Anyone with you? Family?”
“Wife. She’s over there.” He gestured vaguely. “Don’t tell her it’s bad. She worries.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Robert. Your symptoms suggest you might be having a heart attack. We need to move fast, but we know what we’re doing. You’re in good hands.”
His scent spiked with fear, and I felt it like a physical blow. Terror and pain and the desperate hope that I could fix this. My scent-sensitivity meant I knew exactly how scared he was, could read every emotion coming off him in waves.
I shoved it down and focused.
“Owen, get me a twelve-lead. Robert, I’m going to put some stickers on your chest. Might be a little cold.”
I worked quickly, hands steady despite the exhaustion. Placed the electrodes, watched the monitor light up with readings that confirmed what I already knew. ST elevation in leads two, three, and AVF. Inferior wall MI. He needed transport yesterday.
“Robert, I need to start an IV. Small pinch.” I slid the catheter in smoothly, years of practice making it second nature. “You’re doing great. Just keep breathing for me.”
I could feel Owen watching me, probably noticing that all my usual chatter was gone. I didn’t crack jokes during real emergencies. Couldn’t afford the distraction. People thought I was shallow because I flirted and made everything seem easy, but when it mattered, I was all business.
This mattered.
“Oxygen on, aspirin administered, nitro under the tongue,” I said, working through protocols with mechanical precision. “Owen, call ahead to County General. STEMI alert. We’re loading and going in two minutes.”
Robert’s wife appeared, an omega in her sixties with fear written across her face. I felt her panic before she even spoke, the scent of distress making my sensitivity flare.
“Is he going to be okay?”
I looked up from my patient and made eye contact. “We’re taking very good care of him. His heart is working hard right now, but we’re giving it help. I need you to grab whatever medication list you have and meet us at County General. Can you do that?”
She nodded, tears forming. “He’s my alpha. We’ve been bonded for forty years.”
Something in my chest tightened. Forty years. Forty years of pack bonds and shared life and love that had weathered everything. And now she was watching him clutch his chest in a disaster shelter while strangers tried to save him.
“He’s strong,” I said, gentler than I probably should be during a code. “And he’s got you waiting for him. That matters, Mrs. Thompson. That matters a lot.”
We loaded Robert into the ambulance and I continued treatment during transport.
Monitoring vitals, adjusting oxygen, preparing for the possibility of cardiac arrest. The drive felt eternal and instantaneous at the same time, every second stretched thin while my hands moved through protocols automatically.
“How are you feeling, Robert?”
“Little better. Chest still hurts but... not as bad.”
“Good. That’s the nitro helping. We’re almost there.”
County General was ready for us, the cardiac team waiting at the ambulance bay. I gave a report while we transferred Robert to their gurney, rattling off times and medications and EKG findings with the precision that came from doing this job for eight years.
“Seventy-year-old male, chest pain onset approximately forty minutes ago, ST elevation in inferior leads, aspirin and nitro administered, IV established, vitals currently stable but he’s a candidate for immediate cath lab intervention.”
The ER doc nodded, already moving. “Good work. We’ve got him from here.”
I watched them wheel Robert away, his wife hurrying alongside, and felt the adrenaline start to drain. My hands were shaking slightly, the exhaustion catching up now that the immediate crisis was over.
Owen clapped me on the shoulder. “You were good in there. Real good.”
“Just doing the job.”
“No, man. I’ve worked with a lot of paramedics. You’re different when it’s real. All that joking around disappears and you just... see things. Know things. It’s like you can read what the patient needs before they even say it.”
Because I could. Scent-sensitivity meant I felt their fear, their pain, their hope. Meant I knew when they were lying about symptoms or hiding how bad it really was. It made me a better paramedic, but it also meant I carried everyone’s emotions with me long after the call ended.
“Let’s get back to base,” I said, deflecting. “Sable’s probably got five more calls lined up for us.”
The drive back was quiet. I stared out the window at the storm damage, trees down and debris scattered, and tried not to think about how tired I was.
How much I wanted to just stop feeling everything so intensely.
How the past twelve hours had been like swimming through emotional quicksand, every person’s stress and fear adding weight until I could barely function.
But then I thought about Sable. About how she’d been coordinating this entire operation for eighteen hours straight, running on coffee and stubbornness.
About how her scent had been calling to me all night, cedar smoke and autumn rain that cut through every other scent in the building like she’d claimed space in my senses.
About how I’d watched Beau bring her coffee this morning with the same quiet devotion he’d shown for weeks, and how Dane had made sure she ate, and how the three of us had formed this unit around her without ever discussing it.
We were all disasters. Three broken alphas who’d convinced ourselves we were better off alone. But somehow, she made us want to try.
When we pulled back into the fire station, I saw her immediately. She was standing outside the command center with her tablet, coordinating with someone on the phone, her tactical jacket dirty and her short curls disheveled.
And her scent hit me like a freight train.
It had been strong before. Now it was overwhelming. And underneath it, something new. Something that made every alpha instinct I had stand at attention and demand I go to her, make sure she was safe, get everyone else away from her.
Pre-heat.
She was going into heat, and she either didn’t realize it or was trying to power through it.
I crossed to her as she ended the call. “Sable. We need to talk.”
“Not now, Silas. I have three more status reports to review and then I need to coordinate with utilities about power restoration.”
“It’s important.”
“So is making sure two thousand people have electricity.”
I moved closer, close enough that she had to look at me. “When did you last check your suppressant patch?”
Her hand went to her arm automatically, defensive. “This morning. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. Your scent is strong enough that every alpha in this building is noticing. You’re going into heat, Sable.”