Chapter 42 – COSIMA #2
I move toward it on autopilot, my silk dress whispering around my thighs. The fabric's too fine for this place, too delicate. I feel exposed in ways that have nothing to do with the amount of skin showing.
Knight makes a soft, wary sound that tears at something in my chest. I turn to look at him, and those blue eyes are pleading with me.
Don't do this.
Don't lie down on that table.
Don't let them touch you.
I wish I could listen to him.
"Stay close," I tell him instead. "Please."
He moves immediately, positioning himself near the head of the table where I'll be able to see him. Where he can watch over me.
The doctors glance at my silent guardian with clear terror in their wide eyes, but they don’t argue with me.
Neither do my alphas.
Instead, they arrange themselves around the room.
Nikolai near the control panel where he can see the readouts, Geo by the door like one of the bouncers at his club, Raven hovering near Knight.
Knight growls softly every time Raven drifts too close to me, and I can only pray he doesn’t completely lose his shit when I slide into the fucking halo.
I climb onto the table, the movement awkward in the dress. The silk pools around my thighs as I settle back, and I tug it down as much as I can. My silver hair spills across the white cloth like a halo of my own, and I'm acutely aware of how vulnerable I look like this.
Dr. Rami approaches with the IV, and I extend my arm without being asked. I've done this before. My heart still hammers as they spray the crook of my arm with alcohol and the hard pinch of a needle immediately follows.
Somehow, I manage to not visibly wince as she adjusts the needle, fishing for just the right vein, but when I glance up at Knight looming over me, there’s still nothing but fear in those normally feral scarred eyes.
“See?” I manage to whisper to him, trying my best to smile. It probably looks more like a grimace. “I’m okay.”
He growls softly, affectionately, but he chokes on it. He reaches out, and even from a distance, he manages to lightly caress my cheek with the dull back edge of a metal claw.
My eyes flutter shut at his touch.
Breathe, Cosima.
The doctor finally slides the cool catheter into my vein and withdraws the needle. "This will just help you relax," she says, connecting a bag of clear fluid with a slight silvery tint to the line. Like liquid moonlight. "You'll feel drowsy, but you won't lose consciousness completely."
Liar.
I can tell by the way she won't quite meet my eyes.
But I don't call her on it. Because if I do, Knight will tear her limb from limb. And then everyone else in the room. So I just nod and settle back against the table.
"We're going to start the sedative now," another doctor announces.
I watch the liquid flow through the tube, shivering as a cold sensation begins crawling up my arm. Within seconds, warmth spreads instead through my chest and then my entire body. A warm bath from the inside out.
My eyelids grow heavy.
"How did you convince her to do this?" Geo's voice, rough and worried, cuts through the haze that's starting to cloud my thoughts.
"I told her the truth." Nikolai's response is quiet. "That I couldn't tell her everything. That telling her directly could kill her."
Then Azarel's voice, sharp with fury from just outside the door. “You told her what?”
"That the truth could be lethal," Nikolai repeats, and there's steel in his voice now. "Would you rather I lied to her? Said everything was fine when we all know it's not?"
"You had no right—"
"Neither did you," Nikolai cuts him off. "You lost that right, fucking vryzat."
The machines whir to life. The table starts to move, sliding me under the massive metal ring that’s now spinning around me.
My breathing kicks up, panic clawing through the settling sedative fog.
Knight's rumbling intensifies, and I turn my head—so heavy now, like it's filled with concrete—to look at him.
He's staring at the machine, at me sliding under it, and his entire body is rigid to the point he isn’t even breathing. He might as well be a frozen statue, his eyes locked on me yet completely blank, as if he’s mentally somewhere far from here. Maybe in his past.
"It's okay," I try to tell him, but my words come out slurred. "I'm okay."
He doesn’t react.
And I'm not okay.
Something's wrong.
The feeling hits me like ice water, cutting through the warm haze of the sedative. Some instinct I can't name, some primal warning that screams danger.
I try to sit up, but my body won't respond. The sedative has me locked in place, paralyzed but conscious enough to know I should be fighting this.
"Wait—" I manage to get the word out, but it's barely a whisper.
Then I hear it.
Azarel, yelling. Actually yelling, his voice raw with horror.
"Stop the procedure! You’ll kill her! Stop it now!"
There's a commotion—bodies moving, someone shouting in Surhiiran—and then the sound of a violent struggle.
Through my rapidly narrowing vision, I see Azarel being held back by guards. He's fighting them, actually fighting, yelling and snarling and trying to get to me.
And Knight—
Knight is fighting, too.
Blood sprays along the wall in a crimson arc and the bodies of two guards hit the floor as he lets out a visceral roar.
But through the haze of the sedative pulling me under and darkness closing in around me, I swear I hear something else woven into that agonized cry of pure feral terror and rage.
My name.
Knight is roaring my name.