Chapter 40
CHAPTER 40
A shley
“Ashley, this isn’t healthy,” Emery implores, my hand in hers as she tries to convince me to go home and sleep in my own bed for a few hours.
We’re in Dr. Drake’s clinic, outside of the hospital-style room where Christophe continues to fight for his life.
I shake my head at the same time I brush away more tears that try to fall. One would think after three days I would be done crying, but apparently my tears are endless.
“I can’t leave him.” I sniffle, keeping my head bowed. I don’t have the strength to lift it to meet Emery’s gaze.
Shame, fear, disgust with myself, and most of all, gut-wrenching pain all war within me.
“Sweetie, you’re going to make yourself sick if you keep this up.” My sister brushes a braid behind my ear.
“Don’t.” I pull my hand free from hers. “Don’t be so nice to me,” I mumble.
“What?” Emery asks in confusion.
I shake my head and somehow find the courage to meet her gaze. “How can you be so nice to me? After I was such a bitch to you.”
Emery has been here at the hospital, almost as much as me, the past three days, caring for me and watching Christophe whenever I’ve needed to step out of the room for even just a moment.
“I would hardly call you a bitch.” She gives me a warm smile.
“That’s because you’re too nice.”
She shakes her head. “It’s because I love you. You’re my baby sister.”
My vision blurs with even more tears. I angrily wipe them away. “I’m sorry,” I nearly whisper. “I didn’t mean …” I trail off because the words get jumbled in my throat.
“It’s me that owes you an apology,” she says.
Emery’s eyes wander over my shoulder before she looks back at me with a deep sadness in her gaze. “I should’ve trusted you more.” Her smile widens. “You were always the one with the better instincts when it came to people. You knew earlier on that our adopted parents weren’t loyal to us, it was you who sensed how different we were from the people around us. I should’ve trusted that you knew Christophe better than I did.”
She shrugs. “I just always saw myself as your protector. But you’re capable of protecting yourself.” Her eyes move to the closed hospital door. “And Mother Moon provided you with a mate who put your protection above everything else. You don’t need me.”
I shake my head. “I’ll always need you.”
“Good,” she replies. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
She wraps me in a hug, her arms stroking my back. It takes me back all of those years ago to the night she held me during the night of my birthday, when it was storming outside and our biological parents never returned home.
More tears spring forward, begging for their release, but I hold them back. I let go of my sister and take a step back.
“I can’t go home.” I turn my head, looking toward the door that leads to the room where the love of my life fights for his life.
“I know,” she replies. “If it were Chance in that hospital bed, I know I’d never leave his side either.”
I look back again. “I miss him. What if?—”
“Don’t even think of it,” Ms. Elsie startles both me and Emery.
Emery steps aside to reveal Ms. Elsie standing at the end of the hallway, that usual warm, welcoming smile on her face.
“You should be home, resting.”
“Why aren’t you at home?”
Emery and I speak at the same time, going to her. Ms. Elsie was just released from the hospital yesterday. And according to Reese, it was a fight to keep her in the clinic for those two days.
The night of the Supermoon Ceremony, Ms. Elsie left right after the pack went for a run, saying she needed to prepare a meal for the pack. What no one knew is that she and Dr. Drake had suspected all along that something big was coming for the pack. They both injected themselves with an antidote Dr. Drake was able to create from some samples of Christophe’s blood when he was in the hospital.
His blood contained some of the drugs that Dr. X had created to subdue the shifts, along with the remnants of Emery’s blood he’d obtained when she first arrived that had the shifter suppressing drugs that our adopted mother lied to us and told us were nothing more than iron pills.
With that, Ms. Elsie and Dr. Drake pretended to be shocked at the lone wolf intrusion that came the night of the Supermoon Ceremony. They allowed themselves to get close enough to Dr. X to stop him, but, of course, that’s when Christophe showed up.
Dr. X, whose real name is Marvin Walters-Wright. He was a family physician turned researcher from the Northeast. He spent years gathering intel on wolf shifters after encountering a feral shifter that attacked and nearly killed him.
No one believed that he was attacked by a man who turned into a wolf, and he was admitted to an institution for a year. That must’ve spurred his obsession. Since then, it’s been revealed that he worked with doctors in upstate New York where Emery and I were raised, all the way down to Texas, seeking out lone wolves to run experiments on and try to overtake the packs.
He even had guards and security at the NSA do his bidding, which is how he was able to move shifters from the actual prison to his secret torture chamber.
Chael was the one who discovered two of the guards at the NSA headquarters were the ones who betrayed the packs.
“I’m fine.” Ms. Elsie swats our hands away. “How’s our boy?” she asks, looking at me.
“Not much change.”
Despite the gloom and doom laced in my tone, her smile widens. She runs her hands up and down my arms.
“Which means he’s still stable. Last night I checked, his vitals were strong. Our Christophe is a fighter.”
“You were here last night?” I don’t remember her being here.
She nods and winks. “Snuck in while you were asleep. Relieved Alpha Chael who was already here.”
I jut my head back because I don’t recall Chael being here the night before.
“Anyway, you both looked so adorable with you curled into his side the way you were. I even took a picture.”
She pulls out her phone and shows me the picture. My heart sinks, staring at Christophe’s long body, dressed in a light blue hospital gown, covered in the white blanket, his handsome face looking peaceful with his eyes closed.
I’m tucked into the left side of his body, my head resting on his chest, like normal because that’s my favorite spot.
“Wake up,” my wolf whimpers, calling out to her wolfmate. Even through the still image, we can tell our human and wolf mates aren’t merely sleeping.
They’re stuck between life and death.
“Well, I knew Emery wouldn’t be able to convince you to go home and rest for a little while, so I brought you lunch.” She holds up a picnic basket.
“Chicken and turkey sandwiches made on homemade croissants.”
Though I don’t feel hungry, my stomach growls. It’s on the tip of my tongue to refuse the meal, but one look in Ms. Elsie’s eyes causes me to swallow back the refusal.
“Thank you,” I say instead.
Her smile lights up the room.
Emery stays long enough to have lunch with us in the hallway, outside of Christophe’s room.
“He would love this,” I say, unthinking.
“I’ve already stored a container of soup in his freezer for when he gets home.”
Her words soothe the uncertainty that’s been coursing through me this entire time. She makes it sound as if it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll wake up.
“Well, I’ll be going now.”
“You’re leaving?” I ask, while helping her pack up the picnic she’s brought for lunch.
“Me too,” Emery adds. “I’ll walk with you,” she tells Ms. Elsie.
A part of me wants to tell them to stay, but a larger piece of my soul wants nothing more than to get back to Christophe. Both of them must sense that, because they each give me a warm embrace, kiss, and make their departure, leaving me to go back to my mate.
I enter the hospital room to the usual beeping sound that’s monitoring Christophe’s heartbeat. It’s strong and steady, which is good news.
I try to remind myself of that in spite of the fear that threatens to grip me every time I recall that it’s been almost seventy-two hours and he hasn’t woken up yet.
Nonetheless, I tuck myself into his bed, getting under the blanket with him and laying my head against his chest. I flatten my hand against his warm body as well. Seeing the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest eases the worry inside of my own chest. Though it doesn’t put an end to it completely.
“You’re still here,” I murmur out loud. “I know you’re fighting to come back to me. And I’m trying to be patient, I really am, but it would be great if you could speed things up.”
Another rise and fall of his chest is my response.
“I know, I know, that doesn’t sound very nice or patient or even kind. And I’ll wait for you however long it takes, but I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter, the way you listen so intently to me while I ramble on about nonsensical things like the butterfly effect. Not the actual theory, but the movie,” I add.
“And I miss your smile. It lights up my day. I want to hear your voice.”
“E-Even if it s-sounds r-raspy?”
My head springs up and I turn to meet Christophe’s shining brown gaze. My eyes instantly water.
But then I remember.
“Your eyes.”
I move to cover his eyes with my palm. The last thing I want right now is to bring him immense pain when he’s already in the hospital.
But Christophe grabs my wrist, stopping me.
“Don’t,” he warns. “I want to look at you.”
“But doesn’t it hurt?”
To my horror, he nods.
“My lung has felt better.”
I follow his gaze, looking down to where my palm is pressing down on his ribcage, the spot over his injured lung.
“Oh Mother Moon!” I yelp as I snatch my hand away.
Christophe inhales and then chuckles, though it comes out broken.
“I’m so sorry. I should go get Dr. Drake. He wants me to wake him the moment you?—”
“Stop.” He grabs my arm, pulling me back to the bed. “Stay with me.”
My heart pounds in my chest. The last time he told me to stay with him and not send for help I almost watched him die in my arms.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not that. I’m not dying.” His lips spread into a knowing grin. “I just want to look at you. Just us two for now.”
“What are you …” I trail off as I watch him move his body over to one side of the bed and turn on his side. He tugs me down to my side so that we’re lying facing one another.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”
He nods. “Whatever control Dr. X had over me is broken.” He reaches out to palm my face. “You broke it.”
I want to tell him I didn’t do anything, but he inches closer, his lips covering mine.
I giggle as he keeps his eyes open.
“I never want to take my gaze off of you. Not for a second.” Even as he says this, his eyelids droop heavily.
“You need your rest. Your body’s still healing.”
Dr. Drake warned me about this. He said even once Christophe woke up, he would probably need more rest and sleep over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours as his body worked to repair all of the damage those wolves did to him.
I press my hand to his neck. The ugly wound that was there when we first made it back here, is now reduced to a less horrific gash. Soon it won’t even exist at all.
“I love you. I adore staring at you. I love your laughter and the sound of your voice and the way you see things in a way I’ve never seen before. And how playful and adventurous you are.”
“You heard me.” He must’ve heard everything I said minutes ago.
He nods. “Heard everything over the past three days.” He moves a hand to my hip, resting it there.
His eyelids droop even more.
“Close your eyes,” I encourage.
He does so, but then says, “Closing my eyes is painful.”
“Why? I need to call Dr. Drake.” His hand on my waist holds me down again.
“Because I can’t see you.”
He grins.
“But at least now I have the memory of your face to carry me to sleep, though. That’s not enough, but I’ll take it. For the time being,” are the last words he says before drifting back to sleep.
I soon follow him into dreamland. But instead of the broken, restless sleep I’ve been getting for the past two nights, this one is filled with images of Christophe and me dancing underneath the moon, staring into one another’s eyes.