Chapter Thirty Three
“He’s not getting any better,” Brooks said as we sat around Dallas’s hospital bed. “Even with the doctor’s interference it just looks like he’s wasting away.”
Ever since his admittance to the hospital four days ago, Dallas hadn’t woken up once.
He was still breathing on his own, for now, but judging by the look on the doctors faces an hour ago when they had come to check in on him I was pretty sure the ventilator wasn’t that far off.
It was all bullshit. This entire situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
We should have all been with Lennon as she finished out the campaign with her mother and then figured out what we wanted to do from there, but here we were stuck in a hospital room watching our pack mate waste away from a rare sickness.
All because Athena Holloway didn’t want to give her daughter up. I’d seen it on her face that day. The panic at the thought of loneliness and the idea of not being the most important person in the world to Lennon.
Which, on one hand, I understood.
Being loved by someone like Lennon was like being loved by the sun. Who would want to share that kind of warmth with others?
And Athena had been lucky so far that Lennon had shown very little interest in romance or packs before meeting us.
But now that she had, instead of getting therapy or learning how to cope like a normal human being she was using her power to keep us apart at the detriment of Dallas’s health and Lennon’s happiness.
Which was, again, complete and utter bullshit.
“She knows this is happening,” I said with an angry snort. “If Farrow knows about his separation sickness, there’s no way she hasn’t connected the dots.”
“We told him about the bonds, I doubt Lennon has told her mother,” Maverick pointed out. “The brain will go through hoops to deny something it doesn’t want to think about. If she acknowledges our bonds, then she has to also acknowledge that she will have to let go of Lennon eventually.”
“She needs to let go. Lennon’s almost thirty for crying out loud,” Brooks grumbled around Dallas’s fingers as he pressed his twin’s hand to his mouth.
The sound of a sudden commotion out in the hallway drew my attention from Dallas’s sleeping face.
“Ma’am, you can’t go in there.”
“Try and stop me,” a familiarly stubborn voice said and the curtain in front of the door was yanked open and there she stood with my father behind her. Her chest was rising and falling heavily and her cheeks were flushed as she stared at us with wild eyes.
“Lennon?” Maverick gasped like he was seeing a ghost.
The nurse who had told her she couldn’t come into our room was trying to pull on her arm, probably not recognizing Lennon’s face, and Lennon yanked her way out of her coat, slipping her arms out and hurrying into the room and straight to Dallas’s bed.
“Oh.” She gasped as she cupped his gaunt face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his, her blonde hair falling in a wave around their faces and obscuring them from us. “I didn’t know, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I told the nurse who looked about two seconds away from sumoplexing Lennon out of the room. “She’s our omega.”
Just saying those words again sent a tingle of warmth through my body.
Looking over at my father, I shot him a questioning look.
“How?” I asked quietly as I watched Lennon bathe Dallas’s face in tears as Brooks rubbed circles down her back.
“I told her what was going on and she burst into a cabinet meeting and threw a tantrum the size of Texas,” my father said, sounding very impressed with the woman in front of us.
“They’ve got her under a pretty heavy lock and key over there, Son.
Her new Secret Service head looked like she wanted to take me out when I went to speak to her. ”
“And that agent is here now?” I asked, frowning. Senators, especially family friends to the Holloways like my father was, shouldn’t have been met with animosity from a seasoned agent.
My father nodded once, his eyes meeting mine. It was clear he had already come to a similar conclusion as me. “Out in the hallway.”
Leaving Lennon’s coat with him, I peeked out to find a tall slender woman dressed in a suit just outside of the door.
“Hi, I’m Agent Adams, and you are?” I asked, holding my hand out to her.
She didn’t take it, glancing down at my hand like it was infected.
“I’m Agent Kidwell. I was on Miss Holloway’s detail before the loss of Agent Brady and I am now heading up her detail permanently.”
The way she said the word permanently told me everything that I needed to know about her.
She didn’t like me or my pack.
I examined her face a bit more closely. She looked familiar.
“Did you happen to work with us these past couple of months? On the outside security team?”
Kidwell’s overall expression didn’t change, but there was something in her dark eyes that flickered at my words.
“Off and on. I had no set space while I recuperated from the original kidnapping attempt,” she said, her eyes not looking into mine as she stared straight ahead.
“Mr. Adams?” one of the nurses said as she and the doctors got ready to enter the room. “The doctor would like to speak to you about treatment for the patient.”
I wanted to continue to poke at Agent Kidwell, the weird sense that I was missing something poking somewhere deep in my brain, but the nurse didn’t seem like she was willing to wait for me.
The doctor had already started his explanation by the time he’d made it inside, animatedly talking to Lennon who was now sitting on the end of Dallas’s bed with her hand on his ankle.
“His vitals are already rising, just like most research said it would,” the doctor was saying as I flopped down into the chair next to Maverick, my gaze meeting Lennon’s and she offered me a weak, tired looking smile.
She looked thinner than the last time I’d caught a glimpse of her on the television and the desire to go buy everything I could from the vending machine up the hallway and make her eat until her belly bulged filled me.
When all of this was over I vowed to myself that we were going to hide her away somewhere and hand feed her until she regained all of the weight that we’d worked so hard to put on her over the past few months.
“So what we’re going to do now is have you do skin-to-skin for a few hours and see if we can get Mr. Wilson conscious enough to get him to eat a meal. If we can consistently do this I believe he should make a full recovery.”
The room filled with sighs of relief.
“I only have a couple of hours here until I have to head home,” Lennon said, biting her bottom lip. “And I can’t return until after the election. That was the deal I made.”
“She’s seriously holding you to it even after you showed her the bonds?” I asked incredulously.
“Athena Holloway is the most stubborn woman in the world,” my father chimed in unhelpfully. “It’s what makes her such a good president.”
“And a terrible mother,” Brooks muttered to himself.
“Hey…” Maverick warned when he noticed how Brooks’ comment made Lennon flinch.
“No,” Lennon hurried to say, her face twisting. “She hasn’t been a good Mom to me lately. I just… she wasn’t always like this. Not when my Dad was here. He softened all of her hard edges.”
I glanced at my pack, knowing what that felt like all too well because Lennon had softened ours.
“So, when do you want to begin this treatment?” I asked the doctor who was watching our conversation with the fascination of someone who was definitely going to gossip about this with his coworkers later and I couldn’t really blame him.
“As soon as possible, the nurse will get you a gown for some level of modesty if you’d like, though skin-to-skin is really the best—”
“No it’s fine,” Lennon cut him off, already moving to take off her sweater.
“And that is my cue to head out,” my father said, pushing away from the wall. “Zeke, please call your mother. She’s worried about you.”
He leaned down to press a kiss to the top of my head.
“And Lennon, my sweet girl, please don’t work too hard and eat a full dinner tonight, you hear? I’ll see you on election night.”
“Thank you, Willis,” Lennon said, waiting until he and the rest of the people had left before she began to strip.
I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d seen her naked before, and yet I had missed the sight of it so much that I soaked in the view as she neatly folded her clothes.
“Won’t you open your end of the bond so you can feel us appreciate you, Lennon?” Maverick asked, his voice a low rumble as we watched her.
“No,” she said softly, her back still turned to us. “Not yet. Not until all of this is over and we can be together permanently.”
“Why?” I asked as she lifted the sheets and gently started to tug Dallas’s gown down around his shoulders, being careful of the wires on his arms and chest.
She glanced at us, her gray eyes filled with an emotion that made my throat tight and chased away any lust I had been feeling seconds before. “Because I don’t want you to feel how sad I’ve been.”
Then she tugged the blankets up and around her and Dallas and snuggled against his chest.
“You three should go and grab something to eat. There’s only so much of me to go around so if you all end up in hospital beds too you might be screwed,” she said, meaning it to be a joke, but her voice just sounded exhausted as she closed her eyes and tucked her nose into the hollow of Dallas’s neck.
With a sigh, Maverick and I stood, but Brooks stayed seated.
“You coming?” I asked.
But the alpha just shook his head, his eyes intent on the pair in the hospital bed. “I’m going to stay and keep an eye on them. Bring me back a cheeseburger or something?”
“Sure, man,” I said, clapping him on the back.
With one last glance at Lennon and Dallas, I followed Maverick out in the hallway, passing Agent Kidwell who appeared to be on the phone with someone.
She glanced at me as we passed, immediately hanging up on whoever she had been talking to.
The little alarm bells that had started ringing in my head earlier when I recognized her face got a little bit louder and I made a note to ask Dallas about it whenever he woke up. He was always better at making connections than I was.