Chapter 10 Elias #2
For a minute, Elias craves someone to help him bear the load—Gideon’s hand on his shoulder, or Luca’s sympathetic look instead of Finn’s stoic resolve. But most of all, he longs for Isaac’s reassurance.
For the easy certainty with which he could make even the worst things sound like part of the plan. Like this—whatever this is—might still end in something good.
It’s that desire that sets in motion the only solution. A choice that is no choice at all.
“So you are telling me that if he bonds with—” he can’t bear to say the name. “If he’s bonded, then he’ll go back to being himself. Just like that?”
“Neurologically, yes. But I am sure you are aware that we can’t measure the emotional and psychological impact of feeling rejected.”
Elias pulls the tabs off his chest, and his monitor begins a high-pitched beep.
Finn doesn’t flinch but moves to silence the alarms. He doesn’t ask where Elias is going—he’s too smart for that. As if Elias is doing exactly what Finn himself would do in this situation.
“You know where you’re going?” He pulls out his phone, already dialing. “I’ll get you a ride.”
“I think so,” Elias whispers, but he doesn’t—not really.
Not without Isaac.
He realizes that’s how it always has been.
“You’ll keep him safe?” Elias asks, blinking back the rising sting in his eyes. “Until we—I get back?”
“Of course,” Finn says without hesitation.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll let you say ‘see you soon,’ and make that call about a ride. I know just the guy. Take your time.” Finn slips out of the med bay, his voice fading around the curtain. “Hey, Artem. Did I catch you…”
Elias pulls on his shirt, then his shoes, cringing at the sour scent of fear and Isaac’s vomit. It’s not the armor he would have chosen to face a dragon in his cave, but it’ll have to do.
Finn had said to say see you soon rather than goodbye, and somehow, it makes the idea of leaving Isaac only slightly more bearable.
“I’m going, Izzy,” he whispers. “Come kiss me goodbye…”
It’s not their usual parting, but Elias presses his lips to Isaac’s fevered forehead. He presses his nose to Isaac’s temple, breathing in the lime-sugar scent he wants in his lungs until the day he leaves this earth.
“I’m going to fix this, okay? Be good.”
He doesn’t look back, not wanting the still image of his love to be the last he sees before he goes.
Instead, he clings to lighter moments from earlier in the day—laughing with Diana and Darius, squaring off with Gideon, or giggling with yet another new friend.
With those memories warming his chest, he draws the curtain open and steps into the hall.
“My friend Artem will take you—he’s already outside. Gideon gave him the address,” Finn says kindly.
“Thanks. You’ll tell him—?”
Finn nods. “If he wakes up, I’ll tell him you’ll be back.”
Elias is grateful that Finn doesn’t add that it’s unlikely Isaac will wake until Elias can bring O’Daire with him. If he can accomplish it at all.
“Don’t tell him—”
“I’ll leave that to you.”
“Thanks.”
It takes everything in him to turn away and walk toward the ER doors, but once he’s through, his pace quickens.
A brand-new white Toyota Camry waits under the portico, engine humming. The man in the driver’s seat is wearing a yellow hand-knit sweater and looks to be in his fifties.
He slides the window down with a smile. “Elias? I’m Artem. Dr. Merritt says you might need a ride.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’m not sure exactly where I’m going, though.”
“Don’t worry about that. I know the way.”
Elias slides into the front seat, wishing—not for the first time—that Isaac was here to turn this person into a new friend.
“Thanks for taking me.”
“Of course. I was out and about already,” Artem says, signaling before accelerating to merge with traffic. “It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”
Elias watches the city fly by outside the car window. People move about their lives unaware that he is about to do something that will change his and Isaac’s lives forever.
Anxiety swoops and soars in his stomach, reminding him he doesn’t even know where to start convincing O’Daire to come back to the hospital, but uncertainty wouldn’t have stopped Isaac.
Isaac has always led with joy—with a kind of wild optimism Elias could never quite understand, except in the way you understand gravity. You didn’t have to know the science to feel it working to keep your feet on the ground.
Elias has always followed. Always behind. Always anticipating the worst, shielding when necessary, and preparing for disaster as if it were the natural consequence of basking in Isaac’s light.
And he did it gladly. With joy. With a devotion bordering on compulsion.
He hadn’t prepared for any of this. Not for a Pack Alpha who lived in the dark. Not for having to choose between a devil and a diagnosis that sounded more like a punishment than a prognosis.
Elias closes his eyes and lets the motion of the car blur the edges of his panic.
Isaac would have risked it all from the first moment. Without hesitation and without regret.
So while Elias can’t turn back the clock, he will try to move them forward toward something now. And for the first time, he’ll do the hard thing alone.
Even if it leads him to Connall O’Daire’s door and delivers Elias’s greatest treasure into the hands of the dragon.