Chapter 22
Luca
Blake goes down in my arms.
For one terrible second, I don't understand that he's falling.
His hand misses my shoulder, his mouth moves around a sentence he can't finish, and then his weight comes forward so fast I have to drop the tablet and catch him with both arms. He's heavier than I expect, not because he's heavy, but because he's not helping me at all.
His body folds against mine, all the strength gone out of him at once, and the sound that leaves him isn't a word.
I get one hand behind his head before he hits the floor.
I don't know how. I only know my knees slam into the carpet, pain flashing up my legs, and Blake's shoulder lands against my chest instead of the wall.
His glasses are crooked. His face has gone gray around his mouth.
His eyes are half-open, unfocused, and his breath comes in a shallow, broken pull that makes every part of me go cold.
"Blake," I say, and my voice is already wet with tears. "Blake, look at me."
For a heartbeat, the old terror opens under me.
It's the same dark place my body remembers from before this family, the place where fear meant silence, where surviving meant going small and still and waiting for someone else to decide what happened next.
I feel it reach for my throat. I feel my lungs try to close around it.
Then Blake's head shifts in my lap, and the fear changes.
I'm not the one trapped this time. Blake is, the one who taught me how to name panic without apologizing for it.
The one who put his hand over my shaking fingers and told me my no counted even if my voice broke.
The one who stood between me and Dorian five minutes ago with a body that was already struggling and a voice so cold Dorian backed away.
I can't freeze while he's on the floor.
"Help!" I shout, and the sound tears out of me raw enough that it hurts. "Luther! Maceo! Grayson, help!"
My hand goes to Blake's chest, palm flat over the place where his heart should feel steady beneath his shirt.
It's not steady. It jumps under my hand, then stutters, then gives a hard uneven thump that makes me sob once before I bite the sound back.
His monitor chirps against his skin, sharp and fast, and I press my other hand to his cheek because his skin's too cold.
"You stay with me," I tell him, trying to make my voice the one I use at Ember House when an Omega comes apart in front of me and my own fear can't be the loudest thing in the room. "Blake, listen to me. You're flat. You're breathing. I've got my hand on your chest. You're not doing this alone."
I fumble for my phone with fingers that don't feel like mine.
The first attempt slips. The second gets the screen open, but I can't make my thumb hit the right number because I'm crying too hard and Blake's breath catches in a way that makes the hallway narrow around us.
I put the phone on the floor and hit emergency call on speaker.
The dispatcher's voice comes through calm and distant, and I give the address too quickly the first time.
I force myself to repeat it. Private conference floor.
Cardiac history. Collapse. Consciousness altered.
Breathing but wrong. Monitor alert active.
I don't know where those words come from, but they come, and when the dispatcher tells me help's being sent and asks whether Blake's on his back, I'm already shifting him the rest of the way down.
"I'm getting him flat," I say, and my voice breaks on the last word because moving him makes his head roll toward me in a way that looks too lifeless. "I've got him. I've got him."
I ease his shoulders to the carpet and keep one hand under his neck until I can settle him safely.
The dispatcher tells me to keep his airway clear, watch his breathing, stay on the line, and not give him anything by mouth.
I repeat each instruction under my breath as if saying it makes it stay in my hands.
Blake's lips part. His breath scrapes in again, shallow but there, and I bend close enough that my hair falls against his cheek.
"Don't you dare," I whisper, then say it louder because command feels better than begging and begging's all I've got underneath it. "Blake Keller, don't you dare."
Footsteps hit the hallway before I can say more.
Luther reaches us first, moving so fast that the air changes around him.
He drops to his knees on Blake's other side with one hand already reaching, then stops himself when he sees Blake flat on the carpet and my palm pressed to his chest. His face isn't empty.
I wish it were. His fear's right there, naked and furious, and for half a second I see the exact moment he wants to pick Blake up and carry him out by force.
"Ambulance is coming," I tell him before he can ask, because if he asks in that voice, I might fall apart. "They said ten minutes. He's breathing. It's wrong, but he's breathing."
Luther puts two fingers to Blake's neck, careful not to move him.
His other hand braces on the floor beside Blake's shoulder, and his scent pushes hard enough that I feel it in my teeth before he drags it back.
"Quentin said if we managed the stress," he starts, and then he cuts himself off like the words've burned him.
His fingers stay at Blake's pulse. His eyes don't leave Blake's face.
"I watched him take the lunch dose. I gave it to him.
He ate. He sat down afterward. He was doing what he was supposed to do. "
"We did everything," I say, and it comes out too loud, too wet, but my hand stays flat on Blake's chest because the dispatcher told me to watch the rise and fall.
"He took the morning pills too. I watched him swallow them.
He ate because I put the plate in his hands, and he slept in the Nest, Luther.
I curled up against him last night and listened to his heart.
It was steady. I checked. I kept checking. "
Luther's face twists, and the sight of that nearly undoes me.
He's the protector. He stepped in. He held the line after the walk pact, after the missed dose, after all of us admitted we had to stop letting Blake hide the cost. Luther made the plates.
Luther watched the medication. Luther took the laptop out of Blake's hands more than once and stood there until Blake stopped arguing with his eyes.
He did the thing an Alpha's supposed to do when the person he loves is breakable.
He protected him, and Blake's still on the floor.
"I know," Luther says, but his voice has gone rough. "I know, sweetheart. You did. He did. We all did."
"Then why's this happening?" I ask, and I hate how young it sounds. I hate that everyone can hear me ask it. I hate that I'm crying hard enough for tears to fall onto Blake's shirt while my palm keeps feeling that wrong rhythm under his ribs. "Why's this happening if he took them?"
The dispatcher asks something through the phone, and Luther answers because I can't. He gives Blake's age, medications, cardiac history, what he knows of the monitor alert, the time of collapse.
He's shaking. I can see it in the hand he keeps flat beside Blake's shoulder, but his voice stays clear enough to be useful.
That makes me cry harder because I know what it costs.
Grayson arrives next with security behind him, then turns immediately toward the man hovering at the hallway entrance.
"Private elevator. Now. Clear the lobby and bring the paramedics straight up when they arrive," he says, not loud but sharp enough that the guard moves.
Grayson comes down beside me after that, one hand settling between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, while his eyes flick over Blake, Luther, the phone on the floor, the tablet lying facedown near the wall, and the empty hallway where Dorian walked away.
Maceo's voice cuts in from farther back before I see him.
He's giving instructions to someone, low and precise, telling them to keep the children in the side room, close the blinds, and bring water but not crowd the hall.
When he appears, his face is pale in a way I've almost never seen, but his hands are steady.
He takes the phone from the floor, confirms the ambulance route with the dispatcher, and puts it back on speaker close enough that I can hear without letting go of Blake.
Then another phone rings.
Luther's.
For one second, nobody moves toward it because the sound feels impossible inside all this fear. Maceo takes it from Luther's pocket and looks at the screen. His mouth tightens. "Quentin."
"Speaker," Luther says.
Maceo answers and puts the call on speaker beside the emergency line. Quentin's voice comes through without greeting, breathless and hard with motion. "I saw the spike and heard the address over dispatch. I'm five minutes out, maybe less. Tell me if he's conscious."
"No," Luther says. "Breathing, but altered. Pulse irregular."
"Keep him flat. Luca, if you can hear me, keep your hand where it is and tell me if his breathing changes.
Don't try to sit him up even if he comes around and argues.
Luther, control your scent. Grayson, get air moving.
Maceo, make sure the paramedics have the medication list and the latest monitor logs. "
Everyone moves around Quentin's voice. Grayson stands long enough to open the conference room door wider and signal someone to move the decorative table out of the hall.
Maceo's already pulling up files on his phone.
Luther lowers his head for one second, breathing through whatever's tearing through him, then pulls his scent back until the air stops feeling so crowded.
I stay where I am.
Blake's breath hitches. His eyelids flutter. My hand presses harder to his chest, not enough to hurt him, just enough to feel the rise and fall because I can't trust my eyes through the tears.