Chapter 24
Grayson
Blake wakes angry, though it’s mostly exhaustion, worn through at the edges by medication and pain and whatever his heart's been forced to survive in the last twenty-four hours.
Still, it's there in the way his mouth tightens around the oxygen tubing, in the way his eyes track the monitor beside the bed like he's personally offended by every number it displays, in the way his fingers twitch against the blanket as if they're looking for a keyboard no one in this room's foolish enough to give him.
His color's better than it was when they took him behind the glass doors, but better's a word I don't trust yet.
Better still has wires taped to his chest and an IV in his hand.
Better still has Quentin's warnings sitting in the room with us like another person.
Luca's asleep in the chair pulled close to Blake's side, his cheek resting against the mattress near Blake's hip because he fought sleep until his body chose for him.
Luther's in the hallway with Quentin and Dr. Aris, getting the latest medication instructions in a voice low enough that the children won't hear the parts that'd scare them.
I stand by the window with a paper cup of coffee going cold in my hand, watching my mate wake up and decide that the fastest way back to safety's through the same door that almost killed him.
Blake turns his head toward me. The movement costs him more than he wants me to see. His throat works once before he speaks, and when the words come, they scrape. "Gray, I need my tablet for two minutes."
I set the coffee on the windowsill and don't move toward the bag on the chair. "No."
His eyes narrow, which'd be more impressive if he didn't look like a furious man held together by tape, medicine, and spite.
"I'm not asking for the merger files. I need to check whether Victor sent anything after Luther cut him off.
Two minutes. You can stand over me with a stopwatch if that makes everyone feel better. "
Rosalie, who's been half-asleep under the extra blanket at the foot of Luca's chair, lifts her head.
Her crown's crooked in her hair, and there's a crease from the blanket pressed into one cheek.
She looks from Blake to me, then to the small bag Maceo left on the second chair before he went downstairs.
I see the idea land in her face before she moves.
She climbs off the chair, pads across the room in her socks, and takes the tablet from the open side pocket of the bag.
Blake blinks at her. "Rosie."
She hugs it to her chest and backs up until she's pressed against my leg. Her little chin lifts, but her eyes are wet. "No work."
The room goes very quiet.
Blake looks at the tablet in her arms, then at her face, and whatever argument he's got ready fades before it reaches his mouth.
Rosalie's not stern. She's scared. She holds the tablet like it's something dangerous she found too close to him, and I watch the realization move through Blake in a way no adult lecture could've managed.
He can fight me. He can fight Luther. He can argue around Maceo until the room needs a flowchart.
He can't look at his daughter guarding him from a screen and pretend none of this's reached the children.
I crouch beside her and slide my arm around her middle.
"Thank you, Rose. You did exactly right.
" I take the tablet from her gently, turn it facedown on the far counter, and keep my hand on her back until she leans into my side.
When I look at Blake again, his eyes've dropped to the blanket.
The anger's still there, but it's shifted into something that hurts more.
"Gray," he says, softer now.
"No work alone." I don't raise my voice.
I don't need to. The Alpha in me has been quiet for a long time because there's been breakfasts to make, hair to braid, tears to wipe, and a house full of people who thought my softness meant I'd bend before I broke.
I'm done bending around the shape of everyone else's fear.
"That's the first rule. You don't read contracts alone, you don't answer merger messages alone, and you don't handle Victor or Dorian because you're the fastest person in the room. "
Blake's mouth tightens again, and Luca stirs in the chair but doesn't fully wake. Rosalie presses her face into my shirt. I stroke her hair once and keep going, because if I stop now, we'll all start negotiating with the part of Blake that thinks love's something he has to earn by bleeding quietly.
"Maceo gets full access to the legal and business files.
All of them. He gets version history, correspondence, notes, hidden folders, and whatever system you built because you thought calling it chaos would keep the rest of us from touching it.
Luther handles direct communication with Hale and anyone connected to the merger until Quentin and Dr. Aris clear you for limited work, and limited means what the doctors say, not what you can talk them into while looking pale enough to guilt the room. "
Blake's eyes lift at that, and there's enough wounded pride in them that I have to breathe through my own ache before I continue.
"Luca's got veto power over anything involving Ember House, the residents, his history, or language pulled from his life.
If he says no, the answer's no. Nobody asks him to justify the shape of a scar so it can fit into someone else's deck.
I control meals and rest, including mine, which means I stop pretending I can pour from an empty cup because everyone likes me better when I'm useful.
The children get truth in words they can understand.
No more leaving them in hallways to invent monsters bigger than the ones already at the door. "
Rosalie's fingers curl in my shirt. Blake looks toward her again, and his face tightens as though the rule about the kids lands harder than the rest. "I didn't want them scared."
"They were scared anyway," I say, and I make it gentle because cruelty'd be easier than truth. "Silence didn't protect them. It only left them alone with their guesses."
Blake closes his eyes.
For a moment, I think he's going to retreat into irritation because that's safer.
He's always known how to turn fear into a problem, a problem into a plan, and a plan into enough motion that no one can ask where it hurts.
His hand moves under the blanket, restless, then stills when the monitor gives a small warning chirp.
He hears it. We all hear it. Rosalie pushes closer to me, and Luca's eyes open at the sound.
Blake doesn't argue this time.
His eyes open slowly, unfocused with medication and something worse than exhaustion. "What if I don't get better?"
The words are quiet enough that I almost think I imagine them.
Then Luca sits up fast, face creased from sleep and eyes already filling, and Rosalie makes a small sound against me.
Blake swallows, his gaze fixed somewhere between me and the window because looking directly at any of us might make the words impossible.
"I felt myself getting weaker," he says, and his voice catches on the admission.
"I knew I was tired. I knew the palpitations were worse.
I thought I could hold on if I slept a little longer, or let Quentin adjust the dose, or took one more night in the Nest and stopped for a few hours.
That's always worked before. I had no idea it could get that bad.
I was just trying to get us through it."
Luca's on his feet before I can answer. Luther comes through the door at the same moment, probably because the bond pulls him before sound does.
He takes in Blake's face, Luca's tears, Rosalie tucked into me, and the tablet facedown across the room.
His expression changes in a way I feel under my ribs.
He crosses the room in three long strides and bends over Blake with both hands braced on either side of him. "I know," Luther says, and then he kisses him.
There's nothing careful in the first second of it except the way Luther keeps his weight off Blake's chest. The kiss is fear and relief and the terror he's been carrying since the hallway, all of it focused into the press of his mouth.
Blake makes a broken sound and curls his fingers into Luther's shirt, holding on with the hand that doesn't have the IV taped to it.
Luther softens the kiss slowly, the desperation easing into something gentler, but he doesn't move away.
He rests his forehead against Blake's and breathes there, close enough that Blake's got no choice but to feel him.
"We know you were trying," Luther says, voice rough enough to scrape.
"We all know. But you have to let us help before trying costs us you.
Please, Blake. The way we were strong for Luca when he needed us, the way we're strong for the kids, we're right here to be what you need.
You don't have to prove you can carry this alone. "
Blake's fingers tighten in Luther's shirt. "I scared myself."
Luca covers his mouth with both hands, tears spilling over his fingers.
I move to the side of the bed and gather him against me before his knees decide they've done enough.
He folds into my chest, shaking silently.
Rosalie wiggles between us, one hand still reaching for Blake, and I lift her carefully so she can sit against my hip.
"You scared us too," I say. My voice stays steady because that's what he needs from me now, though every word hurts on the way out. "That's why the rules aren't punishment. They're how we keep you here."