Chapter 13 #3
I hold that word in my head like a blade. Necessary doesn’t mean I like it.
Emma appears in the doorway, Brooke just behind her. Mac hovers farther back without Knox now, face tight with worry. Logan gives them a look, probably telling them not to crowd. They don’t.
Doc works fast. “Breathing’s shallow but present. Pulse slow, not dangerously yet. Pupils sluggish. Could be sedative. Could be cocktail. Any syringe?”
“Blaze has them,” Logan says.
“Get them in here.”
Logan turns his head. “Blaze!”
“Coming, coming,” Blaze says, jogging in with the bag. “I love being summoned like a golden retriever with evidence.”
Doc snatches the bag from him. “Stop talking.”
“See, everyone keeps saying that tonight.”
Doc studies the syringes through the plastic, then looks at Logan. “I need clean surface, light, and someone calling my hospital pharmacy contact.”
“She going to hospital?” Emma asks softly.
“No,” I say.
Every eye moves to me.
Doc glares. “You don’t get to make medical decisions for her.”
“She was targeted.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“She wakes first.”
Logan steps in before Doc and I turn the room into another fight. “Can you stabilize her here?”
Doc looks back at Olivia, jaw tight. “If this is what I think it is, probably. But if her breathing drops, I don’t give a damn whose claim is on the table. She goes.”
Claim.
The word moves through the room even though Doc didn’t say it like gossip.
Emma’s eyes soften. Brooke’s sharpen. Mac looks at Logan.
Logan looks like he wants to burn the whole clubhouse down and start over with better men.
Blaze whispers from the doorway, “Did I miss a claiming? Because usually there are snacks.”
Hammer, somewhere behind him, says, “Blaze.”
“What? Tension’s thick. I’m helping.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
Doc starts setting supplies on the tray. “I need space.”
I don’t move.
He doesn’t look up. “I said space, not exile. Stand there and glower if it keeps you from breaking furniture, but if you interfere, I will sedate you next.”
Blaze makes a choking sound like he’s trying not to laugh.
I ignore him.
Doc works. Minutes stretch. He checks her breathing again, pulse again, blood pressure, oxygen.
He mutters to himself, curses at the syringes, asks Logan for details while Logan gives him the trimmed-down version.
Van. Grab attempt. Injection. Unknown hired men.
Target list possible. The room gets colder with every fact.
Olivia doesn’t wake. Her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
I count. I can’t stop.
At some point, Brooke steps closer to the doorway, not crossing into the room. “Cobra.”
I glance at her.
Her voice stays quiet. “When she wakes up, she’s going to be terrified.”
“I know.”
“She may not remember everything.”
“She’ll remember enough.”
“Maybe.” Brooke’s gaze shifts to Olivia. “But waking up here, surrounded by men, with you standing over her like that…”
I look at Brooke fully now.
She doesn’t flinch. “She’ll need calm,” Brooke says.
“I’m calm.”
Blaze coughs. “That is a fascinating interpretation.”
I don’t look away from Brooke.
She looks sad for half a second, then it’s gone. “You’re controlled. That’s not the same.”
The words land somewhere I don’t want them. Controlled is what I have. Calm is for people who grew up with doors that opened normally and hands that didn’t mean pain.
I don’t say that.
Brooke seems to hear it anyway. “I can sit with her,” she says. “When Doc is done. I won’t touch her unless she asks. I won’t crowd her. But if she opens her eyes and needs a female face first, I can be that.”
My first answer is no. It’s already there. Ready. Then I look at Olivia. Unconscious. Drugged. Taken from a street. Hauled into an MC clubhouse by a man who just killed the night around her with his bare hands. Brooke is right.
I hate it, but she is.
“You sit where I can see you,” I say.
Logan exhales like he’s been holding a breath since I carried Olivia through the door.
Brooke nods once. “Okay.”
Doc points at the chair near the wall without looking up. “Then sit there and be quiet. Everyone else out except Cobra, Brooke and Logan.”
Blaze points to himself. “I’m excellent in medical emergencies.”
Doc looks at him.
Blaze nods. “Leaving.”
The hallway clears slowly, reluctantly. Emma touches Brooke’s shoulder once before she goes.
Mac whispers something to Logan that I don’t catch, and he answers with a nod.
Hammer stays near the hall, probably guarding the door.
Joker is nowhere in sight, which means he’s downstairs with the men who tried to take Olivia.
Good. Let him be exactly what his name promises.
Doc gives Olivia something through a syringe, then keeps monitoring. “This should help counter some of the depressant effect if it’s the class I think it is. If it’s not, we watch and adjust.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Could be minutes. Could be hours. Depends what they gave her, dose, weight, tolerance.”
“She’s too still.”
Doc’s gaze flicks to me. “She’s drugged.”
“I know.”
“Then stop looking like you’re about to shake her awake.”
Blaze would’ve liked that one.
I don’t.
Logan stands near the foot of the bed, quieter now. The argument isn’t over. It’s waiting. He knows it. I know it.
But for now, Olivia breathes. And I stand beside her bed. Not asking why. Not questioning what she is. Not dressing it up in words that make it easier for everyone else to swallow.
The claim is already done.
It happened on a cold street before I knew her name. It happened when she dropped and the world narrowed to the men who touched her and the body I lifted from the pavement. It happened before I carried her through these doors. Saying it to Logan didn’t make it true. It only made the truth audible.
She’s mine.
And now everybody knows it.