Chapter 30
ADAM
I was content.
I wasn’t sure how I got so lucky to have landed not only a devoted and loving husband, but now a sweet and snarky boyfriend as well. A boyfriend who was doing many things to my ego—and my dick.
Fletcher and I used to fuck all the time, but after the diagnosis that he was barren, he’d closed himself off from the grief. We’d never truly gotten back to where we were before. I never pushed, never coerced him into anything he wasn’t interested in, but damn, I missed sex.
With Fletcher, sex had almost always been intimate and loving, about sharing our bodies and souls. Sex with Sky was different. More primal, almost, like my wolf knew the Omega needed dominated and pinned down by an Alpha. It was hot as hell.
I hadn’t had them in bed together yet since Sky’s heat, but we were headed in that direction. I couldn’t wait.
After my suggestive 6-inch comment in the group chat, and ultimately deciding on what sub I wanted for lunch, I heard nothing back from either of them. I wasn’t too worried. They were probably too busy stuffing their faces and then driving home. I knew Fletcher enjoyed talking on long drives.
I texted them anyway. Can’t wait for that 6-inch ;)
Around 2:00 PM, the sound of sirens filled the air as several cop cars and an EMS vehicle whizzed past the diner at breakneck speed. Of course, everyone, both staff and customer, had to peer out the windows to watch.
“Must’ve been a big wreck or something,” Josie murmured as she wiped down a table with a damp rag. “Hope everyone’s okay.”
Something about the way she said it made my heart skip an unsteady beat. I quickly shut that thought down. No. Fletcher was an amazing driver. He was fine. They were just busy, that’s all.
I checked my phone again. Neither of them had read my text. Worries planted seeds in my mind and my heart and unable to focus on anything but my mates’ safe return, I holed up in the office to take some time for myself.
My phone rang, and my heart simultaneously leapt and sunk at the same time—because it wasn’t Fletcher’s number that popped up on the screen.
Dread filled my gut. I just knew something had happened. My inner-wolf whined and pawed at the back of my mind, worried as well.
“Hello?” I answered, my throat feeling thick.
“Hello. Is this Adam Rose?” The voice on the other end of the line was masculine and rusty, sounding more than a little weary.
“Speaking. Who is this?”
“This is Officer Deacon with the Greymercy Police Department. I’m calling about your husband.”
My stomach bottomed out. No… Not my mate. Not Fletcher. Not Sky. I choked on the words I tried to say, unable to speak aloud.
“He and another passenger were involved in a motor vehicle accident a short while ago. According to witnesses, another driver ran a red light and struck their vehicle. The car sustained heavy damage, but both men survived. They’ve been transported to Greymercy Hospital for treatment.”
Thank god. They were alive.
I all but flew to the hospital, calling an Uber immediately. I didn’t give a damn about the car. Fuck the car, we could buy a new one. The only thing I cared about was Fletcher’s and Sky’s safety. Were they okay? How badly were they hurt?
My Alpha instincts screamed at me to protect them, that I’d failed to do so by letting them go alone—but I knew that was foolish.
They weren’t birds I could keep in a golden cage.
They were people with hopes and dreams and lives.
I couldn’t control them any more than I could control the reckless driver who hit them.
I parked in the nearest, non-handicapped spot I could find and rushed inside. As I reached the front desk, I slapped my sweaty palms down on the cool marble. The receptionist jumped and looked up at me with startled eyes. One sniff told me she was a doe—a prey shifter—and I felt like an asshole.
“Can I help you?” she asked quietly.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, straightening up and rubbing at my face. “I was told my partners were in a terrible car accident. Can you tell me where they are? Or can I talk to a doctor? Please?”
Her hesitancy turned into a look of sympathy. “What’s your name?”
“Adam. Adam Rose. Their names are Fletcher Rose and Sky DuPree.”
“Let me go check, okay? I’ll take you to the waiting room and you can have a seat.” She stood and gestured for me to follow.
The doors swung inward when she waved her hand over a sensor, and I walked after her, into a large lobby with chairs and small end tables, with a TV playing the home and garden channel, its volume so low that they’d turned the subtitles on.
I sat down and took a deep breath, trying to calm my rioting heart. Everything’s okay. They’re alive. They’re okay. They have to be.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, a dark-haired man in a white coat came out and crossed the room to me. “Mr. Rose?”
I stood to greet him. “Please tell me they’re okay,” was the only thing I could utter, my throat tight with emotion.
“Fletcher is still in surgery. His wounds were more severe. Once he is stable, he will be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where he will stay for a couple of days.”
It was as if a rubber band had snapped around my chest, constricting and tightening and squeezing the air from my lungs. My Fletcher… God, I hated this.
I looked at the doctor. “What about Sky?”
“Sky is in recovery.”
“Can I see him?”
He frowned. “We don’t typically allow visitors in the recovery ward. For special cases, it’s family only. Are you his family?”
“Basically. It’s a long story. He’s my partner.” At the man’s quizzical look, I added, “I have two mates. My husband, Fletcher, and then our boyfriend, Sky.”
“I see. Does he have any family that we should contact?”
I shook my head. “No. He has a brother, but they’re not on speaking terms. Fletcher and I are all he has.
The issue is, Sky has some…quirks. He’s been through a lot of trauma and has PTSD, and I’m worried that waking up alone in the hospital will trigger an episode.
I need to be near him to make sure he doesn’t lose control. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Hmm. I suppose I can make an exception. Come with me.” The doctor spun on his heel and strode off down the hall, his shoes squeaking over waxed tile. I kept pace with him easily enough, even though it felt like my soul might leave my body the deeper into the hospital we went.
All I could think about was Fletcher and Sky, battered and broken and covered in blood, crushed inside our car. How easily they could’ve died on impact. I could’ve lost both of them in one fell swoop and then—
Stop. They’re alive. Don’t go there, I told myself.
Up ahead, the beeping and hissing of medical machinery could be heard, along with the murmur of voices as nurses handed charts off to one another, hurrying down the hall in colorful scrubs.
I looked down at myself, still wearing my Bixby’s get-up and my apron from kitchen duty. I’d never felt more out of place.
None of that mattered, though, as a shriek cut through the air the very next minute—“DON’T TOUCH ME! STOP!”—and everything inside of me seized up. My wolf howled, frantic all of a sudden, and I didn’t wait for the doctor.
I couldn’t.
I took off running towards the sound of Sky’s screams. When I burst into the recovery ward, three nurses were grabbing at him as he frantically tried to escape the hospital bed. The IV was ripped out of his arm, the machines around him screaming as he yelled at the nurses, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“Sky? Sky!” I cried out over the chaos, and Sky’s two-toned eyes locked on me. Tears spilled down his cheeks as he made a lunge for me, stumbling to his knees.
“ADAM!” A near-hysterical cry escaped him as he clung to me, his fingers digging into my sides. “I WANT TO GO HOME, TAKE ME HOME, PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, PLEASE!”
“Sir, you can’t be here,” one nurse tried to say, but I shot her an icy glare.
Another one called out, “We need a sedative in here!”
Sky struggles began anew. “N-No! No! Adam, please, please!”
“Shh,” I whispered, picking him up and cradling him to my chest. He wrapped his arms around my neck and buried his face there, shaking his head frantically. God, this poor boy. Did this place remind him of the facility? Of his past terrors? “It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m right here.”
A nurse in Snoopy scrubs came forward, a needle in hand. She eyed me, then gestured to the bed. “Sir, please. He has internal injuries. He needs to be sedated before he hurts himself further.”
“No, no, no! No more needles! Please, Adam, make it stop!” Sky broke into sobs, his tears soaking the collar of my shirt, and I was torn by my need to keep him safe from the terrors in his mind, and the need to keep him safe from the wounds of his physical self.
“Shh,” I soothed him, even as I shifted Sky’s weight so that the nurse could pull up his hospital gown and stick him with the syringe.
She pushed the plunger down slowly, and I watched the clear liquid disappear inside of my frightened Omega.
He needed to calm down. He couldn’t be panicked like this if he was supposed to heal.
I hated that I was the bad guy, even as Sky whimpered and held onto me. “I’m sorry, Sky,” I murmured, stroking his hair as his body slowly went lax in my arms. “I’m sorry. It’s gonna be okay, baby.”
As gently as I could, I laid him back down on the hospital stretcher.
Sky flopped helplessly there, gazing up at the ceiling with glassy, half-lidded eyes, his lips parted with each gasped breath.
I stood there, hugging my arms to my sides as I watched the nurses busy themselves with taking blood and reinserting his IV, hooking him back up to the machines and the oxygen.
It hurt. It hurt so goddamn badly. I hated leaving him like this, but Snoopy Nurse took me by the arm and escorted me out of the recovery ward with a sympathetic-but-stern look on her face.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “He has PTSD from medical kidnapping when he was a teenager. This is traumatic for him. He’s been in therapy for months and he’s been working through a lot, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg, you know?” I rubbed at my aching temples.
She frowned. “I’ll need to talk to the doctor, but we might have to keep him sedated until he’s healed enough to be discharged, for his own safety. We can’t have him harming himself, even if it’s unintentional.”
I nodded. “I understand. I hate it, but you need to do what’s best for Sky.”
Emotionally exhausted and feeling like the worst boyfriend in the world, I returned to the waiting room, and that’s where I stayed for three and a half more hours, until the doctor came back and told me that Fletcher was out of recovery and in a room in the ICU.
I wasn’t sure my heart could take anymore pain today, but I knew I needed to see him; if anything else, to reassure myself that he was alive and safe.
Fletcher lay in his hospital bed, bruised and battered, his left arm in a cast. There were bandages wrapped around his head. As the driver, he’d taken the brunt of the damage, but it wasn’t anything a little shifter magic couldn’t fix.
That’s what I told myself, at least, as I pulled a chair over to his bedside and sat down.
“Adam?” His voice was muzzy with sleep, his eyes barely cracked open, like that was all he had the energy for.
“Shh. I’m right here, kitten,” I told him. I took his hand in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Just rest.” He closed his eyes and sank back into the pillows. I let the weight of his hand ground me and bowed my head, my thoughts circling like vultures over a kill.
Fuck…