Chapter 21 - Owen
The far-off buzzing is faint but insistent. I try to shut it out, but it invades my mind and refuses to let me go back to sleep.
Not this again. Safe and warm in Trina’s arms, and I have to get up and leave her. Fuck.
Stifling a soft groan, I gently unwrap Trina’s arms from my body and tuck her back in as I get up. I fumble around on the floor for my phone, finding it still in the pocket of my dress pants.
I don’t even remember taking off my damn pants. What a wild night.
Staggering down the hallway, I feel wrecked, as if I spent the night drinking heavily. I think back over the evening, pretty sure that all I had was one glass of champagne.
It must have been the talk I had with Trina. Hearing something like that is enough to fuck with anyone’s head.
As I get to the kitchen, I finally manage to extract my phone from my pants pocket. When I see the screen, my heart leaps up into my throat and freezes there, my entire body going cold from shock.
What the fuck?
I can’t believe what I’m seeing, so I race down the hallway, throwing on some clothes as I bolt out the back door. I tear through the woods, cursing my body for being slow and sluggish as I try to cover the distance as fast as possible.
What’s wrong with me? I feel worse than I did yesterday!
Even though my chest heaves, every breath full of fire, and my muscles harden into steel lumps, I keep pushing myself until I get to the infirmary. Staggering towards the doors, I slump forward, only just barely managing to catch myself by grabbing my knees.
Head down, I pant like a spent racehorse, praying for the horrible pain in my chest to ease. Blood pounds into my temples, blurring my vision and making me nauseous.
Is this how unfit people feel when they run? It sucks.
“Owen?” a voice cries.
I grab the doorframe and struggle to pull myself upright. “Laura,” I reply, seeing one of our nurses coming towards me. “What’s… happening?” I gasp.
“Owen,” she repeats, trying to lift me up. Her hands are weak and shaking, and when I look up into her face, I see her skin is deathly pale and her eyes are dull.
“We’re dying!” she cries. “It started a couple of hours ago. Patients just went critical within seconds. We couldn’t save them—”
“I can’t believe this,” I groan, willing strength back into my body. “What caused it?”
“We don’t know!” she wails. “At first it was just the people who were already sick, but now all of us are practically falling apart.”
I take a deep breath, bracing myself against the pain and forcing myself to stand tall. I take Laura’s arm and move her over to the line of chairs, pushing her into one.
“No, Owen,” she mumbles. “You’re sick, too. You have to rest—”
“The hell I do,” I growl, forcing myself to walk down the aisle. Some of our healers still look functional, but no one looks okay, and there are far too many lying still in their beds with the sheets pulled across their faces.
“How many are dead?” I ask, not expecting an answer.
“Too many,” a soft voice says from the next aisle. I look up to see Merle.
“Can you make sense of this at all?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “You don’t look so good yourself, Alpha.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you aren’t, but I’ll let you be.”
“What can we do?” I ask hopelessly.
She shrugs. “At the moment, the one thing we need to do more than anything else is move the dead.”
I stare at her for a moment, and then I turn around slowly, casting my eyes around the entire room. Rows after rows of beds with still bodies in them assault my vision until I’m forced to cover my eyes.
“We need help. I’m calling Rhys and Shane.”
“They won’t come, Alpha,” Merle says gently. “The council has forbidden it.”
“On what fucking grounds?” I demand.
“The curse is moving faster than ever before,” she replies. “They don’t want to see Silver Valley come down with the sickness again. Shane is also fighting it in his own pack, but it’s not as bad there as it is here.”
The pressure builds up in my temples again, and I have to struggle to stay on my feet. Merle grabs a nearby table to steady herself, and I know she felt the wave of weakness, too.
What the hell is going on here?
“Just do what you can,” I say to her, walking towards the front of the hall. She nods, her face tense and drawn as she watches me go.
Out front, there is a small group of people. None of them looks well, but all of them are supporting family members who look critical. It suddenly dawns on me, the full truth of what Merle just said.
If we can’t move the dead, we have nowhere to care for the sick.
“All of you,” I say in a commanding tone. “Who is still well enough to work?”
Even though all of them look exhausted, a few of the men and women volunteer to help. I ask them to get on their phones and call in anyone they know who still has enough strength to work, then all of us start moving the bodies from the beds into an area at the back of the hall.
Every time we empty a bed, a sick person immediately takes it over, and it looks like we aren’t doing anything at all. As my body weakens and the pain gets worse, I start to wonder if I actually died at some point and have gone to hell.
The stone of Sisyphus, but it’s emptying beds instead.
As I work, I hear people muttering angrily, and it takes some time for me to realize they are shooting glances at me as if this is somehow my fault. Guilt rises in my stomach like bile, and I taste despair in the back of my throat.
I’ve failed. I’ve failed everyone.
“Alpha,” a rough voice says.
I look up to see Jesse standing in my path. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, and his skin looks dull, with a yellow sheen.
“Janice is dead,” he croaks. “Would you like to tell me again how your witch wife saved her?”
“Jesse,” I say, trying to sound comforting. “It isn’t Trina’s fault—”
“The hell it isn’t,” he rasps, his breath becoming short. “Since she arrived, things have gone from bad to worse, and now it’s critical. How long are you going to let this go on?”
We stare at each other, and I know that if we weren’t sick, he’d call the alpha’s challenge on me, and I wouldn’t blame him one bit.
Whatever I personally believe, they have the right to their opinions and to challenge me. I can’t keep pretending Trina isn’t part of this, because she is—it’s the whole reason I married her!
Before I can wallow in that misery, Jesse looks up, a flash of anger bringing him back from the brink of exhaustion.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” he growls.
I follow his gaze and see Trina entering the hall. Even after what I just heard, all I feel is relief.
After what we’ve shared, I can’t possibly believe she’s responsible for this.
I make my way towards her, watching her stop by each bed, putting her hand on people’s foreheads and trying to revive them the same way she did with Janice. The more she tries, the more upset she gets, and when I reach her, I quickly rush her outside.
“Trina, you shouldn’t be here,” I say. “The pack think you’re responsible for this.”
Tears rush down her cheeks, and her eyes turn wide and frightened. She grabs my hands in a death grip, her face paling until she looks almost as bad as the cursed people.
Can she get sick, too? How does this thing even work?
“Owen, I think I am responsible,” she cries softly. “I did this.”
“What?” I ask, my throat so tight I can barely speak. “What are you talking about?”
“I did a spell last night,” she chokes out. “While you were asleep. It was supposed to bind us together and cure the curse, but something went wrong.”
I take a quick step back, yanking my hands away from her.
“You did magic on me… while I was asleep?” I growl.
“Yes,” she cries. “I’m so sorry, I thought it would help.”
“Does it look like it helped?” I yell. “Do you see what’s happening in there?”
“Yes,” she sobs. “I went over the spell again this morning. There was black magic in it, and I didn’t realize it at the time. I can fix this, I promise. You just have to let me—”
“No!” I almost scream. “No more magic! For fuck’s sake, look at what you’ve done.”
“I healed someone with my magic before,” she says softly. “I can do it again. Just let me try.”
“You healed no one,” I say quietly. “Janice is dead. What you did was worse than nothing.”
“Please,” she begs, reaching out for me. “I know what to do now. Just let me—”
“No,” I reply, my voice still quiet but dripping with menace. “You are not to do any magic, ever again. Do you understand me? You’ve done enough damage. I’m too tired and sick to deal with this now—especially when I’m still counting the dead. Go home, and I’ll speak to you later.”
“Owen, please,” she cries, and I’m almost moved by her big, beautiful eyes and tear-streaked face.
Almost.
“Get out of my sight,” I say with finality. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
I turn my back on her, walking back into the hall. I immediately go back to moving the bodies and freeing up beds. To my relief, the flow finally stops, and no more sick people are brought in. Everyone already there stabilizes, but they’re still touch-and-go.
I collapse into a chair by the doors, wiping my face with a cool, wet rag. My entire body feels weighted down, almost impossible to move. My joints ache with pulsing waves of pain.
“Owen,” Merle’s voice breaks through my exhaustion. “Go home.”
“No,” I protest. “I have to stay—”
“All of us who have been here since morning are going home to rest,” she explains. “There are enough people here now to tend the sick ones, and no more cases have come in for a couple of hours. The last thing this hospital needs is more of us dropping in the aisles.”
Grudgingly, I agree and walk out the front doors with her. I’d like to call the council and scream at them, but I don’t have the energy, so I just turn towards home.
Every slow step brings me closer to confronting Trina, and the idea fills me with dread. My love for her twists in my chest, almost ripping my heart in two as my anger flares at the same time.
I know we have to work through this somehow, but I’m more afraid of magic than I’ve ever been.
I push the back door open and go inside, immediately noticing how quiet and empty the house feels. A hint of anxiety seeps through my pain, and I try to brush it off.
She’s here. Of course, she’s here.
I rush through to the kitchen, but it’s clean and empty, the tulips I bought for her a couple of weeks ago dying slowly in their vase. I look at the drooping flowers, a feeling of loss welling inside me that hurts worse than every other thing I’ve lived through today.
With heavy steps, I go to her room, but the silence in the house is already telling me everything I need to know. When I reach the door, I’m not surprised to find the room empty. Not just of Trina, but all her bags and belongings, too.
Well, she got what she wanted. She finally escaped me.
I wonder where she ran off to? Do I even care?
Once the last question drifts through my mind, a searing pain cuts through my chest, and I crumple against the wall, my legs giving out as I slide to the floor.
My chest feels empty, and I can’t even feel my heart beating.
All I can feel is heavy, aching loss, as if my ribs are being slowly crushed from the pressure of my heart breaking.
Trina, no… Don’t go.
I struggle with myself one last time, trying to tell myself that she’s a witch, and I should never have trusted her, and this is all for the best. As hard as I try to believe that, images dance through my mind of Trina’s beautiful smile, the sound of her laugh, and the feel of her in my arms.
I have to admit the truth, to myself and to her, even if she’s no longer here to hear it.
“Trina,” I whisper. “Please don’t go. I love you…”