25. Addie
ADDIE
AIJA ALSI?A – PRESENCE
The medlab’s half-glass, half-wood doors loomed ahead. Fluorescent lighting beamed through its windows, illuminating the white tiled floor, white painted walls, white-clad people—white, white, white, white, white.
Mercy, seated in a plastic chair in a waiting area to the left of the entry, lifted a solemn hand in greeting.
In another life, it would be Fleur waiting for me.
In another life, neither of us would be here.
But now—thanks to Pearce and that early dismissal—I lost my chance to soar. I was instead relegated to the flitting, earth-bound nature and appropriately acrobatic lifestyle of a Swallow.
I padded up to the seats and claimed the spare one beside Mercy, ignoring the other girl in the corner with her nameless handler.
Beckett didn’t pause. He strode through the double doors to go and speak with a man in a—shocking—white lab coat. Within seconds, they were speaking heatedly, and the man cowered as Beckett’s tenor rose loud enough to hear through the glass.
“Do it!” he bellowed.
I sighed and turned to the only other person who could possibly understand how I was feeling right now. “You doing okay?”
Mercy huffed an unamused laugh. “Define okay.”
“Point taken.”
Her fingers, clenched in her lap, squeezed once then relaxed. “It’s fine, I guess. I was expecting this.” Her eyes, black in this lighting, shot to mine. “I just really hate needles.”
Snorting, I reached out and grabbed her hand, lacing my fingers through hers.
Several minutes passed while the nameless girl and her nameless handler were called through.
Several more minutes crawled by while Mercy’s handler and two out of three of mine, waited silently in the hall, staring at us both like we were seconds from bolting.
Where would we even go? And if we’d had the know-how on breaking out of this Gothic hellhole, wouldn’t we have done so by now?
The doctor Beckett was arguing with burst out into the hall, stumbling like he’d fallen—or perhaps been shoved. And judging by my lead handler's immediate reappearance just behind him, I’d have bet my last dollar on the latter.
Glasses askew, the thin, mid-forties, pencil-pusher-type doctor straightened, brushed invisible lint from his immaculate coat, and glanced between us. “Which of you is Adelaide Sinclair?” he stammered, edging away from the ogre.
“That would be me.” I squeezed Mercy’s hand once more for reassurance—hers or mine, I wasn’t sure—then rose steadily to my feet.
“Come through.”
Beckett cleared his throat, and the doctor startled. “Please,” he added quickly, side-eyeing the gargantuan with crossed arms and a stance that could rival one of the garden gargoyles’ solidity.
I frowned as I passed him, noting that he and the other two followed as well, like a row of good little ducklings.
We were led past a series of hospital-looking rooms to the exam room right down the back.
He stood at the threshold, reaching for the door so he could close it as he gestured for me to sit on the bed.
“You three can wait out in the hall while I speak to my patient.”
Beckett simply barged past the man and leaned back against the wall directly across from the bed.
“Like fuck,” Pearce spat, following suit.
“Yeah, that’s not happening, Rick.” Van patted him on the shoulder as he, too, waltzed in, pausing to explain. “Varco’s orders are strict: eyes on the asset at all times.”
“Great,” Doctor Rick muttered to himself.
I was inclined to agree.
Goodbye privacy, hello babysitters.
“Miss Sinclair,” the doctor began, pacing into the room and stopping a few feet short of where I sat. “As you are aware, Blackwing Academy requires several things from its newly assigned Swallow designees.”
“Including, but not limited to, my uterus,” I deadpanned. “I’m aware, doctor. When do we start?”
Doctor Rick blinked, evidently taken aback by my blunt candour. “Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss.” He glanced over his shoulder but Beckett refused to entertain him.
He had eyes only for me—and an intense kind of emotion sheltered within them. Not quite hunger, not quite urgency, not quite anxiety, but a cautious mix of all three.
“This is not protocol.” Doctor Rick leaned in, his voice hushed. “And it could see me fired—or worse. But you have a choice to make, Miss Sinclair.”
Brows drawn, I leaned back, away from the whispering doctor. “What do you mean?”
“I can do the surgery and life will continue on as a normal Swallow,” he pressed, leaving no doubt as to his preference on the matter. “Or I can give your handlers the phone number of a woman—a pharmacist I know—who will supply you with birth control off the books.”
I risked a glance at Beckett, still staring intently behind the doctor.
“These pills, if taken at the same time daily, will prevent any unwanted situations—”
“You mean pregnancy. If you’re going so far as to risk losing your job over what I can only assume is a threat on your life”—I shot a glare over the doc’s shoulder—“then please. Speak. Plainly.”
He tilted his head, considering me, glasses still somewhat askew.
Apparently I’d gained a modicum of the good doctor’s respect, because his features softened.
“Very well. Either way, my life is on the line whether I offer this to you or not. If you choose the pills and the Academy finds out, losing my job is the least of my concerns. But had I not offered…” he trailed off, side-eyeing the illustrious Beckett, “then a treating physician wouldn’t be in my job description anymore either. ”
“Noted. So—pills or uterus extractus.”
He blinked. “Essentially, yes.”
Well, shit. A choice I’d never expected to be given had landed like a gift in my lap, and I had no clue how to feel about its giver now.
An hour ago, you couldn’t have paid me to believe there was a decent bone in Hunter Beckett’s entire body—now I was beginning to wonder if he possessed more than even he cared to acknowledge.
Tears pricked my eyes. Not at the absurd choice before me, but that Hunter Beckett had decided to stake his own career—and life—on giving it to me.
I met his gaze over the doctor’s shoulder. His expression gave nothing away, but his eyes—oh, those jade green irises conveyed a thousand unspoken words.
“I choose the surgery.”
Beckett jerked so hard he headbutted the wall. Pearce and Lockwood startled too, the pair exchanging panicked glances in my periphery—but I paid them no heed, instead directing my words to the man who had somehow given me more than anyone else ever had.
“I have adenomyosis, so a hysterectomy was in my future regardless. It’s the only definitive cure for the disease, which, if you ask me, is a huge lapse in medical science—because the only cure for a disease that affects only women being removal of said uterus and therefore any chance of her bearing her own children is all kinds of fucked up.
” I blinked, catching myself mid-rant. The expressions on all four men in the room varied from guilty—Doctor Rick—to fury—Beckett—to sombre and morose—Deklan and Evander.
I cleared my throat before continuing. “This just saves me the years’ worth of pain before I got to that point. It’s a boon, really. A blessing.”
“What about kids?” Beckett asked, voice scratchy like he hadn’t used it in years. “Don’t you want them?”
I shrugged. “In this line of work? I don’t expect to live long enough to want them.”
A flicker of something passed over his face before he shuttered it. “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then,” I echoed, daring to give him a small smile before diverting my attention back to Doctor Rick.
“Thank Christ you said that because I was really not looking forward to explaining this—” His relief was cut short by the firm grip snapping down on his shoulder.
“Explain the procedure, then fucking go do it. The quicker this happens, the quicker we can get her home,” Pearce growled, teeth flashing.
Home was a foreign concept, but I guess that’s where I’d be staying until I could get out of this godsforsaken place—their home. Their apartment. I suppressed a shudder. I couldn’t imagine making that place my home, not after losing so much of myself inside its walls already.
I glanced at Beckett again, still stoically staring across the room.
Maybe it wouldn’t all be bad.
“Alright, Miss Sinclair. In a moment, we’re going to give you the room, and you’ll change into this gown here”—he held up a sky blue hospital gown, paper-thin and scratchy-textured—“after which my nurse will come in and wheel you on over to the OR.”
“I’ll walk.”
“You’ll—alright, then. A nurse will show you to the OR, and you’ll go to sleep, won’t feel a thing, and will wake up good as new.”
I huffed a laugh. “Sure, doc. New and broken all at once.”
Doctor Rick didn’t know how to take that one. He frowned, placed the gown on the bed beside me, and opened the door, indicating my men were to escort themselves out.
My men. Funny how quickly a phrase like that had popped into my head.
Except—none of the three moved.
“Orders, Rick,” Van said.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, leaping to my feet.
All four men stared as I kicked my boots off and peeled out of my black long-sleeve tee.
“Uh,” Doctor Rick stammered, before he was promptly thrown out of his own office by a glaring Pearce.
I removed the rest of my clothes quickly but unashamedly, pointedly ignoring the trio of gaping buffoons, then donned the sensory nightmare of a gown.
“Ready?” Van asked softly, closer than expected.
“Wait,” I snapped, not willing to leave my clothes in a haphazard pile on the floor. I bent to retrieve them, but a tattooed arm beat me to it.
Pearce placed the pile on the bed and started folding while I just stared up at him, completely flummoxed by his hot-and-cold behaviour—at least until he reached for my underwear.
My hand darted out, snatching them from the pile as he chuckled.
“Allow me,” a deep, rough voice rumbled from my left.
Beckett plucked them out of my hand and folded them into a neat square, placing it atop Pearce’s finished pile.
“What?” He shrugged. “It’s not like I haven’t held a pair of your underwear before, Adelaide.”
I blushed furiously, snatching the neatly folded pair from the top of the pile, only to tuck it beneath my freshly folded shirt.
Van laughed softly, opening the door.
A nurse stood just beyond the threshold, poised and youthful, and completely out of place in a setting such as this. She turned on her heel neatly, padding down the hall, then round to the right in her immaculate Dolce and Gabbana sneakers.
I guess that’s why she willingly worked here—Blackwing paid her for her silence.
I didn’t wait for permission, nor for the clacking of footsteps behind me. I trudged after the nurse, feeling like I was marching to my own execution rather than the promise of freedom.
Doctor Rick waited in the operating room, clad in his sterile surgical attire—fitting since he was about to make me sterile, too—and instructed Nurse Rachael to get me into position on the table.
I followed her instructions to a tee, lay back and waited for sleep to find me. Someone placed an IV in my arm, someone else stuck an oxygen mask over my face, and a third someone else asked me to count backwards from ten.
I twisted, meeting a familiar green gaze, then started counting.
“Dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq…”