25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Halley
The infirmary is warm. The old brass radiators have been bled in the time that I've been gone and are now punching out heat better than before. It's nice. After spending almost a week with my body attempting to boil me alive, everything now feels cold. Especially being away from my Pack.
With my heat ending, and their incessantly needy Omega satiated, they've thrown themselves back into damage control.
It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't locked down their side of the bond, preventing even a hint of their moods or thoughts from slipping through.
I know that they're protecting me, but the lack of input is making me squirm with discomfort.
Shade dropped me off at the infirmary before heading off to join the others, leaving me alone for the first time in a week.
Well, not alone. I glance at my friend.
Everlyn looks tired. Her eyes are sunken, her hair greasy, and she has a tremor in her left hand. She looks different, as if she's aged years in the time since I last saw her.
"Your boyfriends suck," she says as she snaps on a pair of gloves.
"They’re more than my boyfriends now," I say, and tilt my head until my shirt collar slips low enough to show the bites.
"Then your mates suck," she amends, blowing a stray hair out of her face.
"What did they do?" I ask and then wince, remembering what happened right before I went into heat. "Yeah, okay. I know what they did."
"It bears repeating."
I chew briefly on my lower lip before answering. "They killed General Stone, created a power vacuum."
"And…" she intones, raising a brow at me.
"And?" I blink.
She exhales sharply and throws her hands in the air. "And then the fuckers left me to deal with the fallout for a week."
"Okay, yeah. That sucks. They suck. But they were being good mates to me, so surely you can't be too upset with them?" I say quickly, giving her a hopeful smile.
She holds her frown for a few more moments and then deflates. "It's just been a really tough week. Like monumentally difficult."
"Monumentally how?" I ask softly.
Everlyn presses two fingers to my wrist, counting my pulse with her eyes fixed on the clock. "Stone had loyalists. Half of them wanted blood, the other half wanted answers, and all of them wanted it immediately. Then rumors started."
My stomach drops. "What kind of rumors?"
She gives me a flat look. "Use your imagination. Your Pack assassinated the resistance leader and vanished for seven days with the first-ever Omega soldier while she was in heat who just mysteriously came back from the dead. People got creative."
"Oh no."
"Oh yes," she says, tilting my chin up so she can check my pupils. "I heard everything from ‘Halley is a zombie’ to ‘Pack Scorch staged a coup’."
I stare at her. "I'm a…what?"
"A zombie. A flesh eating, mindless reanimated corpse. Like the ones in those terrible black-and-white movies they used to show on Friday nights on base." She clicks her penlight off and gives me a dead-eyed look. "The soldier I heard saying that looked so serious, too."
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. "That is absurd."
"Correct. Did that stop him from telling anyone who would listen? No. Besides, you weren't there to prove him wrong. Knox was too busy knotting you hourly."
I mumble under my breath, half-hearted in my defense. "It wasn't hourly. There were four of them, and they took turns. Well, Blaze and Shade shared."
She pinches between her brows and exhales. "Too much information, Sparks."
"I remember when you used to love sexcapade stories."
She reaches for my chin again and turns my face toward the window. "That was back when I had a sense of humor and whimsy. All of my whimsy is dead, Sparks. It suffocated under the weight of bullshit your mates created. Now hold still, I need to look at these bites."
I lift my chin obediently while she inspects the marks on either side of my neck and at the back. Her gloved fingers are gentle, but her mouth is pinched tight.
"They look okay?" I ask.
"They look like four possessive idiots mauled you." She presses lightly around the skin. "No infection or angry inflammation. Scars are a good color. The healing was clean."
Everlyn steps back and taps a short report into her datapad. The tremor in her left hand makes her finger jitter across the screen.
"Ev," I say quietly, "when did you last sleep?"
"Define sleep."
"That bad?"
She snorts. "I hid in the supply closet at some point yesterday and got a few minutes.
The infighting within the ranks hasn't stopped.
Mostly between the Alphas as they jostle for power, and some from trying to get to the Omega in heat.
I patch them up, but reattaching body parts takes time and focus. "
I grimace. I was kept separate from Alphas for eleven years in The Omega Division because of the violence an Alpha is capable of when trying to claim an Omega. "Shit. I'm sorry."
"Mhm. Not your fault." She loops a blood pressure cuff around my arm and tugs it tight with more force than strictly necessary. "Your mates, however, suck," she repeats dryly.
I feel selfish.
I kept all four of my mates in my nest for an entire week. Maybe I could have made do with just one Alpha for my heat while the rest kept doing damage control, but I remember the fits I pitched when they tried to leave.
I swallow back the guilt and self-loathing before it consumes me. Those are not emotions I indulge in anymore.
"Stone was a bastard and a shitty leader," she says, pumping the cuff until it bites into my bicep, "but he was the mortar holding this place together."
She glances at the gauge, then adds, "His death seems to have ripped every weak seam in this place apart."
I wince at the pressure. "That bad?"
"Worse." She releases the valve in a slow hiss and peels the cuff loose.
"His loyalists wanted retribution against your Pack.
His critics wanted immediate reform." She drops the cuff onto the trolley with a clatter and reaches for her pen.
"Nobody could agree on what to do first, so everyone just shouted louder and for longer.
And thank rut the Human army didn't march on the Pass in the meantime.
There is no chance anyone would cooperate long enough to mount a defensive operation. "
Frack. Yes. I am selfish. So very selfish.
"That sounds exhausting," I say for the sake of saying something. It's weak and I internally cringe.
She lets out a tired breath and leans one hip against the exam trolley, as if she does not entirely trust her legs to keep her standing upright.
"And it wasn’t just the big political drama that was causing fights either.
It was all the petty, basic shit too. Quartermasters refusing to release extra ammunition because no one had the right authority to sign requisitions.
Two patrol captains started a fistfight over an incorrect patrol roster right in front of a line of injured soldiers I was literally patching up. "
Her voice climbs with each example until she cuts herself off, jaw tightening.
"I finally said enough was enough," she mutters, pushing a greasy strand of hair out of her face. "Told everyone I was in charge now because I was the doctor and I know where the morphine is."
I blink at her. "That worked?"
Everlyn shrugs, but it comes out more like a tired sag. "What can I say? People respect morphine."
"Morphine doesn't even work on Alphas!" A laugh slips out of me. "And I really don’t think it was the drugs that convinced them you were the right person for the job."
Her expression flickers, some of the bite softening into weary frustration, and her lips twitch with the hint of a smile. "No? Shame. I was hoping to build my leadership platform on controlled substances and intimidation."
"I think they knew you could handle it. You're good under pressure." I try to catch her eye, to reassure her.
She pulls away and starts to fuss with the tray beside her, rearranging instruments that are already in order.
"I had help," Everlyn says. "Jason kept the communications team on task, keeping a lookout for signs of an attack.
And Prime Alpha Zero kept the military side from eating itself.
He did good, but he's uninterested in taking full leadership for whatever reason.
He, and surprisingly Knox, had enough people loyal to them that nobody tried anything truly stupid. "
She pauses, then gives a flat, brittle little laugh.
"Not openly, anyway."
Her left hand trembles as she reaches for the datapad. She grips the edge of it too hard, knuckles whitening.
"But you were gone. Your Pack was gone. And everyone was still talking about you coming back to life and Commanding the Human army to retreat.
No one knew what the real story was, or whether it was even true, or whether it was something we could put our hope in.
" She glances at me, then looks away just as quickly, like she does not have the energy to deal with my face and the memory of my death at the same time.
"So while half the fortress was panicking about leadership, the other half was panicking about you. "
I open my mouth, then close it again.
Everlyn exhales through her nose, long and shaky, and rubs at her forehead with the heel of her palm. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter, rougher, worn down to the thread.
"I think most of us are just confused and scared," she says. "There is a literal army at our doorstep to destroy us all, and we do not know how we're going to survive it."
She swallows hard.
"Stone told us nothing, Halley. There is nothing.
" Her voice starts to climb despite herself.
"No plans written down. No contingencies. No chain of information. It was all need-to-know, need-to-know, need-to-know, and now he’s dead, and it turns out...
" She lets out a brittle, disbelieving laugh that catches in her throat.
"It turns out no one knew. He wasn't some brilliant puppet master with it all figured out; he really was just a senile old man with control issues. "
She takes a gulping breath, blinking rapidly.
Then another.
Her chest is heaving as she fights to catch her breath, words tripping over each other as the composure slips.
"Do you know how many times people asked me what Stone would have wanted?
" she demands. "As if I even knew the Alpha beyond him kidnapping Jason and me to bring us here.
As if I could pull strategy out of thin air between stitching wounds, contemplating our coming demise, making sure we had enough food in the mess, and trying to stop armed men from disemboweling each other in my infirmary.
And fuck! We came here to save Dazz, Ember, and Flicker, and I realized today that I haven't spared them a single thought in weeks. "
My heart pangs at the sound of their names, and the guilt is quick to follow. When was the last time I thought about my Omegas? My newfound confidence can't stop the wave of self-loathing that washes over me.
Everlyn drags in another breath, thin and shaky, one hand braced hard on the exam trolley.
"I am tired," she says, and the words come out on a laugh that sounds one step from a sob. "I am so tired I can feel my own heartbeat in my teeth."
"Everlyn…" I say softly, reaching to touch her shoulder.
She pulls away from me, tears welling. "And on top of all that, I still can't get over you dying. You're right here in front of me, alive and healthy, but my mind hasn't caught up. I'm still grieving for a dead friend. Twice! Twice I thought you were dead, and it broke me each time."
The words hit me like a blow.
My hand stays half-lifted between us, useless.
"Ev, I’m sorry," I whisper. "I know that doesn’t fix any of it, but I’m here. I’m here."
She scrubs the heel of her palm into one eye so hard I know she must be seeing black spots. Then she inhales, jagged at first, and forces the next breath to steady.
"I know." Her voice is muffled. "And I’m sorry I’m awful right now."
"You’re not awful."
"I threatened three Alphas with a bone saw this morning."
A surprised laugh bursts from me as I picture the scene. "That sounds justified."
A responding weak laugh catches in her throat, then falls apart before it can become real. She lifts her head, eyes wet, mouth tight, and I watch her make a choice.
She can’t stay in her grief, so she goes where she can function: her work.
Her gaze snaps to the ultrasound machine.
"You came back from the dead," she says, and her voice turns steadier with every word. "I need to know what coming back did to you."
My stomach dips.
Everlyn reaches for her gloves.
"Up on the table, Sparks."