3. Cassie
CASSIE
I was glad Maeve was there. Bram hadn’t known what to do when he’d opened the door to find me sobbing, barely able to tell him what had happened at the paper mill.
Now she sat next to me in one of the plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room, her arm draped around my shoulder. My tears had subsided, leaving a hollow ache in my chest, a pit of fear swallowing me from the inside out.
I’d wanted to go back to the paper mill, to meet the paramedics there, to be there for the Hawks even though I couldn’t bear to think about whether they would be conscious or even alive.
Maeve was the one who’d convinced me the hospital was the better place to wait.
The mill would be a crime scene, swarming with police and probably FBI.
They wouldn’t let me inside, wouldn’t tell me anything.
Worse, they might detain me for questioning, isolating me in an interview room where I wouldn’t be able to see the Hawks, to find out if they were okay.
And they had to be okay.
Anything else was unthinkable. But I could still hear the explosion that had rocked the elevator on my way to the first floor, could still see Hawk’s face — Jagger and Vigo standing behind him — when he’d shoved me into the elevator.
I love you.
I loved him too, and I never even got to say it — to Hawk or to any of them.
Now it might be too late, and I hated myself for all the time I’d wasted thinking about Bram, about how to tell my brother that I was in love with the three men who’d hunted me in the tunnels.
About how to tell him I wanted to stay with the Hawks even though my three months with them was over.
The explosion at the mill felt like a punishment. Like the universe had given me a gift and I’d stood there with it in my hands, wondering if I really wanted it.
I looked up at a flurry of activity at the end of a hall leading to a sliding glass door in the emergency room. Men and women in scrubs were lining up near the door, and I got to my feet, training my ears on their hurried conversation.
“Three trauma victims incoming.”
“— severe burns and lacerations.”
“— crash cart —”
I jumped to my feet, my heart clutching in my chest, and started toward the hall without thinking, desperate to see the Hawks for myself.
Desperate to know they were okay.
I didn’t get far before a man in scrubs stepped in front of me. “I’m sorry, miss, we’ll need you to keep the hall clear.”
“But I’m… They’re…”
Mine.
The word stuck in my throat but echoed in my mind.
The Hawks were mine. We belonged to each other.
I hadn’t realized it before but I knew now that it was true.
“I understand,” the man in scrubs said, “but we need you to keep the hall clear so we can take care of them. You gave your name to the front desk?”
I nodded.
“They’ll keep you posted.”
He headed down the hall to join the other doctors and nurses while I clutched Maeve’s hand like a drowning person clinging to a lifeboat in a stormy sea.
There was a split second of almost silence: the doctors and nurses seeming to hold their breath, Maeve standing quietly behind me, the distant sound of an announcement over the hospital’s intercom system.
Then I heard the sirens.
They were far away at first, the sound so distant I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it.
Then an anticipatory murmur rolled through the doctors and nurses standing in the hall and the sirens grew louder as the ambulances neared the hospital.
Someone took my free hand and I turned my head, surprised to see Bram standing on the other side of me. His eyes were as black as night as he looked down at me, but I’d always been able to see the love there when no one else — no one until Maeve — could.
“I’m here,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
I knew the words cost him something. Knew he didn’t like that I’d joined the Hunt, that I’d lost to the Hawks and gone to live with them.
And he definitely didn’t like that I’d been considering staying with them, if they’d have me. We’d fought about it the last time I’d seen him, and the argument had sat in my stomach like a lead weight ever since.
But he was here now. Here when it counted.
The sirens got louder until they were an ear splitting wail on the other side of the glass doors. My ears rang when the sound was abruptly cut, leaving a deafening silence.
A moment later the doors slid open and two uniformed EMTs wheeled a gurney into the hall. I could see someone lying on it, but three of the medical personnel who’d assembled rushed to the gurney, blocking my view as they barked instructions at each other.
They wheeled the gurney down the hall, and I craned my neck to see who was on the stretcher, caught sight of Jagger’s dark hair, the white sheets under his body stained scarlet.
I took a step forward without thinking, the pull toward him instinctual, but was held back by Bram and Maeve, their grips firm on my hands.
“We have to let them work,” Maeve said.
The glass doors slid open again and three more of the hospital workers stepped forward, including a younger guy in a white lab coat. They surrounded the second gurney and I caught only a flash of Vigo’s blond head before he was wheeled down the same hall where Jagger had disappeared.
I felt sick, my stomach roiling as I waited for the third gurney.
Please let him be alive. Please.
But I knew right away this time was different.
Jagger had been bleeding — a lot — and Vigo had been motionless. The hospital staff had moved quickly and purposefully to get them into rooms where they could get the care they needed.
But when they wheeled Hawk inside, all of the remaining medical personnel surrounded the gurney, barking commands and vital signs, their energy frantic and hurried, alarm hanging in the air like poison.
“Prep surgery two…”
“We need to stop that bleeding stat!”
“I’m going to need a crash cart before we even think about getting him into surgery two!”
Hawk’s black hair was spread across the pillow, several IVs already snaking their way into his body when he disappeared with the doctors and nurses behind doors marked with a sign that read Trauma Center.
The hall fell suddenly and eerily silent, like none of it had even happened.
Like the Hawks had never existed at all.
I wasn’t aware my knees had buckled until Bram caught me on the way down.
Everything went black.