Forty-Two
COLE
Awareness comes in soft increments, like the waves of the Puget Sound lapping at my feet and then my knees and then my stomach. With each, a new wealth of sensation pours through my veins. Pain and itchiness and fatigue, all three braided together until I can’t quite figure out where each one originates or how to even relieve them. When the waves reach my hands, another sensation adds to the bizarre mix—shaky weakness. And then a fifth as I realize my mouth is dry. My tongue feels heavy as I work to swallow, and there’s a catch in my throat, a tickle like something’s been lodged there for a long time.
The sensations coalesce, and I can’t help but groan. If someone were to look up the definition of feeling like roadkill, the entry would be me in this moment. This is nothing like the other times I’ve been sedated through a heat. I try to remember, to pinpoint what exactly happened after grabbing my sedative that morning, but my mind is foggy and uncooperative.
Something rustles nearby.
“Cole?”
Marcus. His voice is hushed and roughened, the way he sounds when just waking up. I twist toward him. There’s more rustling, like a blanket being dropped, and then a subtle weight settles in beside me.
“Oh my God,” Marcus breathes. “Cole, you’re awake?”
“Y-yeah,” I say. My voice cracks like I haven’t used it in a long time, and that prickling sensation gets worse in my throat. I try to clear it, but it doesn’t offer any relief.
A hand slips in mine, the touch gentle and cautious. Not even an ember of my oncoming heat fills my veins from the brush of skin against my own. I’ve slept through it all. A measure of regret fills me, but I tamp it down. My eyes are so heavy, but I finally manage to open them.
The room is dark, only a small warm glow emanating from a lamp in the far corner. It casts shadows on a bank of cabinets I’ve never seen before. A window shows streetlights and a few illuminated windows of a nearby building against the inky darkness of the night sky. Confusion washes through me. Did they take me to the local Haven? Had something gone wrong with the sedation Dr. Wales gave me before leaving Seattle?
I try to sit up, but my body is a leaded stone dropped in a lake. The shakiness gets worse in my hands at my effort. Marcus runs his thumb along mine in a soothing, slow pattern.
“Cole?” His voice carries a wealth of emotion, and suddenly I can feel them all, flowing through my chest like a released dam. Fear, worry, hope, even regret. I tighten my fingers around his and slowly bring my gaze toward him.
He’s perched on the side of the bed, his hip brushing my knee. His hair is mussed, there’s deep circles under his eyes, and stubble covers his chin and jaw. His shirt and sweats are plain, the colors dark but the exact shades lost to the low light. It’s the most unkempt I’ve ever seen him.
“We’re at the Haven?” I ask. My voice is even worse than before. I clear my throat again.
The corners of his mouth tighten. “What do you remember?”
I frown. My hands shake even more. He pulls the hand he holds into his lap, tracing the lines of my palm as he drops his gaze.
“Tell me what you remember, Cole,” he whispers. The words are laced with his Alpha bark for all that they’re nearly silent. My stomach twists, and I can’t help the small whine that scratches up my throat. His hand tightens on mine.
“I was going into heat,” I say. “I grabbed the sedatives and my phone and took them to the kitchen. I was going to call you when…”
My voice trails off as the memory of the flare crashes into me, the sudden loss of vision and the splitting headache and my knees giving out while I waited for the blood marker device to finalize its reading.
Marcus nods, still not looking at me. “Right. I called Charlotte when I felt the waves start. She didn’t realize what they were, what they meant. We felt a sudden burst of pain and then… nothing. She ran the rest of the way home.”
I focus on the room around me again, a creeping, sickening realization suffocating me.
“She called for help when she found you on the kitchen floor. You’d hit your head on the counter and were bleeding pretty bad,” Marcus continues, his cadence stilted, the words more detached. “You told her you were having a… a flare. By the time paramedics got to you, you were…”
Dread creeps through my veins.
Marcus doesn’t say anything else, shaking his head and turning his face away from me completely, like he’s trying to hide his emotions. Not that it matters. I can feel his conflict, his anguish in my chest, nearly as potent as my own dread.
The room dissolves into an uneasy silence.
What do I even say? That I’d intended to tell them as soon as my appointment? That I wanted to see what living with him had done to the state of my disease? It doesn’t feel like a good enough answer right now, surrounded by hospital equipment. The fact I thought I might have been going into remission sits so incredibly bitter on my tongue.
Marcus carefully releases my hand and stands from the bed.
“Marcus…”
I try to reach for him, but my arms are too heavy and yet overly weak at the same time. By the time I’ve managed to hold my hand out, he’s opening a curtain. Light spills into the room. My eyes burn, and a dull ache starts just behind them.
