“We won’t get your blood results back for a couple of days,” the doctor says, scanning the metal clipboard he walked in with a few minutes ago. “Given everything else looks good, I don’t anticipate any nasty surprises.” He lifts one sheet of paper, scans it and lowers the clipboard to focus on me. His brow furrows, which, given I’m already wary about being in a hospital, makes me sit up taller and gets my heart rate racing. “And you have no idea what was in the needle?”
I shake my head. “He just said it would kill me. I believed him.”
Callum, Torin, and Archer are waiting in the hallway, having slipped out to give me privacy when the doctor returned to give me my test results.
When Dr. Porter hesitates, I twist my fingers together, hating hospitals more and more with each passing second. “Is something wrong?”
A line forms between his brows. “I read your medical history. You were suffering from bond sickness the last time you were in the hospital. Have you decided to return to your former mates?”
He must have recognized them not to even bother asking who they are.
My peer over his right shoulder to the partially open door behind him.
Callum has his head bent, fingers flying over his cell phone keypad as he sends someone a text. Archer is leaning against the wall opposite, eyes closed, head tipped back. He’d looked exhausted when they brought me here. Propping up a hallway wall for the last five hours wouldn’t have gotten him the rest he needed.
Torin is watching me.
At no point during my tests and examinations has he stopped endlessly pacing back and forth outside my room, usually with his head angled toward my door, a heavy frown creasing his brow.
I drag my gaze from his and back to the doctor, kicking my feet. “I don’t know.”
“You need to decide,” Dr. Porter says with quiet seriousness. “From the dates you wrote here, your heat can’t be more than a couple of weeks away. You need to come back to the hospitalimmediatelyif you get symptoms again. Not wait until you collapse. We can start you on a regimen of drugs to manage the symptoms.”
A regimen of drugs will only delay the inevitable. They might manage the symptoms for a bit, staving off bond sickness before it eventually kills me. He doesn’t tell me that, but I see the truth reflected in his blue gaze.
I need to decide once and for all if I can forgive my scent matches after they crushed my heart. And I need to decidenow.
“You were quiet in the car,” Archer says, opening my door outside my apartment building.
“Just thinking,” I say with a smile that doesn’t feel all that real as I take his hand and let him help me out. I’m back in my maid's uniform and sneakers, relieved to be out of the blue hospital gown that I spent hours terrified I would flash everyone.
“About Callum’s dad?”
“Partly.” We haven’t talked about what happened in that mansion. Not that we had that much time to talk at the hospital with nurses and doctors constantly walking in and out of my room.
“Cops discovered he’d killed himself,” Callum says, climbing out of the car and slamming the passenger door shut. “It’s in the news. That’s what I was furiously texting my attorney about. Reporters say that he learned he was about to go to jail for a very long time for trafficking omegas and shot himself in the head.”
“Attorney?” I don’t ask about his dad shooting himself in the head. We were all in that room. We know that isn’t what happened.
Callum gives me a reassuring smile. “It seemed smart to get one before the cops wanted to talk to us. My attorney doesn’t think we have anything to worry about. Copswereon their way to arrest my dad after a victim walked into a police station withproof of his crimes. He would have gone to jail for the rest of his life.”
“Lottie?” I guess.
He nods.
“But the cops will know I was there.” I frown, scanning the streets and hoping the distant scream of a police siren is just in my head. “They’ll know you were there as well.”
“We were there,” Callum says firmly, “but we left an hour before to take you to the hospital after you were attacked. We’re in the clear.”
“And Kylian?” I ask quietly as they lead me into my apartment building.
Inside, I turn toward the staircase automatically.
Archer grasps my hand and tugs me in the other direction, toward the elevator where the yellowingOut-of-Ordersign I got so used to seeing is now missing in action.
I widen my eyes. “It’sfixed?”
Archer nods. “Jack texted when the doc was running all those tests. I don’t know about you, but those four flights of stairs every day weren’t fun.”
