It wouldn’t kill him. Somerset pushed—politely—through the crowd. He gave the man who had been working on it a questioning look.
“I’m not going to get stuck in there?” he asked.
The engineer huffed and pushed a sweaty clump of hair out of his face. “Fuck if I know,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know what went wrongthistime. Or with the two in the South Tower.”
“Sorry about that,” Somerset said mildly.
“Why?” the engineer asked with a snort. “It’s not your fault.”
Probably not. Somerset hadn’t been there long enough.
The Courts used a different operating system than humans did. They didn’t blend well; the longer they were in proximity, the more… incompatibilities were picked up on. And while Somerset had only gotten here, Gull had been here for hours. The longer he was here, the more glitches would occur. They would only get worse until he was well enough to move on.
Luckily for the hospital, their kind healed quickly.
“Still,” Somerset said. He pressed the button for the lobby. “Sounds like you’re about to have a rough day.”
The man sighed and stashed his tools back in his bag.
Behind the elevator's closed doors, the mechanism clanked and whirred raggedly. It finally stopped, and the doors swung open. Somerset was about to step inside when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hospital admin get a call. She glanced at her phone and blanched before she put one hand up to beg for a moment from the crowd around her.
As she stepped away, she answered the call, her back turned as she talked in quiet, intense tones to someone on the other end. Her shoulders hunched.
“How did he get in?” she demanded, then glanced down the hall. Toward the stairwell. “Lock the wards downnowand get security up here…”
Somerset growled under his breath in irritation. He’d gotten slow in his old age.
The elevator had only just been put back into operation. So when Dylan had lied to Somerset and left Gull’s room, it had still been stuck between floors. That meant he’d taken the stairs.
Somerset was less gentle this time as he pushed people out of the way. He stretched his legs into an easy lope and headed down the hall toward the door. The admin yelled ‘Stop’ after him, but he ignored her.
When he hit the door, it didn’t budge. He bounced off it and staggered back a step before he caught his balance. His shoulder ached where he’d jarred it, and there was frost ground into the dark gray cashmere. He brushed it off with his free hand and rolled his shoulder absently to dislodge the cold ache.
Nothospital security, then.
Somerset’s brain still ached—a peculiarly precise thread of pain stitched long between his ears—from his step outside time. This was different, though.Thiswasn’t a borrowed knack. It was his by blood and birthright.
He pulled it up from his bones. His ma’s promise to him, back when he’d still been wet from birthing, and his first memory.
No door shall ever bar you.
The weight of that seeped into his bones and settled in his fists. It was colder than the Wolf’s lock on the door. Somerset reached out, pressed his hand to the plastic surface of the door, and pushed.
It swung open easily. The lock on the other side shattered. Splintered ice sprayed the hall, dug into the walls, and shattered against the windows. Chips glittered in the glass where the ice had caught it, specks of moss already dug into the silica. Chunks of it caught the Wolf on the other side of the door in its back, embedded in its neck and shoulders. Skin tore and shredded, but under it was bark instead of flesh.
The Wolf grunted at the impact and reached over its shoulder to claw at the spear of ice buried between its shoulder blades. Dirty fingernails plucked at the ripped T-shirt and tore gobbets of skin from its back until it could dislodge the big chunk. It dragged the thing it had dangled over the drop back up and turned around.
Dylan.
The man dangled from the Wolf’s fist as he coughed and struggled. Fresh bruises shackled his neck, livid against Minnesota winter pale skin, and blood stained the stretched-out neck of his T-shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and dark with shock as he grabbed the Wolf’s fingers to try and get it to let go.
“Foundling,” the Wolf said with contempt as its green ice eyes flicked over Somerset.
The Wolves were things of the Court—all of them had a pack—and they saw things differently. They identified people by their connections, by their ties to the Court. Somerset might have called Gull his brother from habit and some old affection, but it wasn’t true anymore. Not legally. When he’d left the Court, he’d left everyone of the Court as well.
Brother to none. Son to… well, that might have stuck. Their mother was a creature of her own rules, and she let little go from her grip.
That was a small advantage. Somerset didn’t need it—probably, ithadbeen some time since he faced anything of weight—but he’d take it. He smiled. Both of them were predators. They knew what the expression meant.
