I wanted to argue, but my throat closed up. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the ache behind my ribs, maybe it was just the sudden, absolute exhaustion.
“Fine,” I muttered. “But you better not let him do anything stupid.”
He grinned. “I’ll do my best.”
We watched bad TV for hours. He made fun of every commercial, every plot twist, until I was crying with laughter. He never let go of my hand, even when I dozed off.
Once, in the dead of night, I woke to find him asleep in the chair, mouth open, head back against the wall. He looked peaceful for the first time since we'd found each other again. I watched him breathe, slow and even, and realized I didn’t hurt as much as I thought I would.
The next morning, Doc cleared me for solid food. I demanded pancakes. I ate every bite, even though it tasted like cardboard.
I asked about Rocket again.
“Maddie’s bringing him by this afternoon,” Wrecker said. “She said he’s hogging the bed.”
I tried to picture it, and it made my heart hurt in a better way.
We didn’t talk about the war, or what was coming. We didn’t talk about the next move, or how much time we had before Greenbriar tried something worse.
For now, it was enough to breathe.
For now, it was enough to know that he was here, and so was I, and even if the rest of the world was burning, we’d survived this round.
I drifted off again, Wrecker’s hand wrapped around mine. The last thing I heard was his voice, soft and true:
“Rest, little bird. I’ve got you.”
Chapter 20
Wrecker
Iwas never one for hospitals. The wolf in me equated them with failure—meat laid out for the scavengers, bodies cold and sterile and too far gone for the pack to heal. Yet here I was, breathing recycled air and bleach, counting the seconds between Parker’s rattling inhales. Watching her chest rise, maybe not fall, maybe not again. Machines did the work I couldn’t: they buzzed, beeped, spat telemetry in green lines that looked like electrocardiogram mountain ranges. Peaks and valleys. The nurse called it “optimistic” when the valleys didn’t bottom out.
Her face was half lost in the sheets, skin gone ghostly with undertones of blue. The worst of it was the right temple, swollen above the brow, purple-black and tight as a drum. Doc had shaved a patch around it for the CT scan, the stubble coarse against behind her ear. Looked like she’d been scalped in a bar fight. At least the bleeding had stopped. I counted the IV bags, tried to guess if any of them were morphine, and if so, if she could even dream through this.
Doc hovered at her left, chart in one hand, reading out the numbers for no one but himself. His voice, usually clinical, ran low and fast. “Pressure’s holding, but we’re right on the edge.Swelling’s the bastard. It's just moving faster than her wolf's healing ability. The broken bones will heal in days. But that damn brain swelling….” He glanced at me, not unkindly. “You can talk to her, Eli. You never know what gets through.”
I nodded, but my tongue was a dead snake in my mouth. I’d done enough talking for one lifetime. Instead, I pulled a chair to the bed and put my hand over hers. Warm, but not by much. The monitor on her finger flashed at the contact, as if scolding me for risking contamination.
The wolf in me wanted to fix it. To lick the wound, to push life back into her by sheer will. I could do neither. I could only sit and wait and remember every fucking thing I never said to her.
The evening nurse, a girl with bubblegum scrubs and a face like an angry sparrow, shooed Doc out for his next rounds. He left with a look at me, as if daring me to let go. I didn’t.
The sun dipped behind the parking lot pines. The room changed: light went blue, shadows stretched, and the glass took on a mirror shine. I could see myself reflected behind Parker’s sleeping face, and I hated the man that stared back. I traced the rise of her knuckles, watched the slow oxygenation of each finger, told myself she’d wake and call me an idiot for staring.
I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I pressed my phone flat against my thigh and dialed the only number I’d never wanted to use again.
Menace answered on the third ring, voice hoarse. “Eli?”
“Got a situation,” I said. My own voice sounded wrong, used up.
He grunted. “Heard about the explosion. Is she—?”
“Alive, but barely.” I glanced at Parker. “Head’s bad. Doc says the swelling’s not responding. I don’t know if she—if she’s going to make it.”
Menace didn’t speak. I could picture him in his home office, boots propped on the battered desk, a bottle of Glenfiddich sweating through the label. The man did nothing by halves.
I pushed on, like tearing out a rotten tooth. “That time after Calloway stabbed you—” I paused. Even the memory was like swallowing ground glass. “We all saw the angel. Savannah said…you’d died.”
