"Plague." Nikolai's voice is careful. Too careful. "Give us a minute."
"I've dragged half the fucking medical experts in the nation here. I need a decision," Plague says, and there's steel beneath the silk now. "Now."
"Then you can't fucking have it," Nikolai says through his teeth, staring him down. The guards in the room shift, their hands resting on their sidearms, ready to back their prince up if this turns any uglier than it already has.
I step up to his side. Geo flanks him on the other, all three of us creating a barrier between the prince and our omega.
Plague's eyes narrow to slits, calculating, assessing the threat. Six guards, one of him, three of us. Evidently, he doesn't like those odds, because he nods once and turns away.
"Five minutes."
He stalks out of the room and the guards relax, but only slightly. The other physicians busy themselves with their ministrations and cleaning up the room, trying uncomfortably to pretend like none of this is happening to give us the illusion of privacy.
"We don't have a fucking choice," Geo growls, turning on Nikolai immediately now that we're alone, even though he was backing him up with his life half a second ago. "You know that as well as I do. That thing could kill her, and Maybrecht's got his finger on the trigger."
"You don't think I know that?" Nikolai hisses. "But Raven has a point," he says, nodding at me. "You saw the way Azarel and Knight both reacted. That was fucking weird."
"Knight is several hundred pounds of solid muscle, steel, and pure feral alpha instinct. He snapped when Azarel yelled we were killing her," Geo counters. "As for Azarel, we don't even fucking know the guy. For all we know, he's still working for Maybrecht."
Another fair point. A rational consideration, but it remains at odds with that intuition buried deep in my gut that's both the reason I'm a defective alpha and the reason I've survived this long.
"I don't think Azarel is lying," I murmur. "He loves Cosima. He's a fucking idiot and I'd like to see him drawn and quartered just as much as you would, but he wouldn't put her in danger."
"And how the hell do you know that?" Geo demands.
"Because he looks at her the same way you do," I say, holding his gaze. "The same way wealldo."
The implication is clear.
You, too, Geo.
Geo clenches his jaw at the challenge, but it's not the time or the place to get into it. We both know that. And I can see from the look in his eyes I've made my point.
The silence stretches. Geo folds his huge arms over his chest, his jaw working, one eye fixed on Cosima's sleeping form. His fingers tap against his upper arms.
Before he can say anything, the door opens and Plague steps back in.
"Well?" the prince asks in his characteristically neutral tone.
"Do it," Geo mutters finally. "She's in more danger if we don't, and right now, we don't even know if thereisa fucking chip."
Nikolai turns to look at me. I see my own fear in his mismatched eyes. I shake my head, silently pleading. We can't do this. Not after what just happened?—
Nikolai clenches his jaw and looks away.
"Fuck," I breathe.
The machine's whirring picks up a few notches and an eerie blue glow illuminates Cosima's face. The metal ring begins to rotate, slowly at first, then faster. Energy crackles through the air, prickling along my skin.
I watch, my heart in my throat, waiting for the moment everything goes wrong.
Seconds tick by.
Nothing happens.
The machine continues its rotation, scanners mapping Cosima's brain in precise increments marked by chirps and hums. Dr. Rami leans closer to a screen displaying what looks like a three-dimensional map of neural pathways, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"Fascinating," she murmurs.
