But I should have known. Shouldn’t have doubted her. Yvaine never spoke badly of anyone, let alone her mate.
I caught myself grinning.
She’d shut my insecurities down fast. Told Rudolph she’d been shocked I was her mate—fair, considering I tended to act first and think later. Sue me.
Then I’d had to hear all her insecurities about me. A full, itemized list. Fuckboy, playboy, all the boys.
“Where to, Mrs. Lycanwood?” Killian called, balancing a potted palm.
“Left. No, farther down. A little more,” Gran ordered.
He started to set it down, knees wobbling.
The grannies cackled. One wagged her cane. “Careful, boy! That plant has feelings!”
“No. More to the right!” Gran said, sipping her new apple juice.
Killian hoisted it again, squatting low, grunting. A bead of sweat slid down his temple.
The plant teetered.
Nothing like a horticultural workout to psych up Killy before the big game.
I told myself I was keeping my identity a secret from my bunny because I didn’t want to distract her before her exam. Totally noble. Completely selfless.
I’d spent more time helping her than studying for my own stuff, although I mostly just took screenshots of her while I quizzed her.Twenty-two, to be exact. Saved them all in a passcode-locked folder because, fuck, if anyone else saw those pictures of her…
They were mine.
I’d tell her. At the game.
I’d tell her I was the reindeer and the mate she needed a ladder to reach and kiss.
Stroking my chin, my lips twitched into a sly grin.And if she fainted? I’d catch her.
But should I kiss her first? Talk to her? Talk to her while I kiss her?Choices, choices…
CHAPTER 29
YVAINE
The child’s lids slowly lowered, as if they weighed as much as the roof over our heads. An empty gaze flickered out before they shut, never to crack open again.
“No! Don’t give up on me now!” the head neurosurgeon barked, her surgical gloves stained red. The nurses swarmed around the near-death bed like desperate bees trying to revive a withering flower.
I could almostseethe soul leaving the small body. Could almostfeelthe carcinogenic mass smirking, proud to have emerged victorious yet again. Could almosthearthe screams of his family with their deforming mouths.
And there I stood, still and hollow next to the surgical bed, with the solemnity of a gargoyle on cathedral duty, useless hands raised and crumpled in front of me.
The EKG was relentless throughout the OR. One long, merciless note that bounced off the hollows of his now-defeated heart, traversing the white, sanitized walls that had seen so much and cared too little. That rang in my ears.
I’d remember this boy. Like all the others. Names, faces, and diagnoses filed neatly in the catalog of the dead that I kept in my head. My own private morgue. My ultimate motivator.
The head neurosurgeon announced the time of death, and I thought about the funeral my body would never have.
My destiny was to be a donation in the name of science, a faceless torso, dissected and labeled, given to first-year medical students to practice on and save lives later. Even in death, I needed to serve a purpose. Why waste space in a cemetery and become food for the already overfed worms when I could still be useful?
I snapped off my surgical gloves and disposed of them.
