"I will."
"Good luck, baby. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for you."
"Thanks." He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The office door opened, and the nurse stepped out. "Julian is on his way. He should be here in a few minutes."
"Thank you." Tony's voice came out barely above a whisper.
The exhaustion was hitting him hard now, a bone-deep weariness that made even keeping his eyes open feel like an impossible task. "I think I need to...I'm just going to close my eyes for a second."
"Tony?" Kaia's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Tony, stay with me."
He wanted to stay, but the darkness was too inviting, too comfortable, too easy to sink into. He let it swallow him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else.
The ceiling above him was made from acoustic tiles arranged in a grid pattern, interrupted by fluorescent light fixtures that seemed too bright. He was in a hospital bed, with metal rails on the sides and sheets that smelled of laundry detergent. Something was attached to his arm. An IV line, taped to the inside of his elbow. Wires ran from his chest to a monitor beside the bed, tracking his heartbeat.
He was wearing a hospital gown. Someone had changed his clothes.
"You're awake," the nurse said.
Tony turned his head, slowly, because the vertigo hadn't faded, and found her standing in the doorway with a tablet in hand.
"What happened?"
"You passed out in the waiting room." Hildegard walked to his bedside and checked the monitor readings.
"How long was I out?"
"About forty minutes or so. We moved you to an examination room and got you hooked up to the monitors so we could track your vitals."
"Forty minutes?" Tony struggled to sit up, then thought better of it when the room started spinning again. "Where is Kaia?"
"She went back to the lab, but she called Shira for you. She's on her way." She smiled. "Congratulations. It looks like you are transitioning."
32
DIMITRI
Dimitri was drifting in a pleasant haze, with Mattie's warm body pressed against his and her head pillowed on his chest. The narrow bed forced them to stay tangled together, legs intertwined, arms wrapped around each other, and he couldn't think of anywhere he would rather be.
This was the happiest he'd ever been.
Lying in a cramped bed in a cramped room on an island prison with a woman he'd known for mere days, and he was happier than he'd been his entire life.
He wanted to tell her he loved her, the words pressing against the back of his teeth, demanding to be spoken, but that would be ridiculous. She would think he was superficial with his feelings, the kind of man who fell in love with every pretty face.
Except he wasn't. He'd never said those words to any woman, not even to Mila. He'd come close, but her betrayal had beaten him to it.
"Your healing is just amazing." Mattie's fingers brushed against his neck, feather-light. "Unbelievable. I was sure you were going to have nasty scars, but it doesn't look like you will."
He opened his eyes and found her propped up on one elbow, staring at the side of his neck with an expression somewhere between wonder and alarm.
"Are you looking at the right side?" He was still too sleepy to remember which side of his neck the deranged immortal had bitten.
"Of course, I am looking at the right side, and I'm telling you that it's healed. There's almost nothing there. A faint line that is not even a scar."
