I closed my eyes, which was a mistake. Every time I did, Otto’s salvage yard came to mind. What I’d done there—forcing Lucy into the pile of mangled cars, then nearly burying her alive beneath the wreckage—haunted me.
Helplessness had seeped into my marrow. I didn’t I’d ever be rid of the feeling. I’d lifted fucking cars one handed, but the weight of possibly losing my Omega could rival a damn semi-truck.
I hated this waiting room.
Hated its sterile, pale walls. Hated the clock above the nurses’ station which kept tick… tick… ticking away minutes.Each movement of the short and long hands reminded me that I had no control over Lucy’s fate.
We’d called her worthless and weak. We’d treated her as lesser.
Yet all along? We were the goddamn wastes of Oxygen. We were the ones that didn’t deserve her; it was never the other way around.
All my life, I had always been the fixer—the one who knew how to put shit back together. Busted toasters, bike chains, every mangled motorcycle my brothers and I wrecked. Give me something torn apart? I could mend it with my eyes closed. I took pride in putting together the pieces of the hardest damn puzzle.
But Lucy was different. She wasn’t a broken machine to be tinkered with. I couldn’t run down to Otto’s at midnight and find Omega spare parts.
I halted, legs no longer willing to move. Turning, I leaned against the window frame, staring blankly at the stormy world beyond the glass.
“What fucking good are my hands if they can’t help her?” I whispered hoarsely, frustration clawing at my chest.
A lifetime of working with nuts and bolts and wires and grease meant nothing. All I could do was stand around while Lucy lay beneath a knife, her life in the hands of people I’d never met before. Was she at all aware of what was happening to her? She’d not regained consciousness before they’d rolled her back to surgery. I hoped she was blissfully ignorant of the pain and the possibility she wouldn’t wake up.
A tiny part of me was mad at her for doing something so stupid.
But how could I say that out loud? Without a second thought, I jumped into risky situations. The thrill of danger wasintoxicating… or it used to be. I knew it was hypocritical to judge Lucy for doing the same shit I’d done all my life.
I turned from the transparent glass as the first rain drops pattered against the building.
My gaze roved over my brothers. Fallon was staring intensely at his phone. Nitro’s blade stuck upright in a seat cushion. Asher was nowhere to be seen. Xander stood silently, closer than the rest of us to the surgical hall entrance, his arms crossed and his gaze unwavering. I found myself gravitating toward him. I moved until we stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and the scent of his anxiety washed over me.
“She’s going to be fine,” I said quietly, sounding wholly unconvinced.
If he heard me, Xander said nothing. He just kept staring ahead.
I clenched my fists and inhaled deeply. If Lucy made it, then I’d spend the rest of my damn life fixing the damage DemonX caused. Broken piece by broken piece, I’d show her what she meant to me.
49
LUCY & XANDER
LUCY.
A crack of thunder fractured the silence, yanking me from a dreamless sleep.
I blinked slowly, feeling like I’d been asleep for years. My vision blurred, my temples throbbed, and I was having intense waves of unsettling recognition. Wherever I was, the smells were all too familiar. My nostrils filled with the unmistakable scent cocktail of antiseptics and disinfectants. I knew, even before my vision cleared and my mind put the pieces fully together, that I was somewhere I’d hoped never to be again—a hospital.
For more than twenty-three years, I’d endured these smells, in these places where people come to be born, or heal, or die. I didn’t believe in rebirth, thought it was a bullshit concept people use to free themselves of bad deeds. So, I was here to either heal or die.
My heart hammered at the quiet, incessant beep of monitors. My skin felt tight and uncomfortable beneath cheap, thin sheets. I wiggled my fingers slightly, feeling pressure at the top of my right hand where they’d set the IV.
No. No, no, no.
Suddenly, a terrible possibility bloomed in my head. Panic clawed up my throat, threatening to choke me.Had it all been a dream?The excruciating cure, my release from Brightfield, the luxurious patient suite at Eros, the art museum in Seattle… even DemonX, the pack who hated my guts.
Had my desperate mind fabricated an elaborate fantasy to escape the prison of my disease? Had I never left Brightfield House at all? Maybe part of it was real. Maybe there was a cure, but it had been too much for my body. Maybe I was finally waking up after months in a coma.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt weighted down, as if gravity had doubled overnight. My muscles trembled with the effort and sweat sprouted on my forehead. Every movement I managed felt like swimming through honey—slow, viscous, exhausting. When I finally managed to sit up, a terrible ache spiked through my abdomen. Hot and sharp, it radiated outward in pulsing waves. I bit down hard on my lower lip to trap the whimper crawling up my throat. A metallic taint hit my tongue; I’d drawn blood. My head swam violently. I had to stay perfectly still with my eyes closed until the world stopped spinning and nausea subsided.
When I opened my eyes again, I knew without a doubt that this hospital room was real—the astringent air, the rough sheets, the distinct shape of the dim lights overhead—and no matter what it cost me, I needed to leave right now before I lost my mind.
