"It's all right. You're safe now," I say hurriedly, gripping his arms tightly.
"Adeline!" he croaks, his voice gruff and hoarse.
"We're going to find her," I tell him assuredly. "I promise you we'll find her."
His dark eyes scan the room, but he seems visibly upset when he sees the IV in his arm. He begins to tug at the tubes, but I quickly stop him. "Easy, tiger," I chuckle. "You still need this stuff to get back to a hundred percent. And if you pull your IV out, I'll just have to poke you again with a new needle," I explain to him, knowing that my words will profoundly affect him given his aversion to needles and, well, almost everything.
He grimaces, and then falls back against the mattress, shaking his head. I watch his heart rate on the monitors, and his breathing picks up as his pulse accelerates. The monitor begins beeping to convey his elevated blood pressure and erratic heartbeat. He's going into a full-blown panic attack, and I can't afford to have him having a stroke or worse at this point.
"Luc, calm down!" I yell at him. "You're safe now. You're going to be okay." I squeeze his arm gently before letting go. "Breathe nice and deep for me. Try to calm your breathing."
His eyes snap shut as he sucks in air, rapidly at first, but then more deeply and evenly as he goes along, trying to calm himself down. It takes several minutes, but eventually his breathing returns to normal and he visibly relaxes.
"How…long?" he bites out, his voice gravelly.
I hesitate before I answer him, because he's not going to like the answer. "You've been out of it for a little over two weeks."
My answer seems to floor him, because he sits up quickly, too quickly, and he grips the bed after what must be a bout of dizziness. "Fuck," he grates out, slumping back against the bed.
"It wasn't easy bringing you back. Trust me," I say with a tremor in my voice that I can't conceal no matter how hard I try. The fact that I almost lost my cousin, my best friend, the man who is like a brother to me, is all I've been thinking about for weeks. "We're just lucky Wraith got to you in time."
Lucien's eyes meet the tall, burly Russian in the corner of the room.
Wraith is standing perfectly still with military precision and regards Lucien with stone-cold blue eyes. "I was on my way back to the island when I received your distress call. I made it just in time to save you. I pulled you out of the pool and gave you CPR until Jax arrived." He grits his teeth as he bites out, "But I couldn't stop them from taking Adeline."
Lucien glares at him. "You should have gone after her! You should have fucking savedher, not me!" he yells.
"He saved your life, Luc!" I tell him sternly. I don't care how sick the bastard is — I'll still kick his ass for acting like a jerk. "He couldn't fucking save youandher. Don't you get that? If he wouldn't have pulled you from the water and stopped you from bleeding out until I could get here, you'd be dead. And you're the only chance we have of finding Adeline. So, I would have lost youboth," I say, my voice breaking on the last word.
Lucien's eyes meet mine, and I'm sure he can tell by my expression that I'm fucking torn up inside over the whole ordeal.
"Wraith was only doing his job," Katya speaks up, and it's full of anger.
Lucien's gaze falls upon Katya standing near Wraith with her arms folded across her chest, a cocked brow and looking like she's ready to take on the whole world. She gives him an unforgiving and hard glare, and Lucien simply stares at her in confusion.
"This is Katerina," I tell him, answering the question that's written all over his face.
"Katya," she corrects me, giving me the side eye.
"Katya is my…my girlfriend," I say, knowing full well it will only piss her off even further. I can't help but love when she gets all riled up. That's the Katya I know, not the sweet, innocent girl she was pretending to be.
"In your dreams," Katya snaps, and I grimace.
Oh, her little innocent act is definitely over with now.
"She's clearly not ready to put a label on us yet," I say with a sly grin. "She's just avoiding the inevitable, though." Then I add, "Besides, I think our couple nickname, Katson, has a certain ring to it."
Katya dramatically rolls her blue eyes to the ceiling, and it makes Lucien smile. The bastard. He's totally smitten with her already, just like I was.
"He kidnapped me, you know," Katya reveals with a cocked hip and a snarky attitude.
Lucien raises a brow at me, but I simply shrug my shoulders.
"It looks like I have a lot to catch up on," he tells me.
"You have no idea," I answer with a shake of my head.
CHAPTER 22
