Rafe’s wolf howled in protest inside him. “Sweetheart, I won’t be able to focus on a damn thing until you’re safe. The sooner I get that chip out of you, the faster I’ll be able to help the others.”
Adri looked like he might put up a fight, but Marco leaned in close. “I won’t let them die, Carter. Now shut up and let your mate work.”
Adri’s mouth snapped shut. Then his eyes narrowed in anger as he processed his body’s involuntary reaction to their Alpha’s order. They didn’t have time for any of that, though.
“I’m going to knock you out with my power so you don’t have to feel me digging inside your brain, kitten. That okay?” Rafe asked.
Adri’s jaguar shone bright in his eyes as he stared up at him. “Of course. I trust you with my life, Rafe. I trust you with everything.”
Reaching out before he could overthink it, Rafe let his power flow through him, sending Adri into a deep sleep. To his right, Emmy had already connected the video link to Katie, and the portable floodlights had been set up so she could see what he was doing.
“Take this now. I’ll get whatever they’ve drugged him with out of his system,” Luca’s mate Cal said, stepping in close from wherever he’d been to press a syringe into Rafe’s hand.
Rafe injected the stimulant immediately before sinking into the focus he needed for what was to come. As he extended his awareness into his mate’s body, he could feel the water witch’s cooling power doing just what he’d said and seeking out the foreign substances in Adri’s bloodstream—silver and who knew what else—and drawing them out.
Distantly, he heard the sound of gunfire and yelling, but he couldn’t focus on that. Marco would keep them safe.
“Craniotomy?” Rafe asked, hand extended towards Emmy.
The cranial drill was pressed into his palm, and he stared at it blankly for a moment. He’d practised this the other day with Katie. Stood in her kitchen and created perfect circles in a skull stolen from the forgotten in the hospital’s morgue. That skull hadn’t been attached to a body more precious to him than life, though. It didn’t have soft lips parted slightly in slumber. It didn’t have skin he wanted to trace with his fingertips until he had every inch memorised by touch alone.
“Doc? You don’t have time for this,” Cal said, voice gentle.
Shaking himself, Rafe forced himself into the clinical calm he was so used to, even though it felt like he was dressing up in someone else’s ill-fitting suit. He could do this. Hehadto do this.
Turning his mate’s beautiful face to the side, he didn’t hesitate again as he turned the drill on and reopened the wound he could still feel in the bones there. The world narrowed to the circle of skull he pulled free, to the veins pulsing with his mate’s heartbeat as he exposed his brain, to the rivulets of blood as he used a scalpel to excise the technological cancer forced on his mate. And all the time, he channelled his power into his mate—healing the damage to Adri’s brain as he sacrificed accuracy for speed; stopping the bleeding from the veins clustered around the chip that would otherwise be trapped in Adri’s skull when he closed up the wound; burning away any chance of infection from the unsterile conditions before it could take root… and desperately willing Adri’s heart to keep beating when it stuttered under the pressure of two surgeries and whatever poison they’d pumped into his veins to keep him compliant.
“You did it, Doc,” Cal finally said, gently pulling the needle from his hand as Rafe stared down at the neat line of stitches on his mate’s scalp.
Rafe clung to Adri as someone—Marco—tried to lift him clear.
“Two more to go, Doc,” Marco reminded him. “He’ll be sad if they don’t make it.”
Rafe whined in exhaustion and complaint, a noise his wolf forced out through lips still human, before leaning down to press his forehead to Adri’s. Two more to go. He’d poured so much of himself into healing Adri, he didn’t know if he had anymore togive. Cal silently pushed another of his stimulant syringes into his hand.
“I’ll catch you when you fall. Just hang on long enough for them.”
Rafe nodded once, turning away from where his Alpha was carrying his soul away from him to focus on his next patient.
CHAPTER 18: ADRI
Adri sat perfectly stillon the seat next to the bed, staring down at his mate’s face that was too pale, too lax. Rafe never looked so passive, even in sleep. He was dynamic. Dominant. This wasn’t right.
Adri had come to twelve hours earlier. Apparently, brain surgery was easier to heal from than magical burnout like Rafe had brought on himself. Adri was wracked with guilt. He’d asked Rafe to heal the others first. It hadn’t even occurred to him that his powerful mate would struggle to heal all three. That Adri’s request might push Rafe past the limits of his body.
“He’s going to be okay.”
Adri’s head jerked up at Marco’s words from the door. He hadn’t even heard the Alpha arrive.
“Relax. I’m just dropping you some food.”
“Thanks.”
They’d been brought back to the Lunetti pack lands, rather than Rafe’s apartment, where it was easier to protect them. At leastMarco had put them in one of the forest’s small cabins instead of the main house, though. Adri didn’t think he could have coped with the noise and social expectations of being close to so many nosy wolves.
Stepping closer, Marco gripped his shoulder with a strong hand, passing him a steaming meat pie that had Adri drooling.
“You need to get your strength back. He’s not going to be happy if you’ve stressed yourself into being ill when he wakes.”
