Pale as a ghost, with his mouth open and eyes shut, a line of blood at his temple, where he’d clearly hit his head on the way down.
There was someone behind me, sliding past, and I could barely pry my eyes away from Jax to see—Seth. And Maia, and Lydia. The office was going to be crowded in a moment, and there I was, standing in the middle of the doorway.
Lydia, though, saint that she was, took me firmly by the shoulders and pressed my whole body forward, almost shoving me over to the couch, where Jax was laid out, Jillian kneeling next to him.
I stumbled as we got there, and Jillian, without even looking, reached out and steadied me as I dropped to my knees beside her.
“He’s still breathing,” she muttered, as she pressed her fingers into the hollow of his throat, looking for a pulse. Couldn’t she hear his heart?
Fuck me, couldn’t she... wait, I was also a damned werewolf. So I listened, closing my eyes and—there. He did have a heartbeat. It was slow, but steady so far.
That was good.
Right? Slow was okay. Slow wasthere.
“Jax is gonna freak out about the carpet,” Seth muttered somewhere behind me. It’d only been a couple months since they’d redone the executive suite after Jiro lit the place on fire.
I absolutely did not let out a hysterical laugh.
People were just looking at me funny because... reasons. That was all.
Jillian grabbed my hand and pressed it to Jax’s throat. “Feel. His heartbeat is still strong, and he’s breathing fine. Breathe with him, Dakota. In.” As though I needed an example, she breathed long and slow in, and then out. “And out. Just like that. With Jax. Okay?”
I nodded, and... it was weird, how hard it was to do that. I was... everything was too fast. I needed to breathe, and I... oh, right. I was breathing too fast. Hyperventilation. I tried to slow down, and it mostly resulted in my breath going shaky, but Jillian kept her hand on mine, speaking low and soothing. “In and out. In and out. Just like that. We have to get someone to take care of Jax. Do you think you can call Prudence?”
“Fuck, we ought to put the poor woman on retainer, we keep calling her so much lately,” Seth muttered somewhere behind me.
“Seth?” Maia’s voice asked. “Come look at this.”
There was movement, but I was focused. In. Out. In. Out. Out. No, in. Dammit.
“What the hell is that?” Seth asked, and he sounded like he was looking at whatever food had been gaining sentience at the back of the fridge for the last year, and Maia had just discovered it.
“I don’t know, but it’s not coffee,” Maia answered. “Well, it is coffee, but I don’t know what the rest is. Rocks? Some kind of salt? But they’d have noticed that, don’t you think?”
“He’s coming around,” Lydia said, and my head jerked up, staring at Jax, waiting for his eyes to open.
But the groan came from behind me, not in front.
“What the hell happened?”
Kent. That was Kent. Rough and pained, but definitely Kent, who had also been unconscious.
Seth, sounding more like he meant business than ever before, which was saying something, since I’d rarely heard theman laugh, cleared his throat. “I think you need to be the one telling us that, Kent. What happened?”
“I... I don’t... We were talking about the potion thing. Stock and possible expansions. I used the coffee machine, and we ate some of the chocolates from the fae, and then... I don’t know. I just got dizzy, and everything started acting weird. And Jax... I don’t know.” Kent’s voice went whiny at the end, and roughened even more. A moment later, he was coughing.
Then I could smell his blood.
I glanced behind me, reassuring myself he hadn’t just dropped dead, but he seemed to be okay. He was just holding a bloody tissue, scowling. “Was it the fae chocolate?”
“The coffee,” Seth corrected.
Kent frowned at that. “But that was just the coffee that’s been sitting in Jax’s office for the last... however long. And the cream and sugar he’s always got too. Why would—” He cut off in another cough, but no one seemed to have an answer for him.
Maia and Seth were exchanging a fearful look. Lydia was leaning against Jax’s desk, looking at him, trembling. Beneath my hand, his pulse and breath continued. Too slow, but at least there.
Alive.
