Everyone jumped into action with renewed focus. The very youngest appeared to be the worst off, which made sense due to their less developed immune systems and diminished ability to self-regulate their temperature compared to the teenagers.
For the patients still awake, I gave oral pain meds and noted it on their makeshift charts. Everything was going fine until the eldest, a teenage wolf shifter called Jack, suddenly convulsed. His mom jerked to her feet and blocked my approach. “No, not you. I need Doc Norbert.”
“Move, Frances,” Dave snapped. There had been plenty of little digs about not being the doctor they wanted, but I refused to let it bother me. I understood the need to be looked after by someone you trusted. I might be Hudson’s chosen mate, but I wasn’t one of them.
Frances clenched her fists, and the threat of violence coated the air. Indigo, who had been silently observing the scene, raised her head and peered at the woman. I didn’t need her adding to the patient numbers.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t do that.”
“You forget that I can feel your intentions like they are my own.”
“I wouldn’t give you another life to save, Cora. I’d simply kill her, and then she’d no longer cause any problems.”
“Not a solution.”
Dave grabbed Frances’s arms and shifted her away from her son’s bed. I snapped on a pair of fresh gloves. Jack was fine seven minutes ago—I’d checked on him myself. What changed? I took out a mini flashlight and waited for the seizure to pass before checking his pupils. Still reactive. I took his pulse with my fingers.Dammit.I grabbed a needle and gave him some fast-acting pain meds. I needed to get his temperature down.
A shout rang out, and I spun around. Another of the kids was seizing. What the hell? I took a deep breath and shoved my panic beneath the layer of cool detachment we honed in medical school to allow us to focus in a crisis. My mind sorted through the steps, and then I moved and started barking instructions. Time passed, and we fought for each and every life as they all started deteriorating. I was not losing a single life today. Nobody could die on my watch.
Sweat trickled down my spine as I fought with death. Norbert burst into the room, looking frantic. “I need—” He froze, looking around the room at the children we were working flat out to save.
“What do you need?” I asked. My voice was calm, but inside, I was falling apart.
“My patients are in the same state. It’s accelerating.”
I couldn’t be in two places at once. We needed to move them into one space, because this was bigger than we could handle alone. “Dave, grab some males and move the doctor’s patients and beds over here. Norbert, get the females to bring along any medical supplies we might need.”
His gaze caught mine as Dave ran out of the door.Oh shit.He was out of supplies. I strode to him and squeezed his hand in mine. “It will be okay.” It had to be—I had no other choice.
Indigo tugged on my consciousness.“Not now,”I snapped and ignored her attempts at communication. I did not have the mental headspace to manage a crazy angel right now. The room was jam-packed full of worried shifters. We should prioritize the most sick, but they were all clinging to life by a thread.
Indigo shoved past my mental shields.“Let me help.”
I froze.“How?”
“Death is within our control, Cora.”What did that mean?“Let me through, and I’ll show you.”Her power hummed in my veins, but I had it leashed. I loosened the chains and felt her intent. Was that really something we had power over?“Yes. Stop living in fear.”
I felt each and every heartbeat in the room, but I sifted out the steady, strong ones and focused on the sluggish and erratic ones. My power curled into their chests and cradled their hearts.Pump. Pump. Pump. Steady. Easy now.
My legs wobbled as their souls brushed against my own. But it wasn’t the same as the souls I met in the afterlife, the ones I had helped to cross over. This was more fundamental. It was unique to the living.
My knees gave out, and I crouched on the floor.Pump. Pump. Pump.I took a deep breath. If I could keep their bodies alive, give them the opportunity to fight this illness, then we had a chance.
Someone shouted my name, but it was like hearing it called down a long tunnel. My eyes fluttered closed as I grounded myself in this world. I could do this. No one was dying. My head slid against the floor, and a long sigh slipped from my lips.
Correction—no one other than me was dying.
CHAPTER EIGHT
If no good deed goes unpunished, does that make us masochists?
Idrifted on a pulsing ocean. A deep, dark force supported my weight as I laid on my back and stared at the night stars above. They winked at me, souls that I was responsible for, and kept burning brightly with the force of my power. I wouldn’t let them be snuffed out. Not today.
It was peaceful here, free of pain, free of responsibility, free of demands. Which meant I was hallucinating or dreaming, because my life was not free of those things. It hadn’t been since… well, forever.
As a child, my grandmother made sure I experienced the worst of the world. She taught me how to compartmentalize and not fold under the pressure of agony. I sought a noble profession to offset the hurt and pain of my childhood and ended up falling for a man who used me. And when he couldn’t get what he wanted, he too chose pain as his persuasion method.
Now, I was in the arms of a man who fought to protect me, offering glimmers of hope and happiness amid the chaos anddestruction. He was everything good when evil stalked my life. If I was selfless, I would push him away—a broken heart now in place of devastation down the road. But it would protect him, give him the distance he needed to make the right decisions for his people without the added burden of shielding his mate, who, despite her protests, kept finding herself at the center of it all, again and again.
