But that's tomorrow's problem. Tonight I hold my mate and listen to her breathe.
"Finally."
Jax's voice carries from the trauma bay when I ease the break room door open. Dawn pushes gray light through the gaps in theplywood, pale and rain-washed, the color of a storm that spent itself overnight and left nothing but the mess behind.
I cross the hall and lean against the doorframe. Jax grins at me from his cot. He looks like hell—bruised, bandaged, his left side strapped with enough tape to gift-wrap a motorcycle. But his color holds pink instead of gray, and his eyes track clear, and the grin spreads wide enough to pull at the cut on his lip.
"Sarah owes me twenty bucks."
I flip him off.
He laughs. Then winces, his hand flying to his ribs, his face crumpling into a grimace that wipes the grin sideways. "Ow. Don't—don't make me laugh, VP. Everything's broken."
"Then stop being funny."
"I'm not. You're the one sneaking out of the break room looking like that." He shifts on the cot, careful of his ribs, settling onto his back with a hiss. "Knox is gonna lose it."
"Knox already knows and I was coming to check you were still alive."
Jax goes quiet. When he speaks again, the grin is gone from his voice. "She saved my life."
"Yeah."
"You picked a good one, VP."
"I know."
I push off the doorframe and head back down the hall. The break room door creaks when I slip through, and Jess shifts on the cot, blinking against the gray light. I ease down beside her and she rolls into me without fully waking, her cheek finding my collarbone, her fingers curling into my shirt.
Then her eyes open. Green and gold in the morning light, unfocused for a second before they find me.
She touches the claiming mark with her fingertips. Traces the edge of the scar where my teeth broke through.
"It's over," she murmurs. Her voice thick with sleep, her hair a mess, her face creased from the seam of my shirt.
I brush the hair off her forehead. Press my mouth against her temple.
"No, Kitten." I breathe the words into her hair. "It's just beginning."
Chapter 9
Jess
Knox takes one look at my neck and stops mid-stride on the clinic steps.
The Feral Sons roll in behind him on trucks and flatbeds loaded with chainsaws, tarps, and enough lumber to rebuild half the town. The hurricane stripped Nightfall Cove down to its bones overnight: power lines coiled across roads like dead snakes, trees punched through rooftops, the harbor pier reduced to splinters floating in brown water. The clinic lost two windows and half its awning, which dangles from the second floor like a flag of surrender and has a hold in the roof.
But the building held. My patients held.The medevac chopper landed at dawn—Dean Bradley strapped to a spinal board, Linda and Mike beside him, the crew out and loaded in under four minutes. Linda gripped my hand through the helicopter door and mouthed "thank you" over the rotor wash. I watched them lift off and let out the breath I'd been holding since they arrived.I stand on the front steps with Finn's arm draped across my shoulders, his thumb tracing idle circles against mycollarbone, the claiming mark hot and tender at the base of my neck where his shirt collar can't hide it.
Knox's gaze locks on the scar. His expression shifts, then a gravity that has nothing to do with teasing. He crosses the parking lot in four strides and pulls me into a hug so tight my feet leave the ground.
"About damn time." His voice scrapes low against my ear. "Welcome to the family, Jess."
He sets me down and grips Finn's shoulder, the brothers trading a look loaded with years of shared history I'll never fully understand. Knox squeezes once and lets go.
Sarah barrels through the line of bikes before Knox can say another word.
"I KNEW IT." She grabs my arms and bounces on her toes, her eyes bright, her auburn hair a wreck of humidity and windburn. "I knew at the wedding. I told Betty. She bet me fifty dollars you'd hold out another month." She yanks the collar of my scrub top sideways to see the mark and her squeal hits a frequency that makes Finn wince. "Oh my gosh, that's gorgeous. Look at the—"
