“Three trauma victims incoming.”
“— severe burns and lacerations.”
“— crash cart —”
I jumped to my feet, my heart clutching in my chest, and started toward the hall without thinking, desperate to see the Hawks for myself.
Desperate to know they were okay.
I didn’t get far before a man in scrubs stepped in front of me. “I’m sorry, miss, we’ll need you to keep the hall clear.”
“But I’m… They’re…”
Mine.
The word stuck in my throat but echoed in my mind.
The Hawks were mine. We belonged to each other.
I hadn’t realized it before but I knew now that it was true.
“I understand,” the man in scrubs said, “but we need you to keep the hall clear so we can take care of them. You gave your name to the front desk?”
I nodded.
“They’ll keep you posted.”
He headed down the hall to join the other doctors and nurses while I clutched Maeve’s hand like a drowning person clinging to a lifeboat in a stormy sea.
There was a split second of almost silence: the doctors and nurses seeming to hold their breath, Maeve standing quietly behind me, the distant sound of an announcement over the hospital’s intercom system.
Then I heard the sirens.
They were far away at first, the sound so distant I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it.
Then an anticipatory murmur rolled through the doctors and nurses standing in the hall and the sirens grew louder as the ambulances neared the hospital.
Someone took my free hand and I turned my head, surprised to see Bram standing on the other side of me. His eyes were as black as night as he looked down at me, but I’d always been able to see the love there when no one else — no one until Maeve — could.
“I’m here,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
I knew the words cost him something. Knew he didn’t like that I’d joined the Hunt, that I’d lost to the Hawks and gone to live with them.
And he definitely didn’t like that I’d been considering staying with them, if they’d have me. We’d fought about it the last timeI’d seen him, and the argument had sat in my stomach like a lead weight ever since.
But he was here now. Here when it counted.
The sirens got louder until they were an ear splitting wail on the other side of the glass doors. My ears rang when the sound was abruptly cut, leaving a deafening silence.
A moment later the doors slid open and two uniformed EMTs wheeled a gurney into the hall. I could see someone lying on it, but three of the medical personnel who’d assembled rushed to the gurney, blocking my view as they barked instructions at each other.
They wheeled the gurney down the hall, and I craned my neck to see who was on the stretcher, caught sight of Jagger’s dark hair, the white sheets under his body stained scarlet.
I took a step forward without thinking, the pull toward him instinctual, but was held back by Bram and Maeve, their grips firm on my hands.
“We have to let them work,” Maeve said.
The glass doors slid open again and three more of the hospital workers stepped forward, including a younger guy in a white lab coat. They surrounded the second gurney and I caught only a flash of Vigo’s blond head before he was wheeled down the same hall where Jagger had disappeared.
