Chapter Three: Code Blue

"Dr. Adams, we need you in Trauma One!"

Emma dropped her half-finished coffee and sprinted down the Seattle Grace Hospital corridor, her sneakers squeaking against the polished floor. Friday nights in the ER were always chaos, but something in Sarah's voice set off her instincts. Not just urgency—fear. Her wolf, usually dormant during her hospital shifts, stirred uneasily beneath her skin.

Five years of emergency medicine had taught her to read the signs. The way the nurses avoided her eyes. The peculiar tension in the air. The subtle shift in scents that her weakened supernatural senses could still detect. Whatever waited behind those trauma room doors wasn't a typical case.

She caught the metallic scent the moment she pushed through the doors. Wolf blood. The distinctive copper-and-lightning smell hit her like a physical blow, making her wolf surge forward with recognition.

"Male, early thirties," Sarah rattled off, falling into step beside her. Her friend's usually steady hands shook as she passed over the chart. "Multiple lacerations, severe trauma to the chest and abdomen. BP's dropping fast. Found unconscious outside the emergency entrance."

Emma's wolf stirred beneath her skin, recognizing one of their kind despite the broken mate bond that had left her supernatural senses dulled. She pushed the feeling aside, forcing herself to focus on the clinical details. She was a doctor first, wolf second. Five years of practice had perfected that balance.

"Stats?" Her gloved hands moved efficiently, assessing the damage. The wounds were deliberate—too precise to be from a fight. These were torture marks, methodically inflicted. Her stomach churned at the implications.

"BP 80/40 and falling. Pulse 130, thready. Temperature—" Sarah hesitated, double-checking the readout. "Temperature's reading 105.2."

A human would be dead with that fever. But this was no human, and these were no ordinary wounds. The flesh around each cut was darkened, veined with black that spread like poison through his system.

"Start him on broad-spectrum antibiotics," Emma ordered, keeping her voice steady despite her racing heart. Her hands found the worst of the wounds—a deep slash across his abdomen that reeked of something chemical. Something wrong. Her wolf recoiled at the smell, recognizing an ancient enemy. Wolfsbane, but wrong somehow. Modified.

The patient convulsed suddenly, his eyes snapping open. They glowed amber in the harsh hospital lights, wild with pain and fear. A nurse gasped, dropping a tray of instruments.

"Clear the room," Emma barked, her voice carrying the unconscious authority of a born healer. "Everyone out except Sarah."

The nurses hesitated only a moment before complying. They were used to Emma's occasional unusual requests. In five years, she'd earned their trust by saving seemingly impossible cases. They'd learned not to question her methods.

"Emma." Sarah's voice shook slightly as she read the incoming lab results. "His blood work... I've never seen anything like it. These markers aren't human."

The monitor screamed as his heart rate plummeted. Emma's hands pressed against the wound, her healing magic responding instinctively despite its weakened state. But something fought back against her power, something that burned like acid where their energies met. The modified wolfsbane wasn't just poisoning his body—it was corrupting his very essence.

"He's been poisoned," she muttered, more to herself than Sarah. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought against the darkness spreading through his veins. "Some kind of wolfsbane derivative, but it's been modified at a molecular level. It's attacking his shifting ability."

"Wolfs—" Sarah cut herself off, eyes widening as pieces clicked into place. "Emma, what aren't you telling me? What is he?"

The patient seized again, more violently this time. As Emma fought to stabilize him, his head turned toward her. Recognition flickered in those pain-glazed eyes, followed by desperate urgency.

"Healer," he gasped, blood staining his teeth. "Alpha Kane... they got him too. Rochester warehouse. You have to—" His words dissolved into a wet cough that sprayed crimson across his chest.

Emma's world tilted on its axis. Steve. The name she hadn't let herself think about in five years slammed into her like a physical blow. Her broken mate bond flared with phantom pain, remembering its other half.

The monitor flatlined with a terrible, sustained note.

"Starting compressions!" Sarah moved with practiced efficiency, but Emma barely heard her. Her mind raced with implications. Rochester warehouse. Modified wolfsbane. They got him too. Someone was hunting wolves—hunting her former pack.

Her hands moved automatically through the resuscitation protocols, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought failed. But her wolf was fully awake now, clawing at her consciousness with desperate intensity. After five years of silence, after everything he'd done, Steve was here in Seattle. And he was in danger.

"Time of death, 23:47." The words tasted like ash in her mouth. Another wolf dead, another life she couldn't save. The poisoned wounds already turning black, spreading even after death.

Sarah's hand touched her arm, warm and steady. "Emma? What's going on? What was he talking about?"

Before she could answer, her pager shrieked with urgent demand. Another trauma incoming. Multiple victims. ETA three minutes.

Emma stripped off her bloodied gloves, her decision made before she consciously realized it. The past she'd run from had found her anyway. "Sarah, I need you to trust me. What you saw tonight—"

"Goes in my personal files, not the hospital records." Sarah's dark eyes were steady, unflinching. "I've worked with you for four years, Em. I know you have secrets. Whatever's happening... whatever he was... be careful."

The overhead speakers crackled with artificial urgency. "Dr. Adams to Emergency Bay One. Dr. Adams to Emergency Bay One."

Emma squeezed Sarah's hand once before running toward the bay doors, her wolf surging with each step. Every instinct she'd suppressed for five years screamed to life, sensing what was coming.

The ambulance sirens grew closer, their wail carrying another sound beneath—a pain-filled howl that resonated in the hollow space where her mate bond used to be.

Steve.

The name echoed through her mind like a curse, like a promise, like fate's cruelest joke. She'd spent five years building a new life, becoming someone stronger than the rejected mate who'd fled into the night.

But destiny, it seemed, wasn't finished with her yet.