CHAPTER 37

Jarrett's pov

I was sitting in the chair next to Helena's bed because I hadn't slept and I wasn't about to, not when her breathing kept catching like she was drowning on dry land, and then she woke up screaming like something was tearing her apart from the inside out and I didn't know how to stop it.

Her skin was splitting along her ribs and shoulders, thin red lines opening up where fur tried to push through.

I could see it, I could see the white of bone and then the dark of blood and then something else underneath, something that wasn't human.

She was burning up, 104 and climbing, the thermometer kept beeping and the nurses kept looking at me like I did it.

"Get her to St Mercy," I said, and my voice came out wrong, too rough, "now".

St Mercy was a human hospital, white tiles and that fake lemon smell that made me sick.

The Council law said no humans for wolf injuries but Council law wasn't going to keep her breathing, so I carried her, and wrapped her in a blanket because she was shaking and because I couldn't stand to see the blood on her shirt.

The ER doors slammed behind us and everything started moving too fast.

They put her on a bed and cut her shirt off and a young doctor with tired eyes, started saying words like "severe dermal lacerations" and "fever of unknown origin" like that meant anything.

They gave her painkillers that did nothing, antibiotics that did nothing, stitches that pulled and tore the second her skin tried to shift again.

Her wounds kept reopening, every time they closed up something underneath pushed out, like her body couldn't decide if it was human or wolf and so it was both and neither and it was killing her.

The bloodwork came back "inconclusive".

I heard one nurse whisper to another by the station, "drug seeker, probably, look at him".

I almost shifted right there in the hallway. I had to dig my nails into my palms until I felt something other than rage.

Because the problem wasn't drugs, the problem was human medicine couldn't fix a wolf mid-shift, it didn't know what it was looking at, and worse, every tray, every tool, every clamp had silver in it.

And every time they touched her with it she jerked and made that sound again, that broken sound that went straight through me.

By hour three her fever was 105, her lips were cracked and bleeding, and the monitors were going crazy, numbers jumping, alarms screaming.

The doctors were talking about ICU and sedation and restraints and I was thinking about how many of them I could take before someone put a bullet in me.

The doors to her room banged open and Brent was there with his shirt half untucked, his hair wild and his eyes red like he hadn't slept in days.

He turned and looked at Helena, then at the tubes in her arms and blood on the sheets and her chest rising too fast, and his face just broke.

"Get her out of here," he said, "you're killing her".

I hit him before I thought about it, my fist caught him across the jaw and he stumbled back into the wall but he didn't swing back, he just put his hands up and looked at me like I was the one bleeding.

"I didn't cheat on you, Hell," he said, and he was talking to her even though her eyes were closed, "I was programmed to, the Council made me watch you, I didn't know I was part of it until Vanessa told me".

"Liar," I said, but it came out weak.

"I thought I was protecting you," he said, "they said if I stayed close, if I reported, you'd be safe, I was so fucking stupid, I didn't know about the twin bond, I didn't know about Maya, I didn't know any of it until three days ago".

He stepped closer and I moved between him and her bed but he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at the way her shoulder was splitting open again, fresh blood running down onto the white sheets.

"Silver," he said, "they're using silver tools, can't you smell it, that's why she won't heal, you have to get her out of here".

I smelled it then, that metallic wrongness under the antiseptic, and I wanted to tear the whole hospital down.

Just before I could do something, my phone rang.

I answered because what else was I going to do

"If she stays there she dies by morning," Vanessa's voice came out roughly, like she had been screaming too, "you hear me Jarrett, she dies, human bodies can't handle a double-bond backlash, you need wolf territory, you need earth, you need no silver, you need pack"

"How do I know this isn't you setting us up," I said

"You don't," she said, "but she's your mate, so you'll risk it, won't you". She said and hung up.

At the same time the hospital admin walked in with two security guards, "Mr Hale, we're going to have to sedate the patient, she's become a danger to staff, we can't have this kind of disruption".

They came toward her with a syringe and Helena's eyes snapped open. Immediately, the monitors exploded, glass and sparks and the whole room went dark for a second and then the emergency lights came on red.

She whispered my name, "Jarrett, it hurts," and that was it

I ripped the IVs out, I didn't care about the blood, I grabbed the thin hospital blanket and wrapped her in it. She was so light, too light, and she was shaking so bad I could feel it in my own bones.

We ran down the back hallway, past nurses who were too busy with the alarms to stop us, past security who took one look at my face and decided it wasn't worth it.

Brent was already in the car, the driver's side door open, the engine running, he didn't ask where, he just opened the back for me.

I laid her across the seat, her head in my lap, and Brent got in and drove like the devil was behind us.

Both of us over her body, my hand on her chest feeling her heart, his hand on her forehead pushing the hair back.

And we really looked at each other, for the first time in eight years. We had to share her or she died.