Chapter Four

Asher didn’t look up right away.

 He was lounging on the bed now, the white bandage covering the broad expanse of his chest obvious under the thin blue hospital gown he was wearing. 

Wordlessly, Zane moved toward the cabinet in the corner and began taking out the necessary things needed for the cleanup. Gauze. Saline. Scissors. 

Then he snapped on a new pair of blue rubber gloves, turning around to approach Asher, who now had his sneering eyes laser-focused on Zane. 

“I thought I told you to leave, cockroach.” His voice was lazy despite the obvious contempt in his gaze, and Zane mentally cringed at the sight. For an alpha, Asher did a shitty job of controlling or masking his emotions. He was almost like a teenage boy with how volatile he was, making it so easy for anyone to read his thoughts. Well, what did Zane expect from a spoiled brat raised with a silver spoon shoved so deep down his throat it peeked out from his ass? Asher has lived his entire life with the knowledge that the world would bend over on its back just to please him, so why would he need to be self-aware?

If Zane could choose, he would rather be counting rice from a sack, grain by grain, than being Asher’s doctor, but their grandfather Robert had called him the day the brat almost killed himself and told him to take care of him.

Internally kissing his teeth, Zane ignored Asher and approached the bed, placing the metal tray on the bedside table. Asher’s lips curled, and his alpha scent grew a tad suffocating, oozing pheromones as he clearly tried to assert his dominance over the other Alpha. “A nurse should be the one changing my dressing. Are you trying to earn favors with me? You should know not to bother by now.”

Zane had never met anyone who loved the sound of his own voice as much as Asher. He was always talking. With a neutral expression, he picked up the scissors and tried to touch the bandages around Asher’s head, but he jerked out of reach, shooting daggers at Zane with his eyes. “Don’t fucking touch me man and when I speak to you, you don’t fucking ignore me! Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Zane straightened to his full height and held Asher’s gaze. The two of them clashed into an eye battle that seemed to last for a long time, with neither of them blinking even once, especially Asher, until Zane finally broke eye contact. That to Asher was enough show of defeat, and it stroked his hyperinflated ego, making him snarl under his breath. “Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought.”

If he had glanced, truly glanced at Zane in that moment, he would have seen that Zane’s expression was far from defeated. But he didn’t, and when Zane reached for his bandages next, he let him. Zane slid the scissors under the edge of the gauze and began snipping at it.

A tense, heavy silence hung between the two men until Asher spoke up again. “You know, when I take over this hospital,” he went on, voice smooth as silk. “The first thing I’m going to do is fire you. And not only that.”

Zane peeled back the gauze slowly, exposing the wound. It was healing perfectly well, and Zane could tell it wouldn’t even leave a scar. Shame. He tossed the soiled bandage into the disposal bin.

“I’m going to blacklist you from every hospital in this city. In this entire damn country if I have to. And you’ll be lucky if you can get a job mopping floors or maybe, since you are obsessed with cadavers, you’ll be given a job as a security guard in a morgue.”

There was only silence on Zane’s part as he removed the bandages around Asher’s shoulders next. Musing silently, he stared at the wound. It looked angry, red, and swollen around the stitches. Was it getting infected? Good, he would very much like the infection to spread and kill his mouthy half-brother, but that would just end up as negligence on his part, becoming a black smudge on his otherwise perfect record. 

Moving on to the bandages around his ribs, Zane also cut them away. The skin under was severely bruised, swollen, and in a worse color than when Asher had been in surgery a few days ago. Zane had been the one to staple his broken rib bones together before laser stitching the cut. 

But the doctor knew the ugly, dark red color was just a sign of the wound healing, albeit a tad slower than an Alpha should heal. He checked the ones on his thighs, and they were healing as nicely as the ones above his brow. The only stitches a little concerning were the ones on his shoulder. 

With precision, Zane quickly soaked a pad in saline and pressed it over the stitches, maybe a little harder than he needed to.

Asher’s following words about how Zane would never get a penny from the family’s money and how their father didn’t add his name to the will because he was a bastard was cut off when Asher sucked in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth.

 He gripped the sheets on the bed and tightened his knuckles, making them bleed white, but his arrogance made him stomach the pain instead of telling Zane to stop.

Not that Zane would have stopped anyway.

He pressed again, dragging the pad over the stitches until he caught the edge of one stitch, tugging just enough to reopen the skin. A fresh bead of blood welled up, and Asher let out a curse, clenching his jaw.

“Your skin is a little swollen, Mr. West.” Zane finally said in a completely cold and detached voice. “The stitches are pulling a little taut. I have to restitch.”

Asher, who had gone white from the horrible pain, didn’t say a word; he only nodded as he clearly fought back tears. He might be an alpha, but not even the strongest ones could withstand the agony after the life-threatening accident he had. Most of his bones were broken, and all the drugs pumped into his system have weakened his natural pain threshold. 

“Alright then. But I'm sorry to tell you I won’t be able to apply anesthesia during the restitching because it would react badly with the morphine in your system.” Zane explained the blatant lie in the most serious voice. Even if he sounded unserious, it wasn’t like the uneducated brat could know any better.

If he wasn’t such an asshole, Zane might have felt sorry for him and stopped the entire thing because Asher went even paler and he startled to tremble, but the scent of that fear was the only thing that brought a genuine smile to Zane’s face since he stepped into the ward. 

He quickly grabbed the things needed for the stitches again, and after cleaning the blood away and removing the old stitches, he started to stab the needle in and out of the skin to pass the surgical thread through. 

Asher let out another painful hiss, the muscles along his abdomen tightening as moisture gathered in his eyes. When he noticed Zane looking at the tears in his eyes, he quickly screwed them shut to hide the embarrassment. 

Zane could barely bite back his smile. 

Even though he stabbed harder than he should, when Zane finally finished, the threadwork was the neatest and prettiest he’d ever done, and he took a minute to admire his handiwork with a gleam in his eyes before schooling his features. Then he changed his gloves, which were now bloody, and he began smoothing a new bandage around Asher's shoulders and then ribs.

Asher was sweating so hard now, and his cheeks were wet. A jolt of heat slammed into Zane at the sight of Asher in physical torment, and he had to take in shuddering breaths to fix that blank look back on his face.

“There, I'm done.” Zane’s voice broke the silence in the room, and Asher blinked his eyes back open. They were red and burning with tears. 

“Get the fuck out.” He snapped at the tall, slim doctor hovering over him, cringing at the thickness of his own voice. 

Zane slowly nodded, and there wasn’t even a single shred of emotion on his face despite how he’d been struggling to hide his excitement when he was restitching Asher without anesthesia. “The orthopedist will come and take a look at your leg in a few minutes. Rest well, Mr. West.” He said at last and turned on his heel without another word said. He could feel the heat of Asher’s glare burning between his shoulder blades.

At the door, he paused briefly and discreetly moved his hand to rearrange his half-hard cock. There was just so much the coat could cover. Besides, it would be extremely unprofessional and quite uncomfortable to walk around the hospital with a boner poking against his zipper. 

Zane knew he was fucked in the head because of the years of torment he suffered at Asher's hand so he wasn't even surprised at his spiking arousal when he saw Asher's pained, tear-streaked face.

How nice it would be to keep that painful expression on Asher’s face…forever.