Chapter 54

Chapter 54

Williams Mansion

“Nothing’s working,” Caine said hollowly, his normally gray eyes once again turning red as he stared down at Danni while they stood there waiting for her heart to start beating again.

“I…” Noah began, so fucking tempted to tell him about the blood only to say, “I’m sorry,” because there was nothing that he could do right now, not until he talked to Kale, and he really needed to talk to Kale.

Over the past few months, the shifter had been dropping by every few weeks with more blood for him to test, but without access to the Sentinel network, he’d been limited on what he could do. So, he’d tested a few theories and what he’d discovered had him running the tests over and over again, needing to make sure that what he was seeing was right and if it was…

He really needed to talk to Kale.

“I can’t lose her,” Caine said numbly, looking completely lost while Noah stood there, wondering how he was going to convince Kale to do this, knowing just how much he hated Pytes. That was the first thing that he’d learned about the shifter. The other? He was a mercenary, ruthless, and if he ever found out what this blood could do, he’d be unstoppable, and Noah really wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“What’s the Council doing?” Noah asked, wishing like hell that they hadn’t cut him off, not when he needed answers to help Danni, but they didn’t trust him. They’d made that crystal clear after they found out that he was using their network to run the mystery blood through their system.

“Sending more fucking demon blood,” Caine bit out as Noah’s attention was drawn to the cardiac monitor when a faint beep drew his attention while he tried to figure out a way to get access to the Sentinel network again.

He already ran a sample of the demon blood that they were giving Danni on his own, but the results were all over the place. He couldn’t identify anything in it, but he knew that it wasn’t helping her. When he ran tests on the demon blood with Danni’s blood, her cells would become stronger, but so did the cancer cells, which is why he’d told Caine to stop giving it to her. When he added the mystery blood to the demon blood, it went through a violent transformation, breaking everything down into separate cells, letting him know that the demon blood came from multiple sources. Before he could test the demon blood to see what he was dealing with, the mystery blood completely destroyed it, letting him know that at least one of those sources had been human blood.

“Why isn’t Christofer’s blood working?” Caine asked as they watched a faint heartbeat register on the monitor.

“I’m not sure. Every test that I run shows that Christofer’s blood should be able to kill it,” Noah explained, wondering why it wasn’t killing the cancer. It also made him wonder if he was wrong about the other blood. Biting back a sigh, Noah lowered his gaze to the fetal monitor and waited for the baby that never should have made it this far to let them know that it was okay.

From what he’d been told, once a Pyte was pregnant and the body locked down, the baby was protected and could not be harmed unless the mother’s life was at risk and the body was forced to abort the baby. Just with the cancer alone, the baby should never have been able to survive, but somehow it had. It survived every time Danni’s heartbeat stopped and came back stronger than ever when her heart began beating again and he had no idea why.

No one did.

The baby was a Pyte, but it hadn’t reached its immortality yet. At this point, he was as vulnerable as a human child and shouldn’t have been able to survive this, but he had, and it was destroying the Pyte forced to watch his mate and child die over and over again. Noah wasn’t sure how much more of this Caine was going to be able to take, and from what he’d seen, the Council wasn’t either.

They were placing more shifters and demons around town, having Sentinels rotate in and out of the area more frequently, and keeping Nathan, John, Michael, and Chris local instead of sending them to the compounds to help make preparations for the war they thought was coming. They’d also had the cells in the basement reinforced and he knew that the Council was counting on the other Pytes living in the house to stop Caine every time that he lost control. They were also trying to convince everyone in the house to relocate the children to the Boston compound, letting Noah know that they weren’t expecting Danni to pull through this. It told him everything that he needed to know.

They’d given up.

Michael’s main job was now to keep Danni as comfortable as humanly possible and that wasn’t good enough for Noah. He’d come here for a reason and it wasn’t to watch Danni fade away. He wasn’t ready to give up, not now, and definitely not on Danni. When Caine brought her into his ER over a year ago, Noah’s entire life changed.

Before that day, he’d had no idea about all those things that went bump in the night, and now…

He didn’t think that he could go back.

He-

“Go check on Izzy,” Caine murmured quietly as the fetal monitor recorded his son’s heartbeat, letting them know that he’d survived.

“What’s going on?” Noah asked, quickly adjusting the fetal monitor around Danni’s belly as Caine sat down on the bed next to his mate and took her hand in his.

“She’s in pain,” Caine said, leaning over to kiss Danni’s forehead as his mate slowly exhaled.

“Where is she?” Noah asked, double-checking Danni’s cardiac monitor before heading to the door.

“Her bathroom,” Caine said as Noah quickly made his way down the hallway as he had to admit that the Pyte’s ability to hear a pin drop a mile away definitely came in handy at times.

He didn’t bother knocking, knowing that Chris was still out on patrol and that Izzy wasn’t going to answer him, not if she was as bad off as he thought she was, and Christ, he really hoped that he was wrong. She wasn’t doing well. He’d tried talking Michael into asking the Council about giving her the surgery, but they wouldn’t fucking listen. She was in so much fucking pain and…

There was nothing that they could do anymore.

She was a Sentinel and there wasn’t a hell of a lot that they could do, but the few options they had were no longer a possibility. Transfusions of Sentinel blood wouldn’t help since the injury had already set. He’d wondered if they rebroke her hip and gave her Sentinel blood immediately if it would fix it, but it wasn’t a chance that he was willing to take. The only other option was a shitload of drugs just to take the edge off and the Council had decided that was no longer an option for Izzy after the results of her last blood test came in.

Her liver and kidneys were starting to fail and her heart…

He really needed to fucking talk to Kale, Noah thought, only to feel his heart break when he found her. Izzy was curled up in the fetal position, her face pressed against a towel, screaming in pain as she struggled to hold it together and-

“Fuck it,” Noah said because he was done waiting.

He wasn’t sure if this would work, but they didn’t have a choice. She was suffering. He needed to do this now before things got worse and with the way things were going, Noah knew that it was only going to get worse.

They were out of options.

“Hold on, Izzy,” Noah said as he reached down and pulled the small Sentinel into his arms, swallowing hard when she screamed in pain. “Just hold on,” he whispered as Izzy grabbed hold of his shirt and buried her face against his chest as she released another heartbreaking scream.

“What are you going to do?” Madison asked when Noah headed out of the room and found Ephraim’s mate standing in the hallway, her red eyes full of concern as she cradled little CJ in her arms.

“Fix this,” Noah said, tightening his hold around Izzy as little CJ squirmed in Madison’s arms, trying to get to his mother and reminding him that there was more at stake here than just finding out if his theory was right. Izzy had four beautiful babies that needed their mother and a mate that would be lost without her.

Praying like hell that this worked, Noah quickly made his way downstairs and headed for the infirmary. “It’ll be okay,” he swore, kissing Izzy’s forehead as he carefully placed her down on the gurney and held her for another minute when she refused to let him go. Her sobs became louder, her body trembled as her hold on his shirt tightened and he told himself that he didn’t have a choice.

“Everything will be fine,” Noah murmured absently, placing his hands over hers and gently pulled them away. He forced himself to ignore her screams as he walked to the small refrigerator he kept in the corner, telling himself that this was going to work as he grabbed a small vial of blood from the back and tried not to think about what could happen if he was wrong.

He grabbed a syringe and filled it with the blood, wishing that it was fresh and-

“What the hell are you doing?”