Chapter 127

Istowed Genevieve in an empty exam room at Sunshine Hearts, doing my best to pretend I was okay. Like I wasn’t hurting everywhere. Or like I hadn’t been stabbed. My head throbbed, the world swayed every so often, and I barely had a grip on my consciousness. But Genevieve needed me. It was obvious she needed a doctor. Even the smallest movements had her wincing, and I worried about permanent damage to her shoulder. With her wolf dormant, she wouldn’t heal the same.

“Let Maggie take a look at you, okay?” I said. “I need to check on Nolan.”

The commotion across the hall in the other exam room had my heart lodged in my fucking throat. I needed to know what was happening to my baby brother.

“I don’t have any hope,” Genevieve whispered. God, if that didn’t rip my fucking heart out. I didn’t blame her. And I didn’t have the heart to say I didn’t either.

I cradled her face and kissed her briefly, noting the trembling in her body. Fuck, she was freezing.

“You don’t have to,” I told her softly. “But please, let Maggie take care of you until Cecelia can check you out. It’s not just about that. It’s about everything you went through.

“Okay.”

“Take good care of her.” I paused in the doorway to glare at Maggie. “Her sister is in the waiting room. Maybe get her?”

“I will,” Maggie replied with a small nod.

“And get her dry clothes and a few blankets. She can’t stay in those.”

“I’ll take care of her, Killian,” she promised. Teeth clenched, I nodded and glanced at my wife once more from the doorway. Fuck, it was hard to walk away from her.

“Go,” Genevieve said, her voice barely audible. I listened despite the growing knots in my stomach.

Across the hall, it was fucking chaos. Declan sat in a corner, rubbing a hand over his chest while Cade crouched beside him to talk him through a panic attack. Finn stood off to the side, hands tucked under his armpits and looking visibly distressed—not that I blamed the kid.

Sam and Lucas hovered close as Connor and Cecilia took care of Nolan on the table. Except Connor was fucking wearing a heavy pair of leather gloves as he attempted to grab one of the spikes drilled into Nolan’s skin. The metal burned bright at the contact.

“Son of a bitch!” Connor howled, stepping back and shaking out his hand. Nolan seized with a painful cry, his back arching off the table. Sam and Lucas rushed in to help Cecelia hold him still. Connor tossed the gloves aside and massaged the welt on his palm. “Even through the leather, I feel the burn.”

Fucking magic.

“I don’t know anyone in town who has the experience to get these out and is human,” Cecelia said tightly. “We need to make a plan fast.”

“You,” Lane pointed at me from his damn near invisible spot, “where the fuck is Beau?”

“Waiting room,” I said. He strode two long steps into the hall and started yelling.

“Beau, I need kit-B from your car!”

“One kit-B comin’ on up!” Beau called back. Fuck, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the fuck kit-B was.

“Out of the way, sweetheart. We’ll handle this.” Lane took Cecelia by the shoulders and moved her forcefully. Beau was fucking fast, rounding into the room before she could even protest. Lane grabbed a rolling cart and dumped the shit off it, ignoring Ceclia’s angry exclamations. The hard case that Beau laid out was daunting. I knew what Lane was into, which made the fact that he had different cases terrifying as fuck. “Do you remember Kalahari?”

“I remember the fuckin’ waterslides?” Beau replied, cracking a grin.

“Other part of Kalahari.”

“Vividly.”

“We’re doing that backwards,” Lane told him. When he flipped open the case to reveal an extensive medical drill kit clearly custom designed with more add-ons than I’d ever seen for a fucking drill. My stomach turned, and the room wavered.

“Why do you have that?” Cecelia asked.

“You don’t want to know,” I whispered. Neither did I.

“We work fast.” Lane ignored us. I watched as he worked quickly to outfit the drill, matching up pieces with the spikes until he found the right one. “I’ll get them out, you cover him up. I need your fucking draw hands, Beau.”

“Yipee-ki-yay.” He chuckled darkly.

When Beau grabbed gauze pads, Lane slid on a pair of fucking goggles. When Lane tested the drill, Beau put on gloves. They were fucking terrifying with how in sync they were.

“You can’t do that!” Cecelia exclaimed when Lane started in on the first one. The whir of the drill is nauseating.

I grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the way.

“Darlin’, you act like you’re somethin’ special, but you ain’t. We can do what you do. And we’re better at takin’ them apart,” Beau boasted like it was something to be proud of. “Lane, here, went to medical school three times in three different decades. I followed him around—”

“Beau,” Lane snarled, never looking up. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good boy.”

They fell into a silent routine as Lane rapidly unscrewed the first spike. Jesus fucking Christ, how deep had she drilled it into Nolan’s bone? Bile stung the back of my throat at the smell of burning hair that filled the room. It was a scent I never wanted to know and one I’d never fucking forget. The relay of Nolan’s heart on the monitor was daunting—an unsteady beep threatening to fail on any given notice.

“Oh, my baby!” Mom let out a strangled cry when she appeared in the doorway. Oh fuck. Not the thing for her to walk in on. Lucas moved fast, catching her and holding her tight.

I dragged in a painful breath. The emotion in the room was overwhelming enough, but Mom never fell apart. Listening to her do so? That was fucking devastating.

Lane and Beau were efficient in their silence. For every spike Lane drilled out, Beau was quick to tape down gauze. But the problem was the bleeding. There was so much blood, and they weren’t stopping it. They were just putting fucking tape over it.

“We can’t get the one out of his eye,” Lane said. “It’s too deep and too fucking risky. I don’t have the right equipment to handle that level of damage. He needs a hospital. Tell me we have a way to get him to a real fucking hospital.”

“There’s an air ambulance inbound,” Cecelia told him. “It’s still over twenty minutes out.”

“That’s not soon enough,” he snapped. My heart sank as I stared at my baby brother. We needed more fucking time.

A screeching sound overtook the heart monitor.

“What’s happening?” Mom’s voice trembled as she tried to get the words out.

“We’re losing him,” Connor said with a hint of panic in his voice. The kid was used to handling animal emergencies. Not people.

“I know,” Cecelia shot back. She shoved Lane aside, who didn’t protest. The gravity of the situation was reflected in his face—something that made me feel even worse. “Crash cart. Now.”

All of us fell fucking silent as she and Connor worked fast in case they needed to save him. Dear fucking God, please. Please, let the kid fucking live. The sound of the machines around Nolan was deafening, reflecting every tense fucking moment until he flatlined.

I lost track of everything, the world floating in and out of a fucking haze.

“Clear!” Cecelia exclaimed.

Hands off, paddles down.

Nolan’s body seized on the table with the surge of electricity.

Nothing.

Hands off… paddles down… seize and repeat.

Over and over again.

Panic stole the breath from my very lungs as I sagged against the wall.

Not Nolan.

He couldn’t…

Tears pricked my eyes as the room grew unbearably hot.

“Breathe,” Cade whispered from his spot next to Declan. “Just breathe…”

“No, no, no, no,” Mom sobbed.

Still nothing.

“Fight, kid,” I whispered, emotion choking me up. He couldn’t die. Not like this. Not Nolan. “Fucking fight. Please… please, you’ve got to fight…”

My knees buckled and gave out. The blood loss made my head fucking swim. I crashed hard to the floor with echoes of my name… somewhere.

I was drowning. All over again.

And I let the darkness drag me under.