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“No,” I said to the boy. “I just saw the truck. I gave a report to the police at the time. ”

“They need to get back to work, Jorgen. Take Junior upstairs to wait for Helen. ” Lucas nudged the boy to Jorgen’s side.

Jorgen was still eyeing daggers at us, but I got the sense that he couldn’t disobey a direct command.

Junior peeked into Winter’s room one last time. “Bye, Grandpa Winter,” and then he looked up and to us. “Bye, Gina, bye, Edie. Sorry you didn’t get to pet me. ”

I gave him a smile. “Me too. ”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Without the boy and Jorgen radiating disapproval, the climate outside Winter’s room warmed again. Gina’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Anyone want coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Lucas said.

“I’ll be right back. ” She pushed away from her desk and stood.

“Anything I can do while you’re gone?” I asked.

Gina glanced at her chart and shrugged. “You can do a fingerstick. ”

I nodded. “Sounds good. ”

* * *

I turned to the isolation cart as soon as I could to hide my smile. A fingerstick was perfect. I’d go in alone, get a blood sugar on him, and keep the test strip afterward for Dren’s blood. I couldn’t have planned it any better.

Lucas came to stand beside me, startling me from my nefarious thoughts.

“He’s that bad, eh?”

“How do you mean?” I tried to sound innocent.

“He’s gone down from two nurses, one with a trank gun, to one nurse without a trank gun. ” His eyes searched mine. “You all don’t think he’s getting up again, do you. ”

“Um. ” I inhaled, and exhaled, glad my expression was hidden by my mask.

“Let me guess. You can’t tell me. ”

“It’s not that I can’t tell you, it’s just not my place. I might do it wrong. Hell, I might be wrong. I don’t know how the moon works on your kind. ”

“Can I come in with you?”

Dammit to hell. I didn’t have a good excuse to keep him outside. “Sure. Why not?”

* * *

I got my supplies together at the edge of the room. Lucas walked in without gear on—what could happen to him if he got bitten, he’d become more were?—but being alone in the room with two werewolves made my cotton isolation smock feel a lot like a hooded red cape.

“So who was he to you?” I asked as I approached the bed.

“Frightening mostly. ” Lucas stood on Winter’s right side, and I joined him there. “One Halloween as a kid I asked my mom if I could dress up as him. ”

“That bad?”

“Worse, really. ” Lucas looked down at Winter’s still form and shook his head. “He was willing to do anything to get his way. ”

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m … sorry?” I guessed.

“He was the perfect pack leader,” Lucas said, going on like I wasn’t there. “He didn’t give a shit about anything else, anyone else—his life was the pack. Anything for the pack. He had to be tough. Cruel, even. ” Lucas reached out to touch Winter’s face hesitantly. We hadn’t shaved him since his arrival, and his five o’clock shadow was becoming a low beard. “Goddammit—he lived this long. He wasn’t supposed to die. ”

I uncovered one of Winter’s hands. I’d lance his finger and get blood while Lucas was distracted by his grief and—“Oh, no. ”

“What?” Lucas’s attention spun to me. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s probably in the chart already. I just didn’t know—” Winter’s fingertips were turning black. It was due to the blood pressure medication we gave people. At the volume he was getting it here, we were saving his vital organs at the expense of the rest of him. If we couldn’t turn down his meds soon—if the moon didn’t heal him, if he didn’t wake up and the processes in him that regulated blood pressure begin to work again—his hands would go. His remaining foot too.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “That’s bad, isn’t it. ”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. ”

Lucas leaned over the bed so that his face was over Winter’s. “You’re not supposed to die. Do you hear me? You’re not supposed to die. ”

There was a small cough from the room’s doorway. “Did I come at a bad time?”

Lucas and I both looked up. A man I hadn’t met yet stood in the doorway, shadowed by the light outside. Lucas’s hands clenched on the bed’s side rail, so hard the bed shook. “Viktor. ”

“I take it now’s a bad time?” The other man—were, I was guessing—stepped into the room.