Page 8

SKYE

Something distant yet familiar was calling me. Some part of my awareness reached for it. Just by doing that, the conscious effort to connect with it made me feel less alone.

It was like a rope. A four-strand braid of strong fiber that I knew well. If I could just grab it, I knew I wouldn’t sink. Wouldn’t drown.

My vision was blurry when I finally opened my eyes. My eyelids were so heavy, and sleep seemed like such a good idea.

I heard my name, and felt Halo’s touch not only on my hand, but laced through my aura. Her brown sugar and plum scent pulled me toward wakefulness, bolstered by the strong dark coffee scent of Severen, and the whisky barrels buried in grave dirt that was Crux.

Crux said something, but it was rushed and muffled and I couldn’t make it out. Then he was gone.

My eyes came into focus, and the first thing I saw was Halo’s beautiful face.

“You’re awake.”

I wanted to ask what happened but I couldn’t speak. My throat wouldn’t work right. Panic began to swell and my eyes opened wider. I squeezed Halo’s hand. Where was I? Why couldn’t I talk? Somewhere, an irritating, rhythmic beeping grew more and more rapid.

“Calm down, baby,” Halo said, placing her cool, soft hand on my forehead. “It’s alright. You have to relax. You…” She exchanged a glance into somewhere I couldn’t see, but I could sense Severen. Halo returned to looking into my eyes.

“You had an accident. You passed out. You’re in the hospital.”

The hospital? A tear slipped from my eye, traced my ear and soaked into the pillow.

Crux’s scent grew more potent as he appeared at my bedside, along with a woman I didn’t know.

“Skye? I’m nurse Lawrence, how are you feeling?”

I couldn’t speak. More tears threatened to fall from my eyes but Halo’s calming aura wrapped around me like my favorite plush blanket and soothed me.

“We paged Dr. Houser,” said the nurse. “He should be here momentarily to do a check up.”

I wanted to ask for water. Instead, the request came out as a dry, crackling hiss.

In the distance there was a rattling sound. Crux returned to my bed with a cup. He spooned chips of ice to my mouth, and slowly, carefully tipped them past my lips. He was apparently the only one who could decipher my rasp-language.

The ice burned going down my throat but it also had never tasted so sweet.

I looked at my pack with questions in my eyes.

“How… long?” I croaked.

When they told me, I didn’t believe them at first, but then I noticed the dark skunk stripe in Crux’s perpetually blue hair.

“Your… roots,” I said.

He raked his fingers through his hair, tousling it self-consciously. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Matters.” I took a shallow breath, already feeling exhausted. “To me.”

Halo stroked my forehead. “I’ll take him to a salon when you’re feeling better. All three of us can go. For now, just rest.”

My eyes drifted closed. Tempting as it was, I didn’t want to sleep. I felt I had slept too long, and my pack needed me.

“Skye?”

A new figure entered the cloud of bodies around my bed, every bit the doctor cliche. White coat, stethoscope around his neck.

“I’m Dr. Houser, the cardiologist at Caduceus Hospital. How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” I admitted. “Thirst.” I couldn’t even say the full word, thirsty .

Now Severen was the one who was serving me shards of ice which I slowly sipped onto my tongue.

“Do you know what happened?” asked the doctor.

I was silent. I wanted to shake my head, or repeat what my pack told me, that I had passed out, but all that seemed like it took way too much energy.

Halo grasped my hand, which was nice of her.

Crux’s grave-earth smell was coming across especially wet and marrowed, and Severen’s jaw ticked in his cheek.

I knew then that I didn’t simply pass out.

“You fell unconscious because you suffered an acute cardiac event,” Dr. Houser said. “You are in complete heart failure, and the only hope for a cure is a heart transplant.”

Ice fell like a heavy sheet over my body. Not just because of what I had been told, but the cold, detached way the doctor relayed the information. Halo squeezed my hand.

“Currently you’re on the list for a donor heart. In the meantime, you’re attached to this ECMO machine, via connections in your femoral arteries. What this does is circulate the blood, which allows your heart to rest.”

Tears flowed down my cheeks, silent and exhausted. I was hooked up to machines, my heart was essentially rotten and useless, and in order for me to live, someone had to die.

I turned my head away from the doctor and closed my eyes.

“Okay,” I rasped. “Please go.”

I couldn’t escape the morbid thought. For me to stay here, on this earth, and have a happy life with my pack, the people who love me the most, someone else had to die.

Maybe it would have been better if I never woke up.