Page 25 of Bound to Enemy (Wolf Billionaire #3)

CHAPTER 25

DAXTON

I tore through the healers' building with my mate in my arms. From the moment she whispered my name and closed her eyes, she hadn't moved.

Her heart was beating, barely, but she was at least alive, which meant that there was a chance.

"Help! It's your Luna."

Immediately, I was swarmed by dozens of healers who came with a stretcher. They got to work on her while I stood by the side watching.

I couldn't make sense of what they were saying, but I picked up on words like poison, cardiac arrest, and brain function.

I had run with her in my arms all the way from the clearing. I had spoken to her the entire time I made my way to the healers' building.

The war was over and we had won, so why did I feel like I was on the losing side?

This wasn't meant to happen.

They wheeled her toward a door that led to the surgery areas, and I went to follow them but was stopped dead in my tracks by one of the smaller healers.

"Alpha, alpha please." I tried to move around the healer so I could go with her.

Why couldn't I feel her wolf? Why was it when I reached for her, she wasn't there in our connection?

"Alpha please," the healer tried to push me back, but my eyes were focused on the stretcher as it was wheeled away from the waiting area. "Alpha, you can't go into the operating room."

More healers came and started trying to push me back.

"Let me go!" I needed to be next to her. I couldn't risk not being close to her. She needed my wolf to heal her, just like I did last time. I can save her. "Let me go!"

My wolf clawed at the walls of my mind and tried to break free. I didn't want to let him loose in case he harmed someone, but the longer they kept me from her, the less restraint I had.

"Let me go!" I roared.

I thrashed against all four of them, and they moved, but only by a little. No matter how hard I fought them, they just kept pushing me back.

"Alessandra!" I was hysterical. My mind was in a state of sheer panic. Why did it feel like I was losing her? Why did it feel like she was dead already?

No, I couldn't allow myself to think like that. I needed to keep my head straight. She was still here, her heart was still beating, and she was alive. They would keep her alive.

Those were the words I kept telling myself over and over again.

"Daxton," Elliot came into view, and his panicked eyes stared into mine. "Dax, I need you to calm down."

The four healers moved away from my body, and I all but collapsed into my beta's arms. My body felt weak, all the strength from my muscles had drained, and all I could focus on was the fact that my mate was laying on a cold operating table with her body open and exposed to the elements.

"I got you, Dax." Elliot held me up, my head rested over his shoulder, and an unknown sting behind my eyes began to build up. "She'll be okay, you know our healers. They are skilled at what they do."

I knew that they were skilled, but this was also a poison that we had never dealt with before. She had barely survived the last hit of this poison. I had nothing else to offer her. She already bore my mark, that was meant to be enough, but it wasn't—fuck.

I lifted my head, my heart already heavy in my chest. Why did it feel like my soul wanted to leave my body?

I couldn't lose her. There was no me without her. She was my grounding, my soul, my tether. She was the essence of my very being. Until her, I didn't truly exist. And now with her, she is all that I live for.

A foreign moisture filled my eyes, blurring my vision. It wasn't until one single trail of water made its way from my cheek all the way down to my jawline. I felt the small tear taper off the edge.

I hadn't cried in years. I didn't even shed a tear when my father passed. I simply took everything on the chin and kept it moving.

"Dax..." There was a thin film of moisture over Elliot's eyes as his irises shined with emotion. "She will live."

I shook my head, the darkness had already gripped my heart. "We don't know that. She should be healed, the mark is meant to make her invincible to the poison. Why didn't it work?"

"I can answer that." The voice came from behind me.

I whirled around, the despair left my body for a moment, and the rage and betrayal that I had felt in that clearing returned.

Without hesitation, I launched myself at Jason. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and slammed his body against the wall. I didn't miss the audible groan that rang through the area.

"Everyone leave!" It was Elliot who gave the order to the healers that crowded around in their scrubs. "That's an order from your alpha."

My heated gaze stayed trained on the wolf in front of me. I wanted to kill him. He had promised me and given me his word that he would keep her safe.

'It was her over us'.

We were both willing to die for her, so why was he still living and she was hanging on by the most minuscule of threads?

I heard the shuffling of the healers as they made their way out of the waiting room area. I didn't need witnesses here just in case I decided to end this man's life.

"What do you mean you're the reason her mark didn't work?"

He gulped, the sadness in his eyes screamed at me. "She saved me. She drew her essence from within herself and transferred it to me."

"What?" Both Elliot and I said that at the same time.

"That's not possible."

He shook his head, "It is. It's an ancient magic, a practice that has only been performed by very few wolves. We studied it during our times as pups for school. She must have figured out how to do it."

"What does this have to do with her not getting better?"

"Shit," Elliot hissed behind me under his breath.

"What?" I looked over my shoulder at him. "What is it?"

"She gave him a chance at life by essentially forfeiting hers."

The world came to a record-scratching halt.

"He..." The words couldn't even leave my lips. "No, no, she wouldn't do that."

I lied to myself. I knew exactly the kind of leader she was and I knew that she would do whatever she needed to do for her people.

Tears brimmed Jason's eyes. "I tried to stop her."

The words echoed in my mind loudly with each passing second.

'...she forfeited her life...'

Those words rang over and over again in my mind until they all came to a loud, clamoring crescendo and I let out a loud roar, surging my fist forward;

The room went deathly quiet. Little flecks of concrete flew all over the place the moment my fist made contact with the wall right beside Jason's head.

Tears rolled down Jason's cheeks. His eyes were glued on mine, but I knew that he wasn't crying because he had been scared I would kill him. He was mourning for the woman we both loved.

"Killing you would be a waste. She would never forgive me for it," I gritted through my teeth. "Get out of my sight, before I change my mind on killing you."

I shoved him into the wall and pushed away from him. His neck hung low, completely and utterly distraught, but there was no ounce of pity that I could give to him. He was not the one on the operating table. He wasn't the one who could likely lose a mate.

I walked over to the chairs in the waiting room and sat down.

There was nothing that I could do but wait for her to come out of surgery. I simply prayed for the sake of my pack and all those around me that she survived, because if she didn't, then I would soon follow after without question.

The day bled into the night and I remained rooted in place. I could hear the gentle pelts of the raindrops against the window. Elliot and I had been sitting in the silence of the room for hours.

I hadn't moved an inch since I had sat on the seat. My thumb rubbed over the mating cut that was on my left palm. It had faded into nothing but a scar now. It was a symbol of our bond and our union. Humans had wedding bands, but we carried these marks embedded in our skin. They were a part of us, they were a symbol of who we belonged to.

She was mine and I was hers. That was how it was and how it would be till the end of time.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath.

The pad of my thumb rubbed the inside of my palm and I let out a heavy sigh. It was like I was suspended in mid-air and I had no way of bringing my feet back down. I waited in limbo wondering if she were dead or alive.

Elliot patted my back, the same movement he had done every so often when I stirred. He was at a loss for words too.

We had done it, we had won the war and saved all of our people. And yet my heart couldn't find any joy. What joy was there without her?

She was the one who had saved us, she was the one who had taken on the rogue king alone. It should have been me. I should have been the one to carry the burden that she decided to carry all by herself.

We were meant to be a team. Why did she go at it alone?

The doors to the waiting room opened and in walked the head healer. His clothes were doused in blood, her blood. I could see the fatigue in his eyes.

I stood from my seat and stormed over to him. "Is she alive?"

"Yes."

It was a simple one-letter word but the power it had over my entire existence could not be put into words.

She was alive. She was still here with me on this green earth. My mate was alive.

I doubled over as the anxiety that had ridden my body thawed away and I allowed myself to feel everything that I had bottled.

All the stress. All the fear.

"She's alive but she isn't awake yet, alpha."

I lifted my head, "Did you induce her into a coma?"

He shook his head, "The poison had spread to her heart and we had to resuscitate her three times before it finally started back up again. We're not sure what the lack of oxygen would have done to her brain. Our hope is that she wakes within the next 48 hours."

That momentary sense of relief quickly faded and all I was left with was that familiar despair that I had become accustomed to for the past few hours returned.

"She will wake up, right? You will get her to wake up, right?"

The head healer looked at me and then his eyes moved to Elliot behind me.

"Don't look at him, look at me," I demanded the healer. "Look at me!"

The healer shivered where he stood in fear.

"Dax," Elliot stepped up beside me and placed his hand on my shoulder. "She will pull through. She is still here, she's still alive. Can he go and see her?"

"Of course," the healer gulped. "Right this way, alpha."

I calmed my emotions and followed him toward her wing. With each step I took I felt like my chest sunk a little deeper into itself.

"She is here, alpha."

We came to a halt at one of the ICU rooms. The walls were made entirely of glass so I could see her there lying on the bed with tubes sticking out of her everywhere. She looked like she was sleeping but I knew now that she was in between. She was neither here nor was she there. She was holding onto life with all her might.

"You can go in whenever you are ready, alpha." The healer left me standing outside her room just staring at her. My chest felt like it was constricted and all I could think of was the night before all of this happened. The way she had stared into my eyes and told me that she loved me. She had noted her soul to me and now I would give anything to be back in that room again. Just the two of us and the rest of the world locked away behind the door.

That sting that I had now become accustomed to sang behind my eyes. I never knew that it was possible for a person to feel their heart physically breaking in their chest.

I don't know how long I stood outside her room before I finally entered.

Her room smelt sterile. The scent was sharp and burned the inside of my nose.

She would hate this smell. She liked the smell of vanilla and lavender. I would need to talk to Elliott and make sure there is some essence in the room.

The machines beeped as her heart thumped gently in her chest. I could see just how battered and bruised she really was.

She had been in surgery for almost 10 hours, and there was no sign of her healing. Her wolf was locked away, meaning that she was more human now and far more fragile than I would have liked.

This wasn't looking good. But I had to hold out hope for some kind of miracle here.

I walked toward her bed and just hovered above her. My eyes roamed the length of her body, taking in her battered frame. I could see the faint scar from the mark I had given her. The same mark that was meant to protect her, but instead, she had sacrificed herself to save her beta.

"I'm mad at you." The words came out hoarse. I didn't even know if she could hear me, but I hoped that she was still in there. "You were meant to be the one who lived."

I sat by her bedside and gripped her cold hand in my large one. Normally she would have curled her fingers around mine like she always did. But this time there was no reaction.

Her chest rose and fell gently, and her brain had activity in it, yet she was not reactive to me. She wasn't here, at least not in the way that made her alive.

"You need to wake up now, love." I closed her fingers around mine with my free hand. "We won, Ale. We won the war, but it doesn't feel like I won shit because you're like this. So I need you to wake up so it feels like a celebration. I can't do this life without you; you can't leave me. Not when...not when I just found you. How can I exist without my soul?"

The first tear fell, and the ones that followed could not be stopped. All the pain and the anxiety flowed out of me. She wasn't out of the woods yet.

"Come home to me, Ale. We aren't finished yet."