Page 19 of Eternal Light (Fated in the Stars #5)

Gideon strips off his ruined pants and splattered sneakers, which he can’t do anything about. The knee of his jeans is stiff, and the blood has soaked through so much that it has stained his skin.

Turning the water as hot as he can bear, he scrubs and scrubs until the water runs clear down his body, leaving only the water pooled in the bottom of the shower, still pink. His eyes burn, but Gideon hasn’t earned the right to cry—not when he’s the reason they’re here.

He turns the scalding water off and opens the shower curtain to find that the EMT had left scrubs on the bench, along with a towel. He dries off perfunctorily and pulls the scrubs on over his damp body, sliding his bare feet back into his bloody shoes.

The EMT is waiting outside when Gideon comes out carrying his ruined clothes, so the young guy points to a trash bin. Gideon doesn’t hesitate to push them in as deeply as he can. It’s a strangely intuitive gesture—like the guy has been in this kind of situation before.

“What’s your name?” Gideon asks, his throat so sore that it’s made his voice raspy. Maybe he’d been screaming for longer than he’d thought, or maybe it was those tears he was forcing back at the show of kindness.

“Galen. You?” He points away from the restroom toward a quiet waiting room at the end of the hall. It’s the same style of generic blue walls that had been in Nashville.

“Gideon.”

“I’ll wait with—” Galen begins to say, as he points Gideon toward the end of the couch.

The room smells like sadness and grief…or maybe that’s just him. There’s a commotion somewhere in the hall, and Grayson is just there—like he has materialized out of Gideon’s grief, hauling him into his arms and jamming his nose into Gideon’s neck.

“Ah, I’ll leave you to it, Gideon.” Galen smiles at the obvious affection and waves his goodbye.

“Hey, Galen?” Gideon calls after him as Finn makes it through the door, with Leo close behind. The EMT stops and turns toward him, a subtle question on his face.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.” He waves and heads back toward his vehicle, which is probably still standing open in the loading bay.

Gideon doesn’t spare Galen another thought as he rubs Grayson’s back and clasps Finn around the middle with his other arm.

He takes deep breaths of his mates’ scents, even though they’re fraught with fear.

They both look terrified and a bit wild.

Grayson’s scent is mostly patchouli, and there’s a strange electricity snapping in the air, like the atmosphere right before a storm.

Finn’s jaw is clenched, and while he hasn’t been crying yet, he smells like he could start any minute.

“Where are the kittens?” Gideon asks, looking after them down the hall. He catches Leo’s eye while doing so, and the beta’s jaw is clenched hard. He just shakes his head.

Gideon frowns and searches for that intangible place where he feels his mates. If he couldn’t still feel Luca shining brightly, he’d be extremely worried—because Nix has shut his bond down entirely. Why? He hasn’t done that since his combat trial.

Finn holds out his phone while Grayson shakes and growls in his ear.

It’s just a technological reflection of their location—confirmation that the feeling in his gut isn’t that far off.

The phone shows Luca’s condition and location.

His soulmate is at an unfamiliar address forty minutes away.

There’s low-level pain in his lip and his right sinus.

Another layer of dread forces itself past the numbness he’s using to keep his rage down.

He taps around on the screen and finds Nix also in the same location, with a pain in his chest. Rowan is moving toward the hospital, but not by road—his bio stats show an elevated heart rate and temperature, but no injury.

Fear stops him from checking Jay’s microchip, too, unsure if he could handle it if it had gone dark.

“What the fuck is happening?!” Gideon shoves the phone back into Finn’s hands before he throws it at the wall.

“We don’t know,” Finn says. “I heard Nix once over our link, but now there’s nothing.

There’s never been nothing before. Even when he turns it down, I can still…

right afterward, Gray freaked out, and then you called.

” Finn trails away. “I tried calling them, and the phone connected, but no one was there.”

“Jay?” Grayson asks.

Leo closes the waiting room door quietly and leans his forehead against it, his back to the room, but the words are loud in the silence. “Yeah, tell us about Jay first.”

“We saw the kids, saw some fans out front. Then, when we came out to the car, Rhodes was there waiting.”

“James Rhodes?” Leo asks incredulously, spinning around to lean against the door in shock. “He’s already dead. The police said there were two bodies in the car. How was he there?”

Finn sits heavily on the couch. “What did he want?”

“He wanted us to get him away from the cops and Carnell.” Gideon rubs a hand down his face.

“You told him to go fuck himself, right?” Grayson growls. The enigma is still shaking, and the tips of his fangs are piercing his lush lower lip.

“I didn’t. If he could give me Carnell, then I’d have gotten him a villa in Tahiti. But it didn’t matter—he looked like death.” Before, and certainly after. Like his soul was being used as the battery for a powerful concealment spell. “He said Carnell needed him alive.”

Grayson jerks before looking at Gideon incredulously. Even under his obvious fear, frustration, and anger, he’s come to the same conclusion as Gideon had. “Withers is using Rhodes’s soul?! Fuck.”

“Not anymore, Gray.” Gideon shakes his head. “He took the brunt of the bullet intended—” Gideon shakes his head but continues on a different tack. “Jay took the bullet second-hand, high on the right side. I had to…” He looks down at his hands and expects them to be stained red with blood.

“CPR?” Finn confirms softly as he drops his head into his hands, no doubt running through all the possible damage and the most dire conclusions.

“Yeah. Galen…the EMT says he coded two times in the truck. He’s alive and in surgery now. Fuck! I know Nix can handle himself, but—we have to get them back, right the fuck now.”

Gideon is torn between staying with Jay and the unknown dangers Nix and Luca are facing.

The house they’re in isn’t on the beach, but who knows who Carnell has on his payroll?

Just thinking about what he could do to Nix, knowing he carries the Rhodes pack babies…

and then there’s Luca. Gideon’s soulmate is so brave and, when provoked— so stupid .

“I’ll go.”

Leo bangs the back of his head against the door—once, twice—and then, after a third time, he turns and punches a hole in the drywall beside the door.

It’s hard enough that the serene painting of a waterfall falls to the floor, and the drywall spiders out from the point of impact. “Stop. You’ve done enough.”

“Leo,” he tries, accepting a parting squeeze from Grayson before he sits so he can throw an arm around Finn’s shoulder.

“No, Gideon. Not now.” Leo shakes his head and rubs a hand over his face. The scent of burnt cinnamon wood makes Gideon’s nose burn. At least it replaces the lingering sense-memory of Jay’s blood.

“I’m sorry. My father…”

“I said no.” He looks at Finn and then at Grayson, but still not Gideon. “If they’re okay right now, we wait for Rowan, and then we make sure Jay comes out of this ali—fuck—alive. Then we go and get them back. Together.”

Grayson growls again, and that electricity is snapping in the air, his long black hair shifting in a non-existent breeze. “Our alpha is fighting for his fucking life, and our mates are in real trouble. What are we going to do?”

“I’ll go,” Gideon says again, and he moves toward the door, but Leo meets him chest-to-chest.

“You aren’t going anywhere. Sit the fuck down.

I’m done with this grandstanding shit. We are done splitting up.

No good comes from that. I am so mad at you, I fucking told you—” Leo growls, pulling at his hair.

“Fuck, I told you this was the worst fucking idea ever. So now you are going to listen to me.”

“Leo, I’m sorry,” Gideon tries again. It’s not enough—he knows that—but his mate’s heart is breaking. His heart is breaking. Gideon moves to hold him, and Leo holds a hand out to stop his approach but takes a step forward. Good thing Gideon speaks Leo in the same way Leo speaks Gideon.

“You know what? No. From now on, we’ll just know your ideas are dumb.

So dumb, and—” Gideon grabs him and Leo punches him in the chest. “The dumbest ideas. We’re always going to do the opposite,” he whispers and clutches Gideon to him.

“You could have died, too. Goddess. What if he dies for good? What am I going to do?” Leo chokes before finally looking Gideon in the eye and begins to cry.

What are any of them going to do?

Gideon needs Luca and Nix to be safe, too. For the second time, he acknowledges that Nix can more than take care of himself—and Luca, for that matter—but he must have felt Jay’s bond break, and Goddess knows what that feels like now.

Regardless, there are parts of Gideon’s heart out in the world in danger, and he needs to have them where he can do what he was born to do, even though until now, he’s done the fucking worst job.

“It’s going to be okay, Leo. I promise. I’m going to fix this.”

Leo wipes his nose on Gideon’s scrub shirt and nods, his furious bravado quiet for a minute.

“Where the fuck is Rowan?” Gideon mutters.

“Why would they take Luca and Nix but leave Ro?” Grayson asks before he groans and doubles over. “Fuck.” Grayson puts his head between his knees.

Shit, the Broken Bond Syndrome. It’s an insult to freaking injury. Luca is going to start feeling it, too, if they don’t figure their shit out in the next few hours.

Gideon’s chaotic thoughts come to a grinding halt when there’s a knock, and the door opens. A nurse in surgical scrubs pokes her head in.

“Jay Rhodes’s pack?”

Finn meets her at the door. “Yes. I’m Dr. Finn Merritt. How is he?”

Her eyes widen, but she perseveres. “He came through really well in the end. The doctor should be here in a few. Hey, would you be the Dr. Finn Merritt from Nashville? I think I just saw the world debut of your seminar on Omegan Andrological Care. I really enjoyed it.” She smiles, and there’s pink in her cheeks.

She raises a hand as if to twirl a lock of hair, which is currently underneath her surgical cap.

“Thank you…uh…when did you say the surgeon would come to speak to us about my mate?”

Her face falls as she remembers why her hero is here in the first place—and that he’s mated.

“Um…soon. I’m going to go now…” She throws a thumb back over her shoulder.

Gideon would laugh if he weren’t battling the worst surge of anxiety he’s ever felt. He consoles himself that the nurse hadn’t looked like she was the bearer of bad tidings.

Grayson allows himself a weak chuckle, despite his obvious fear and malaise. “That will never not be funny.”

“You should talk,” Finn grumbles. “Oh, Grayson, you are so magical. Oh, Grayson, you have four Affinities, we have never! Ohhhh, so talented and so handsome…”

“Hey, fuck off, no one said I was handsome,” Grayson groans without heat and holds his hand out for Leo. “Come pet my head.”

Leo lightly punches Gideon in the belly one more time before taking Grayson’s head in his lap.

Gideon begins to pace. He needs a distraction, or he’s going to hunt Jay down for himself, which he’s sure the hospital staff would not appreciate. “The visit with the Guild went well, then?” he asks.

He knows he sounds disinterested, which he assuredly isn’t.

Any other time, he’d be giving Grayson all of his attention.

He pulls out the phone and checks on his Kittens and…

where is baby-alpha? Rowan is still about twenty minutes out.

Is he walking? Does he not know how to hail a fucking cab?

He presses call, but it just rings and rings.

“Dammit, Ro,” he mutters.

“It was good,” Grayson sighs as Leo rubs his temples and Finn rests a hand on his wrist to keep track of his pulse.

When no more is forthcoming, Gideon can’t keep himself focused long enough to ask more questions.

He hears the squeak of footsteps in the hall, and then there’s a doctor, fresh from surgery, standing in the waiting room.

It’s the worst case of déjà vu, but this time, it’s not Riordan—it’s a stranger.

“Rhodes pack? I’m Dr. Haus.”

“That’s us. I’m Dr. Finn Merritt. How is Jay?”

Apparently, the nurse hadn’t warned her colleague about the famous andrologist in their midst, but at least the doctor retains his dignity despite the initial look of surprise.

“Once we got him some blood, he rallied like gangbusters. That’s what gave us trouble from the get-go.

The bullet didn’t hit any major organs, even though there was significant soft-tissue damage.

He’s stable now, and we’ve put in a drain to help prevent any fluid build-up while he heals.

With some rest, he should recover well in a few days.

We’ll keep a close eye on him, but everything looks positive at this point. ”

“He’s okay?” Gideon whispers. He’s having trouble reconciling the damage and the death from earlier with the positive outcome.

“He is. We’ll move him out of recovery in the next hour, and then you can go up to see him. Enigmas never stay under long.”

Finn shakes his hand and walks him to the door. They make professional small talk, and Gideon knows he should thank the doctor for his hard work on their behalf—it’s his role, after all, as Jay’s second—but he can only hear the buzzing of relief in his ears.

Jay isn’t dead. Jay isn’t dead. Not. Dead.

In the next instant, he’s sitting on his ass in the middle of the floor, and he’s laughing with relief.

He knows he looks like a crazy person for the second time today, but it’s when he starts to cry—in great, racking sobs—that Gideon’s mates cuddle close around him.

They mutter soothing words of their own relief and, somehow, absorb some of his anguish.

He’s reminded that maybe it’s not just him that is supposed to do the saving.

Maybe the Goddess sent them to save him, too.

Thank you for them.