Page 50

ELLIETTE

A sudden impact jarred my knees, and I pitched forward. My palms landed against something solid, and an antiseptic smell filled my nose.

“Am I dead?” I asked, afraid to open my eyes.

But then, I was talking. Maybe that meant I’d survived. Except…it was possible dead people talked all the time, and it was just that nobody listened.

“No,” Sean said, sounding relieved. “You’re not dead.”

Thank God . But after being dragged through the fourth dimension, there was another question I needed to ask. “Can you… Can you still see me?”

“Uh…yeah.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and righted me so I was no longer leaning face-first against the wall. “Any reason why I shouldn’t?”

Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw a pale blue wall. I looked up at Sean who was haloed by fluorescent lighting. “Where am I?”

“St. Mary’s,” he said. “I told you that.”

“So, it worked?” The evidence was all around me, but I couldn’t believe I’d actually tilted. Through the fourth dimension. With a dryad to Montana. “Where’s Lukas?”

“Room 208.” Sean tipped his head to the left. “At the end of the hall.”

I glanced down the shiny tiled corridor, then took off at a run, but I didn’t make it two steps before Sean grabbed my wrist and yanked me back to him.

“Let go!” I cried, trying to yank myself free.

Sean puffed out his cheeks in an expression I didn’t understand, then blew out the air. “Just so you know… He’s going to be surprised to see you.”

“ What?” I wrenched my arm free. “You said he needed me. I thought he asked for me.”

“He does need you. He just...doesn’t know it yet.”

I looked up at Sean and felt the blood drain from my head. I’d been duped. Sean obviously didn’t know how things had gone down between me and Lukas. He didn’t realize what a huge mistake this was.

If Lukas was in as bad shape as he said, this could make everything worse.

“Take me home,” I demanded.

“No,” Sean said.

“If he’s in as bad of shape as you say he is—seeing me could make him worse.”

“No,” Sean said. “It won’t.”

I kept arguing, even as my heart felt drawn to the room at the end of the hall. “If he decides he wants to see me, he can call me himself.”

Sean shook his head. “I’m sorry I stopped you, I just wanted to prepare you for his initial reaction.”

“Which will be furious,” I said, still pissed Sean hadn’t been this forthcoming before we came.

“Maybe at first,” he agreed .

Oh my god. It was one thing for me to think it, quite another to have his confirmation. “This is a bad idea.”

“Just go see him,” Sean said. “ Please .”

I glanced back down the hospital corridor toward Lukas’s room. I could imagine him lying in there. Wounded. Humiliated. He wouldn’t want me to see him like that.

Sean put his hand at the back of my shoulder and gave me a gentle shove. I fell into my first step, moved stiffly into my second, then picked up the pace—not quite a run, but still feeling the draw of the man I loved. The berserker I’d always loved.

I reached his room, grabbed onto the door handle, and entered. Lukas’s back was to me, and he glanced over his shoulder—probably expecting a nurse.

There was a moment of surprise on his face, followed by a brief burst of elation that quickly soured to disgust. He rolled over to face the window.

I remained frozen to the spot, my hand still gripping the door handle, because my imagination had paled in the face of reality.

Lukas didn’t look like Lukas. His eyes were swollen and the skin around them was a dark, mottled purple.

If the splint was any indication, his nose was broken too, and his face was cut badly in several places with sutures and little strips of tape holding everything together. The stitched laceration that ran along the right side of his face pulled down at the corner of his eye.

“Lukas?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. My nervous gaze followed the length of the long tube that went from the IV bag hanging high on a pole to the bandage on the back of his hand.

Lukas didn’t respond. He also didn’t turn around .

“Will you talk to me?” I asked.

Still, he didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know how long I was supposed to wait for a response. I didn’t know how hard to push.

Then, right before I tried again, he spoke.

“How did you know I was here?”

I let out a breath. Lukas’s voice was scratchy from lack of use, and he aimed his words toward the window—still unwilling to face me—but at least he was talking.

“Someone from your clan notified the team,” I whispered, afraid to shatter the brittle connection between us.

“Why would you come?” There was a snide bitterness to his question.

I didn’t know if my heart could take any more rejection, but I released my grip on the door handle and took a few steps closer. “I wanted to see you.”

“Is this what you hoped to see?”

“Why would I hope to see you in the hospital? I asked.

“I assume you’re still pissed at me. I’m sure you wished the bastard had killed me.”

For a second, my steps faltered, then I moved closer until I was just a few feet from the edge of his bed. “What are you talking about?”

“I notice you didn’t waste any time coming here to gloat,” Lukas explained. “I’m surprised you were able to get a flight on such short notice.”

“I didn’t take a plane. Sean tilted me.”

“He what?! ” Lukas twisted toward me, then winced in pain before slowly turning back toward the window. His tone dropped to a disapproving simmer. “That was reckless. And unnecessary.”

“I survived,” I said, my own disapproval rising because how dare he suggest my ego was so thin—so thin I’d want anyone dead, especially him?

“And you can’t honestly have expected me to stay home, knowing you were hurt.

And I didn’t come here to gloat, you egotistical asshole. I’m not pissed at you either.”

He didn’t seem affected by my censure. He kept his back to me and muttered, “You should be pissed.”

“ Yeah? ” Even though he couldn’t see it, I folded my arms in a posture of defiance. “Well, keep it up. Maybe I’ll get there.”

“I treated you like crap at that bar.”

“Relax,” I said. “It didn’t have the impact you hoped.”

Now, that got Lukas’s attention. He rolled gingerly, just a quarter of an inch in my direction, and we made our first eye contact that held.

He narrowed his ice-blue eyes. “You didn’t care I was with another woman?”

“Oh, come on.” I threw my hands out in frustration. “I figured out what you were doing. I knew it was all an act. You were trying to push me away. Again , I might add.”

Lukas rolled back toward the window. “Apparently, I failed at that too.”

“You are such an idiot. Don’t you see? You can’t make me hate you.” I walked around the foot of his bed and pulled the visitor’s chair right up to the side of the mattress. We were so close now, we were face to lacerated face. Eye to swollen eye.

He looked at me for a few seconds—probably trying to judge my sincerity—then closed his eyes. “You looked pretty mad, and you didn’t seem to have any trouble letting me leave.”

“You needed to go home to your clan. You had to be alpha. I couldn’t get in the way of that. So, of course I let you go.”

It was a risk, but I reached out and took his hand.

His eyes opened in surprise at the physical contact, but, thankfully, he didn’t pull away.

“I’m not alpha anymore.” He kept his gaze locked on our joined hands.

“I know that too,” I said, this time softly because I didn’t really know how he felt about the pure-blood thing.

And though he hadn’t been thrilled about his promotion to alpha, it couldn’t have felt great to be demoted.

Especially so violently. By his own father. And there was the matter of his pride.

“I didn’t even fight back,” Lukas murmured, mostly to himself and still not looking at me.

I cupped his jaw with my free hand, careful not to brush my thumb against any of the stitches, and his eyes met mine.

“Why not?” I asked. “You’re in your prime. I know he’s your father, but I have to believe you could have bested him.”

“I let him do it because I deserved the beating.”

I took a breath, thinking that was the answer to my earlier uncertainty. Just like his father, Lukas was disgusted by his ancestry. “You thought you deserved to be beaten because of your mother’s bloodline?”

Lukas blinked once, slowly, then started to actually roll his eyes before the small action made him wince in pain. He frowned and grumbled, “I don’t care about that.”

“Then why?”

“Elli,” he said, and his tone was so serious, I leaned in closer .

He squeezed my hand. “I deserved to be punished because of how I treated you. Letting him beat me was my act of contrition.”

I pulled my chair in closer, my heart hurting for him. “You didn’t deserve a beating, Lukas.”

“Well, I got one anyway. He destroyed my face. How can you even look at me?”

“You think I care about that?” I wanted to laugh, but the pain in his eyes told me this wasn’t the time.

“ Everyone cares about that,” he said. “That’s all anyone cares about.”

“Not me.”

He exhaled a humorless laugh. “You said you could never forget a face like mine.”

“Who could?” I asked in all sincerity. “But that’s not why I love you, Lukas.”

His eyes looked like they would have widened if they weren’t so swollen. “You… love me?”

I tipped my head to the side. It was odd to think I’d never said the words out loud. Not to him certainly because I thought he already knew, but not even to myself.

There was no reason to be shy about it now. “I’ve always loved you, Lukas. You know that. Don’t act so surprised.”

“Okay, but you still love me,” he said, as if needing to hear it confirmed. “After all this .”

“Yes,” I said on an exasperated sigh. “I’m in love with an idiot who thinks a few stitches?—”

“One hundred and sixty-seven stitches.”

“—could change the way I feel.”

He smiled a little at that, though not so much that it pulled at any of the sutures. “I still love you, too, after all this. ”

“Good to know,” I said, grinning and barely able to comprehend what was happening.

“And I’m not going back to the clan compound,” Lukas added. “I obviously can’t be alpha, but I’m not going back at all.”

My body relaxed. I hadn’t even realized how much tension I’d been holding until it all ebbed away.

He stroked his thumb across my knuckles. “Would you mind if I moved back into my apartment?”

“Why would I mind? It’s yours. I’ll get back on the apartment hunt first thing tomorrow.”

“There’s no rush.” Lukas pushed up on his elbow, then pressed down with his hand, raising his torso off the mattress.

I leaned back in concern. “Should you be exerting so much energy? Lie down.”

Lukas reached out and slid his free hand behind my neck and pulled me closer. Clearly, he meant to kiss me, but I didn’t know where or how to do that—what with the splint, tape, and so many bruises.

Lukas misread my hesitation, and his hand loosened behind my neck. “You love me, but I’m too hideous to kiss.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No. I’m trying to figure out where on your body it wouldn’t hurt to kiss you. How’s your right ear lobe?”

He laughed, which turned into a cough, then a groan.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ribs. Three cracked.”

Three cracked ribs, and he was pushing himself up off the mattress?

Lukas laid back on his pillows and raised his left hand. “My thumb. That doesn’t hurt too bad.”

I took his hand gently in mine and kissed it. “Lukas? ”

“Yeah?” He closed his eyes, exhaling a breath that spoke to me of exhaustion and—hopefully—a new and lasting peace.

“How much longer until we can go home?”

A small smile touched his lips.