Page 51

ELLIETTE

T he answer to my question was a mere ten hours. Apparently, berserkers—with their high tolerance for pain and warrior sensibilities—weren’t too keen on being poked and prodded while lying around in hospital beds. Plus, they healed pretty fast if given the chance to fully rest.

Sean had been kind enough to bring Lukas’s Lotus and personal belongings to the hospital before he tilted home with— it had to be said —a very self-satisfied smile on his face.

Now, Lukas and I were heading back to Minnesota with nothing more than his hospital discharge instructions and a bottle of Ibuprofen.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked sleepily. We’d been driving for six hours and were still in Montana.

“I was thinking happily ever after,” Lukas said.

I glanced over and studied his amused expression, trying to picture how the lacerations would heal, and thinking the resulting scars might make him look even more handsome, but in a rugged dangerous kind of way .

Lukas took my hand, lifted it, and kissed my knuckles.

“I meant with the team,” I said, clarifying my earlier question while enjoying the soft brush of his lips, still barely able to believe I was in the car with Lukas—just the two of us. And we were together. For real.

It was a scene I’d imagined so many times before. I wondered how Evan would take it.

“The team?” He lowered our hands to his thick, muscled thigh.

“Your ribs will heal,” I explained. “So will your shoulder injury. Are you going to play again?”

He seemed to give that some thought, then shrugged. “If O’Rourke will have me.”

“He’ll have you.” I let go of Lukas’s hand and fluffed up the novelty narwhal pillow he’d bought me at a gas station hours earlier. I wasn’t necessarily into narwhals, but it had been cushier than the unicorn option.

I shoved the pillow between my head and the window, then stared out at the flat ribbon of highway ahead of us.

I didn’t want to miss a second with Lukas, but it was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. Ever since leaving the mountains of southwest Montana, there’d been less and less to look at.

I’d even started questioning our decision to drive. Tilting hadn’t been that bad.

“You don’t know that,” Lukas said.

For a second, I forgot what he was responding to.

That is, until he added, “I may not be the same draw I was before. O’Rourke may have second thoughts about me. Questionable body. Fucked up face.”

I closed my eyes and rested my head against the pillow. “People will want you on the team because you’re an asset. You know how to win games. Everything else is just media fluff.”

“The Spriggans’ roster might be more loaded with talent than ever before, but the team still isn’t off to a great start,” he said dolefully.

“Exactly my point.” I yawned. “It’s because you’re not there to help make them great.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. Or rather, I thought I said it. I might have only been thinking it because—with the highway gently bumping and humming beneath the tires—the sound was lulling me into a comfortable zone of bliss.

“Did you want to talk about…the other thing?” I asked as if I were tipping my toe into potentially dangerous waters.

He glanced at me, then back at the road. “What other thing?”

“The thing that tripped your dad.”

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Are you concerned about my impure test results?”

“Of course not. But why did they run the test again?”

“Ah.” He pressed his lips together, then gave me the parts of the story that Sean had been unable to explain. “After my coronation, someone on the counsel expressed concern about the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

“A conflict of interest?” I asked.

“My mother’s brother worked in the lab, and he was the one who signed off on the test results. The counsel wanted to get ahead of any future questions. They ran the test again with a neutral lab, so there’d be no room for doubt.”

He glanced over at me and made big eyes. “Oops.”

I knew he was trying to make light of the situation for my benefit, but I didn’t need him to. I didn’t want him to. If we were together, I didn’t want him to hold anything back.

“And why did this all come as a surprise to your father? Didn’t he know your mother?”

“Alphas sire children. They don’t know any of the mothers.”

“Yeah, but…if the offsprings’ bloodlines were so important, wouldn’t he know?”

“My mother was the daughter of an alpha from a different clan. It would have been highly insulting to question her genetics because that would have meant—to some degree—challenging the alpha himself. And, as you know, the goal of those contracts was to end the animosity between clans. Not add to it.”

“But…you knew her. Your mother.”

“I knew her. I lived with her until I was ten and had to move into the Clan Bakken compound for my training. I haven’t seen her since.”

My heart squeezed, thinking of a ten-year-old Lukas saying goodbye to his mother.

“I don’t know why she never told me. Maybe it wasn’t a conversation you had with a pup. Maybe she hoped it would never matter because she was praying I’d never be tapped to be alpha.”

I sat with that for a second and decided—even though I’d never met his mother—that that’s exactly what she’d hoped for.

Lukas turned on the radio to a sports-show channel. The hosts were discussing a recent hockey game between the Pittsburgh Pookas and the Richmond Redcaps. Their voices droned on.

After a while, I thought I heard Lukas turn the channel to a classic rock station. Then, a few minutes later, he said my name. “Elli?”

“Hmmm?” I was vaguely aware that my body had been in the same position for a bit too long. Everything ached.

“Wake up,” he said, his words a gentle prodding.

“I am awake.”

He chuckled. “You’ve been snoring.”

“No, I haven’t.” I might have been embarrassed if I thought there was any truth to it, but I was totally awake. I’d just drifted off for maybe a second.

“Okay,” he said. “Not snoring. Snuffling . And don’t worry. It was cute.”

“Okay,” I said sleepily. “Where are we?”

“Home.”

“Very funny.” My eyes fluttered open.

“Not joking. We’re home.” The car slowed as Lukas steered us around a corner.

I sat up and glanced around at our surroundings. We were in a downtown area, and I thought I recognized the CVS on the corner. “We’re home?”

“That’s what I said. Twice.”

But how was that possible? We still had to cross into North Dakota.

“You’ve been sleeping for nearly ten hours,” he said, answering my unspoken question.

“Oh, no.” I rubbed the grit out of my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I hear tilting can be taxing on the human body. You needed to recover.”

“But you’re the one who’s injured! And that had to be such a boring drive for you. ”

“Nah. I had a lot to think about. ”

Well, I didn’t doubt that for a second, but still… “It was rude of me.”

He laughed, clearly in disagreement, and pulled up to our building’s parking garage. He manually rolled down the driver’s side window and hit his code on the security keypad. The garage door lifted, and we drove in. Home. At last.

He parked, and we got out. He popped the trunk.

Back in Montana, the hospital staff had pushed Lukas out in a wheelchair, much to his disgust. Now, he was unloading the car like he didn’t still have three broken ribs.

“Let me help you.” I tried to grab one of the bags out of his hands.

“I got it,” he said grumpily.

“Seriously, there’s no need to?—”

“Elli, I got it. I’m fine. Already halfway mended.”

I glanced up at his face, preparing to argue, when I realized he was right.

Somewhere along the journey, he’d ditched the splint on his nose.

The bruises were fading, and while the stitches would have to be removed, the edges of the angry red slash they were holding together had softened to a pale pink.

“But…if you heal so fast, why has your shoulder been hurt for so long? Even before you took that hit.”

“I heal fast,” he said, “but only if I give my body time to rest. It’s hard to rest a shoulder when your job is to keep swinging a hockey stick. My nose wouldn’t be healing as fast as it is if I’d used it to steer the car…”

The image was comical, and I laughed.

Lukas grinned, then hoisted his bags, and we headed for the elevators. Seconds later, we were entering his apartment. He let me go in first, then dropped his bags by the door.

I scanned the apartment, relieved that my girls had cleaned up the mess. There wasn’t an acorn or speck of paint in sight. Not even a wine glass in the sink.

“Did you have a party last night?” Lukas asked.

“What?” I whirled on him. How did he know?

He stood there, grinning. “I can smell the Doritos.”

“Oh.”

“They linger.”

“Right. Does that mean you’re hungry?” I started for the pantry, but he grabbed my wrist to stop me.

“Starved,” he said.

I gave him a confused look. “Did you want me to make you a sandwich?”

Lukas exhaled a burst of air through his nose like he found that highly amusing, then wrapped his hand around my neck and yanked me toward him. Our bodies collided.

I didn’t miss the wince of pain at the corner of his eyes, so as much as I wanted him, I worried this wasn’t the right time. “Something else, then?”

“Don’t play dumb,” he said. “You know I’m hungry for you.”