Page 13 of Omega's Heart

And how did I loosen that stubborn tongue of his?

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J ust before light’s out one night in the middle of April, Kaden’s phone chimed with Quin’s ringtone to let him know a text was coming in.

Congratulations! it read. You’re an uncle again. His name is Lonnie. Holland says he’ll be

an alpha.

Kaden smiled and shifted the phone from his right hand to his left to type. The broken finger was sore again, in the last stages of another battle against infection and shitty blood supply that made the doctors look grim and twisted Kaden’s stomach with anxiety.

Congratulations back! he typed laboriously. Every once in a while, the pressure from the phone would send a shooting pain up his arm from that finger, so he had to be careful how he held it. Hope he looks more like his bearer than the old wolf.

Funny. We’re getting things set up for you here, small apartment, etc. I’ll get Bax or Seosamh to file the paperwork whenever you want to come. And if you see a nurse or doctor you can talk into moving to Tennessee, we’d appreciate it.

Kaden’s jaw dropped for a moment, then he snapped it closed. Guess the hospital is ready then? Did Quin really think they were going to find humans to work in his hospital?

The building’s mostly finished, but finding staff is a problem, Quin typed.

Oh, so he was aware of it.

The phone chimed again. Bram will be back to work as a nurse in a year, we have Adelaide, and Cale plans to do medical school. There’s a couple gone out for technician stuff we need, but we could always use more. Even short term.

And one nurse wasn’t going to be enough. I’ll keep an ear open and see who I can woo, Kaden sent back, along with a couple of kissy-face emojis.

You are so like Cas.

Kaden laughed, then winced as it jarred his finger. I’m off to bed, big brother. Speaking of, tell Cas to give me a call tomorrow.

I will. Sleep well.

Do my best.

And then he could put the phone away, turn off the light, and try to ignore the throbbing in his hand. It was probably nothing—every part of his body seemed to take it in turn to feel weird or ache strangely lately. Tonight was just his finger’s opportunity to give him nightmares.

But it made it hard enough to get to sleep that he eventually beeped the nurse and asked for something, and then he was finally able to fall into a fitful sort of doze.

Kaden woke in the morning with a start, his dreams leaving him feeling slightly hungover. Or maybe that was the sleeping pills. Whatever, he felt like shit. He rolled slightly onto his left side to reach for his phone to check the time and gasped as his hand shot fire up his arm and tried to explode his brain.

What the fuck? He stared down at his hand in horror. What used to be his middle finger had turned into a fat, gleaming sausage, the flesh bulging out around the splint that held everything steady, red streaks creeping up the back of his hand in a slow poisonous attack on his heart.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. They’d spent so much time on it, the doctors who had pieced it so meticulously together in Germany, and then again when he’d first come back to the States. He’d made them promise to do whatever was needed to save it and he’d been taking handfuls of drugs to keep the infection out of it ever since. He’d deal with the pain, deal with the needles, deal with any further surgeries. Because there was an entire forest’s difference between having one finger and a thumb and having two.

Shit.

For an instant, one brief moment of insanity, he considered trying to hide the obvious infection from the nurses, but just sliding it beneath the bedcovers proved that he was being a fool. And Kaden hated the thought of being a fool.

Dammit, I’m sorry Quin. Though he didn’t know why he was apologizing to his brother. And then a moment later: Mom?

He didn’t want to be alone for this.

It was stupid. Even as he pushed the button to bring the nurse so he could confess to her, he just… what? Wanted someone to tell him it would be all right? Wanted someone to kiss it all better? He was an alpha and he could deal with this himself.

But Lysoon, he really didn’t want to.

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F our days of intravenous antibiotics and painkillers. That’s what they gave him, a last forlorn hope that he suspected was mostly just to humor him. The drugs were strong ones, the ones with the risk of damage to other organs or addiction. Four days of blood tests and doctors looking concerned. Also, four days of hope and fear and hiding it all from everyone around him. A good soldier. That was him.