Page 80 of The Omega's Fake Mate

“Nick?” Both Griff and Lara were at my side in a second. “What's wrong?” Griff asked. “Is it the baby?”

“I don't know.” I straightened. “It's passed.” But something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

I couldn't shake that feeling. Cold dread took hold of me.

“Maybe you should sit down,” Lara said. “You just went super pale.”

“What's going on?” Zander's voice made me look up and rush over to him. He seemed a little bit confused when I threw myself at him, but rolled with it. “Hey. Everything all right?”

No.Nothing was all right, but I couldn't explain what was wrong either.

“Nick?”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry. Give me a moment.” I needed to clear my head. Take a deep breath. I was fine. The baby was fine. Whatever that weird pain had been, it was gone now.

Shake yourself out of this, Nick.

“Okay,” I said, looking up at Zander. “Okay. I'm fine. Let's go back to the living room.” Maybe the presence of my friends and family and whatever they had planned for me could distract me from that nagging feeling at the back of my mind that something was stillterribly wrong.

I managed to grit my teeth through about an hour of 'partying' before my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but answered anyway, a bad feeling that I already knew what was coming in the pit of my stomach.

“Hello, my name is Julia Sholz, I'm calling from Lawrence General Hospital. Am I talking to Nicholas Kramer?”

“Yes.” Why was this lady calling me? I'd never even heard of the hospital she'd mentioned.

“You're listed as emergency contact for Rhys Johnson.”

My blood ran cold when she mentioned my brother, and not only because he'd changed his name to that of the asshole he'd married. I couldn't speak. Suddenly I knew what had been so terribly wrong all this time.

Rhys...

“What happened to my brother?”

29

Nick

Within half an hourof getting that phone call, Zander and I were on the road. My sisters and my brother were coming as well, although Carole and Lara were taking Lara's car while Dean rode with us. The hospital was in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Zander told me it would take us about three hours to get there if traffic was good. I hoped it was. I needed to see my twin.

The lady on the phone said he was stable, but I wasn't going to believe that until I saw it with my own eyes.

I had no idea what Rhys was doing in Massachusetts, but apparently, he'd been found there, lying on the ground outside a diner. Someone beat him until he passed out.

I got the feeling I knew who that someone might have been.

But that didn't matter now.

All that mattered was getting to Rhys.

During the three and a half hours it took us to reach the hospital, none of us really spoke. Not aside from Dean uttering some variation ofI swear if I get that asshole, under his breath every few minutes.

I kept quiet. Zander didn't say much either, but he glanced at me every so often, sometimes reaching over to squeeze my knee or my shoulder. I appreciated his support, but nothing could make me feel better before we reached Lawrence.

Once Zander parked the car in front of the hospital, I sped off ahead of everyone else.

No one tried to hold me back as I raced across the parking lot and to the information desk. I drummed my fingers on the desk as the nurse looked up what room my brother was in. The second she told me, I was off again.

Rhys was on the third floor and the elevator seemed to take forever to get up there. Especially because people wanted to get on and off on the second floor, in wheelchairs and with crutches. I gritted my teeth, said nothing, and stormed out of the elevator when the doors dinged open on the third floor.