Page 24 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

She’d taken in a large breath, and then before she could overthink things, she’d gathered her supplies.

Thankfully she had some prescription pain medication for a patient whose chronic pain she managed.

She’d be as sparing as possible and deal with any fallout from the missing doses later.

But Sam needed it now if he was going to remain unconscious as she operated on him.

So Autumn administered the medication, scrubbed her hands, and began the task of removing the bullets from his body.

He’d moaned and seemed to attempt to thrash, but he hadn’t come fully awake.

She’d felt terrible for his pain but remained focused.

There had been several bullets embedded in him after all.

But they’d all come out clean, and as far as she could tell, there was no internal damage.

A miracle. She’d frowned in confusion, however, when the bullets had come out bent, one nearly flattened.

Something about Sam was very unusual—wrong even—and a deeper spike of worry caused an uncomfortable twinge inside.

The things she’d seen—and felt—inside his body would need to be explained.

Autumn had stitched his wounds, bandaged him, and then collapsed in the chair next to his bed.

She’d closed her eyes and let the floodgates open, tears rolling.

Adrenaline. She’d held her emotion back so she could get the job done, but it engulfed her then, draining and overwhelming.

I did it. I did it. Once she had gotten hold of herself, she’d checked his vitals, made a cup of tea, and sat on the small deck, allowing the clean air to fill her lungs and soothe her soul.

Now infection was their worry. But Bill had brought her antibiotics, and she’d monitor his vitals for any sign that infection was setting in.

Autumn moved away from the fire, going to Sam and checking his pulse.

Stronger. Better. She put her hand on his forehead.

It was warm but not overly so, and his breathing was even and steady.

She’d wait an hour and then give him another dose of pain meds to keep him sleeping. It was best for him. Sleep healed.

She positioned her chair so that she could lay her head against the wall and also watch him.

She still couldn’t believe he was there, right in front of her.

Part of her felt as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole.

It had been just that morning that she’d woken and showered and headed to New York City, yet it felt like a lifetime ago.

It was , something inside whispered. That was a different lifetime.

This is a new one. Don’t you feel it? The intangible divider that separated that Autumn from this one?

Yes, she did. The same way she’d felt when she’d been declared healed and been driven away from the hospital toward a life she couldn’t picture nor prepare for.

Maybe all lives were separated into sections, the crossing of some lines jolting, others barely a blip on the radar, each only fully discernible later, when the bigger picture could be seen, when questions became answers, when turmoil became clarity.

The last rays of sunlight wavered, mixing with the coming night, casting a milky glow on his face.

“Sam,” she murmured, still disbelieving that she knew his name after all this time, all these years.

The sun shifted, brightening, fighting to stay for just a moment longer.

Sam. She’d only ever seen him in moonlight.

I made a boy of moonlight. Those long-ago words wove through her mind.

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe he was a strange combination of both the sun and the moon.

Dark and light. Reality and fantasy. She’d thought him a dream once, only he was very real.

Despite her fear and the precarious situation at hand, a wash of something akin to joy trickled through her.

Effervescent. Glittery. He’s here, right within my reach. How? How?

Her eyes moved over his features. He was as she remembered: strangely beautiful.

Under the filtered sunlight, she could see that his unusual hair was a thousand different shades of white, pale yellow, and a bare scattering of gold.

She reached over and felt it under her fingertips.

Coarse and silken, an odd contrast, just like the silvery shade in relation to his skin tone.

She’d never seen anything like it. Like him.

His skin was bronze and smooth, except for the scars on his temples, another one traveling from his ear to his chin, and several marring his throat.

Then there was the one she’d remembered that went from his neck to his navel and several more on his abdomen.

His legs were littered with scars as well, matching ones on his knees and thighs.

She frowned, wondering why he’d been operated on again and again.

Someone—or many someones—had taken a knife to him so many times.

And they’d replaced whole parts of him. She’d gotten a glimpse of it when she’d been digging for those embedded bullets.

It hurt her to know he’d felt so much pain.

That he’d had to heal, over and over and over.

Yet he had. And she prayed that he would again.

He was obviously strong. Mighty was probably a better word.

His jaw was square, but his cheeks were thin, hollows beneath his bones, and though his frame was large and muscular, his ribs could be seen easily above his bandages. It appeared he hadn’t been eating much recently.

Where have you been?

She kept watching him, cataloguing his features, committing him to memory in a way that felt almost desperate, a secret fear that her time was limited, her fight to hold on to him as hopeless as that of the waning light.

His brow was heavy, but his lips. Ah, his lips were full and lush, the only softness to his otherwise inordinately masculine face, even if they were set in what appeared to be a perpetual frown.

Broody. Suspicious. Something about it made tenderness rise inside like a wave.

Something about those lips was a challenge to Autumn.

Make me smile , they said. I dare you to try.

At that moment, she made it her goal. How beautiful those lips would be curved in joy.

His eyelashes were long, in the darker shade of gold randomly flecked through his hair. And she could see the same pale speckles under his dusky skin. Not only unusual but unnatural. Almost fantastical. But what does that mean exactly? In a way, it was as though he glowed from the inside.

He was a strange combination of colors and features that didn’t seem to go together in any traditional way, yet he was undeniably attractive to her.

Was it because she felt a curious connection? Still, after all these years? Was it because something about this man still felt…magical? A dream come to life? A walking fantasy?

Maybe. Or maybe it had nothing to do with any of that. Maybe it just was.

Autumn couldn’t help herself. She ran a hand over his cheek. He moaned, shifting away, whimpering and tensing, as though anticipating some sort of pain. Cruelty when he was too weak to fend it off. Sadness swept through her, a rushing river of compassion, full of sharp rocks that snagged her heart.

Autumn sat back, considering the whole of him, casting her gaze over his myriad scars once more and again wondering what brutalities he’d suffered and why.

“What did they do to you?” she asked, her heart aching. Sam’s eyelashes fluttered as he dreamed. She would have to wait for an answer.

Her gaze went to the blanket she’d spread over his lower half.

She’d had to cut his jeans off but hadn’t removed the blue boxer shorts he’d been wearing even though the waistband was soaked in his blood, and it’d dried stiff and crusty.

She wanted to respect his privacy. Yet she could clearly see that at least one part of his anatomy was working just fine, and though he might be different from other men in several noteworthy ways, what was going on down south was very usual.

Your eyes lingering on the bulge beneath the blanket isn’t exactly respecting his privacy, Autumn.

Still, her gaze remained glued. He was a large man, and all his…various parts were obviously sized as such. She saw him twitch, the blanket rising slightly as at least one part of him regained consciousness.

Well, that was a measure of health, wasn’t it? And as a professional… oh, quit it. Your justification is pitiful. You just want to stare.

She resisted rolling her eyes at herself but averted her gaze from Sam’s nether regions, feeling ashamed but not overly ashamed. It wasn’t like he knew she was staring at his ample package.

Autumn stretched. She was exhausted. She stood and walked to the sofa near the window.

She’d set her alarm and get at least a couple hours of sleep.

Her purse was on the coffee table where she’d tossed it after dragging Sam inside and retrieving the things from the truck.

She suddenly remembered the files she’d stolen from Chantelle’s office and dug them out of her purse.

She hadn’t had time to fully explore her emotions with regard to her birth mother.

She’d all but shut it out since leaving the ratty hotel room where she lived, and then, well, life had flipped on its dang axis.

She’d have to deal with that eventually, but did she really have to deal with whatever other upsetting facts might be laid out in her social services file?

Autumn pulled her legs beneath her, spread a blanket on her lap, and smoothed out her file on top.

She was going to ask Sam for answers when he—God willing—woke up and was strong enough to talk.

She may as well start the conversation knowing as much as possible about her beginnings and all that had happened—whether immaterial or not—prior to her meeting him in the woods in the dark of night.

She stifled another yawn, setting the other folders aside and opening hers. There was no copy of her birth certificate contained within—apparently, Chantelle had been honest when she’d told her that information, specifically her birth mother’s name, was sealed.

She flipped through the forms that had been filled out by social workers preparing to place her at Mercy Hospital for Children where a large population of other state-ward ADHM babies were being cared for.

Her eyes caught and held on a small line near the bottom of one of the pages, inquiring on the date of ADHM diagnosis.

The date listed was her birthday, but written next to that was the phrase, “Suspected ADHM.”

Suspected?

Across the room, Sam made a grunting sound in his sleep as though responding to her distress. She watched him for a moment, but he appeared to simply be dreaming, which was good because it meant he was sleeping deeply.

Autumn looked back at the paper, a frisson of confusion buzzing beneath her skin. Suspected ADHM.

They hadn’t been sure she was ADHM positive when she was born. Because her mother had told them the same thing she’d told Autumn? They’d doubted her perhaps. Another lying junkie. Par for the course when it came to addicts. But still, they’d listed her as suspected.

But there were tests that would indicate whether a mother had taken ADHM, even in small amounts, during pregnancy. They were in-depth, and results could take weeks from what she knew. But they’d performed those tests later when she was at Mercy Hospital, and they’d come up positive…right?

She set her file aside and picked up the other three in the stack.

The names on the folders were for children she didn’t know and had either lived somewhere other than Mercy Hospital or been on a different floor than her, and their paths hadn’t crossed.

She flipped through each file, going directly to that same line.

Two of them simply had a date of diagnosis, but the third one, a boy, said the same thing as hers: “Suspected ADHM.”

Autumn set them all aside, massaging her aching head. She felt disturbed. Deeply worried. Yet without her medical records, she had no way to confirm that the suspected ADHM diagnosis had become a definite ADHM diagnosis.

And if it hadn’t?

Autumn stood, heading to the bedroom where there was a second twin bed, suddenly so weary she could hardly stand. Or think. Yet even as she dropped into sleep, the incredulity remained. She’d found him. She’d saved him. Her moonlight boy. Sam.