Page 41 of Worthy or Knot (Serendipity Omegaverse #3)

Forty-One

MEGAN

T he townhome is dark and silent as I slip inside it, dropping my bag on the entry table and slipping off my shoes.

I don’t bother to turn on the hall light, using the dim shadows cast by the streetlight out front to get me to the kitchen.

Thursday. It’s been three days since the crisis event.

In theory, we should be through the worst of everything.

The weight of the reality that we’re not makes it nearly impossible to move through the house, every step like moving through molasses. I pause at the kitchen counter, trying to remember how to eat, how to even have an appetite. I could do that. I could pull down one of those chocolate bars and…

And all I can see is Cole twisting us the last time I’d grabbed one, how he’d let me take him to my bed so I could make the awful feelings of helplessness fade.

Feelings that are way worse now, loud and monstrous. My ringing phone is a welcome noise in the horrific space that is my mind.

“Hello?” I answer without looking at the screen.

“Megs.” It’s Charlotte, and she sounds like she’s been crying.

My heart climbs up my throat, all my fear and panic back in a moment of horrid suspension.

I’d literally just left his room an hour ago.

He’s been stable the last two days. Well, as stable as can be expected given…

everything. Which really just means the alarms on the various machines only go off when they’re expected to and not all the damn time.

“What’s wrong? I can be there in twenty minutes.”

If I get a rideshare. Which I really shouldn’t do because I’ve already missed three shifts and will probably miss a lot more. Our budget might not be the tightest, but now’s not really the time to be adding extras if we can help it.

“No, no, it’s…” Charlotte gasps for breath like she’s drowning. Vaguely, I can hear Marcus talking in the background. “Y-you’re okay to stay home. You need to sleep.”

The anxiety doesn’t lessen a single bit. I try my best to swallow around it as I lean over the counter, dropping my head onto my elbow and closing my eyes.

“They’re going to pull him off the sedation,” she says after a minute. “He’s starting to try and breathe on his own, so they think he’ll be able to handle it.”

It’s like a gut punch. My breath gusts out of me, and my muscles lock up.

“But his bloodwork is still a mess.”

There’s more of Marcus talking in the background. Charlotte sniffles and then sucks in another deep breath that I can feel all the way through the phone.

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “They… they’re thinking that maybe that’s his new baseline.”

And just like that, my stomach drops to my feet.

New baseline? That would mean that the kidney and liver damage they’re seeing is permanent.

I force it all behind the wall, force myself to find the numb center I’ve cultivated for awful cases just like this.

It takes me a few minutes, but then my chest doesn’t ache. Nothing aches. It’s just… just numb.

“All right. So they’re dropping the sedation to see if he starts truly breathing on his own?” I ask. When Charlotte agrees, I continue. “Do they have an idea of when that might happen?”

“They said it should be in the next 24 hours.”

“Okay. You’re still going to be the one that stays tonight?”

We’ve been rotating through who is there when. The last thing we want is to have him be alone if—when, when— he wakes up. And things can change so quickly in the ICU.

“I think Marcus wants to stay, but I’m going to as well.”

“Call me if anything happens,” I order her like I have every time I’ve left his room.

“Of course, Megs.”

She hangs up. I set my phone on the counter and slowly push up. It takes me another minute to flip on the kitchen light so I can figure out something to eat.

My eyes catch on the vase perched in the center of the kitchen window, the green of the vase and stems reflecting back against the darkness outside. The flowers are wilted. My stomach twists as I forget how to breathe. Do I even have lungs?

And all at once, I’m eighteen again, alone and drowning. No parents. No bond. No Omega. My knees give out. I crumple to the floor and weep.

CHARLOTTE

My entire world has narrowed to a singular hallway in the center of Manhattan, full of white walls and crappy art and brown linoleum floors.

I pass one of the oddly stylized flowers in its bland wood frame and faded white mat.

A desperate frustration rises, but I shove it down like I have the last week.

I adjust my bag as I walk through the hallway again, trying to keep a smile plastered to my face as I pass the reception desk without comment.

There’s no reason to introduce myself. Everyone knows who we are at this point.

The door to his room is closed, but one curtain is drawn, revealing the large bed and multiple machines whose chimes I can hear in my sleep.

Correction: my life has narrowed to a hallway and a large, sterile room designed by the same shitty decorators.

Several people sit on the room’s couches.

I recognize Johnathan where he’s perched on the couch under the window.

He’s dressed in dark jeans and a plain t-shirt.

His eyes are tired, with dark circles underneath them, and a few days’ worth of beard cover the lines of his jaw, testaments to his own worry.

Next to him is a woman about my age, her strawberry blonde hair and green eyes just like Phillip’s.

Sitting on the floor, leaning against her legs, is a man with short brown hair and a square jaw.

He looks worried and tense, but his hand is gentle where he holds the woman’s on his shoulder.

Taking up the rest of that couch is two men I’ve never seen before.

The taller one has black hair shorn short on the sides but longer on top.

A black and white tattoo traces up the side of his neck: two snakes twisted around each other.

He seems the most relaxed of everyone. The other one is leaner with mid-length blond hair that falls across his forehead and blue eyes the color of a summer sky.

He leans against the tattooed man, his hand indecently high on his leg.

On the other couch is a man with olive skin and dark brown hair.

He’s dressed the most formal in slacks and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

He traces shapes along the back of the woman who sits next to him.

She’s plus-size with generous curves and black hair chopped blunt to her chin.

She lays sprawled along the sofa, her head in the man’s lap.

I don’t know all their names, though I’m sure they were mentioned at least once over the last week.

We’d all hesitated on them coming out, hopeful that Cole would wake up after he was weaned off the sedation medication Friday.

But here it is, Tuesday, and there has been no real change.

He’s been able to come off the ventilator, and his bloodwork has stabilized with no significant damage to any of his organs, but he hasn’t woken up.

The doctors aren’t sure he will at this point.

The thought slashes through me, but I breathe through it.

When they’d told us yesterday morning that he might not manage to wake up on his own, we’d called his dads.

Well, Marcus had called them, quietly explaining the update and encouraging them to come out if they were able.

Maybe we would have had them wait a bit longer anyway, but his birthday is tomorrow.

It feels wrong to not have his family here for that.

So now here they are, surrounding him and being with him, just like us.

Part of me burns at them being here during my window of time to be with him, my one day this week that I don’t have rehearsal or classes at the gym.

I’ve been the one with the least amount of time to be here, the only one of us whose job isn’t flexible enough to adapt around Cole being sick.

I swallow down the ball of rage that burns in my stomach before it can surface as a growl.

They’re his family. I’m not going to complain about them wanting to spend time with him, too.

Not out loud, at least. The man with the snake tattoo catches my gaze, but I turn away before I can make an ass of myself.

A nurse glances away from a computer, his smile warm if a bit brittle. Megan’s are like that sometimes, especially when it’s been several rough shifts in a row. He stands and holds out his hand.

“I’m Jacob,” he says. “I’ll be Cole’s nurse for the next few days.”

“Charlotte,” I offer. “I’m?—”

“One of his Alphas, right?” He shakes his head and amends his question. “One of his bonded Alphas, I mean.”

When I nod, he tucks a pen into his pocket and checks his watch.

“I’ll let them know you’re here so you can be with him.”

While most of me wants nothing but to curl up in his bed the way Marcus has done most nights this week, I’m not enough of a jerk to force his family out. I give the same fake smile as before and shake my head. “That’s all right. I don’t mind them being here.”

A door slides open behind me.

“Charlotte?”

It’s Johnathan’s calm, quiet voice. I turn away from the nurse.

“Hi,” I manage. “I’m glad you made it out.”

His smile is nearly non-existent, clearly just an automatic response to a greeting.

“I know you’ve gotten to meet my partners. I’d like to introduce you to the rest of my family.”

“Of course.”

I adjust the bag on my shoulder and follow him in the room. Jacob follows behind me, setting one of the chairs from his nursing station just inside the sliding glass doors. He’s gone before I can offer him any kind of thanks. THe blond man leans forward with a small smile.

“Hi, I’m Jasper, part of Pack Montegue,” he offers, holding out his hand. “This is one of my partners, Rylan.” He leans his head against the man’s shoulder, and Rylan kisses his temple. “Violet, our Omega, is Cole’s sister. And the grumpy one is Dominic. Don’t worry, he always looks like that.”

There’s a scoff and then a snort behind me from the other couch.

“It’s good to meet you,” I offer numbly. “I’m Charlotte.”

And then I’m surrounded by them all, their faces and their names and their warmth.

The strawberry blonde woman is Scarlett, Cole’s oldest sister. She looks nothing like her siblings. Cole and Violet have the same black hair and golden, olive skin and hazel eyes. Her laugh is just like Cole’s, though, and it has my breath catching in my throat.

The men are harder for me to remember, but I do my best. The man with Scarlett is Joshua, a Beta just like Jasper.

That brings up confusion in me. Cole had mentioned she’d matched, right?

Why was only the Beta with her? Violet’s entire pack was here with her, so it’s not like it would be impossible for it to happen.

After the initial conversation dies down, I drop my bag at the foot of his bed and slowly sit beside him, tucking my legs to my chest and resting my cheek on my knees. No one comments or even seems surprised that I can’t help but touch him, be near him.

Violet adjusts her hair as she sits up. A ragged bond scar, just starting to turn silver, sits under her ear.

My breath catches in my throat at the sight.

It’s automatic to quietly trace Cole’s wrist, right where my accidental bite sits, now fully healed and a thick pink welt.

It hasn’t had the time to fade the way Marcus’s has on his chest.

“How did he like the piano?” Johnathan asks after a while.

For some reason, the question has tears lining my lashes and threatening to fall.

He frowns and then pulls me into his arms, not hesitating for a moment.

He perches on the very edge of Cole’s bed as I sob uncontrollably into his shoulder.

All the fear and hopelessness and rage. Every moment of feeling completely inadequate the last week, of watching—of feeling —Marcus fall apart without knowing how to help him.

His worry slowly filters into my chest, and it just makes the tears fall harder.

A soft hand palms my shoulder after a minute. I manage to pull myself together and lift my head, quickly wiping away all the tears.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, completely embarrassed.

“Don’t be.” Johnathan’s smile is softer this time and actually touches his eyes.

Scarlett’s quiet voice fills the awkward silence. “I’m glad he’s found such protective, compassionate Alphas.”

When I glance up at her, her eyes are glassy with tears, too. Somehow, I know they’re not for Cole, but for herself and whatever situation has left her with only a Beta in her life now. It’s instinct to grab her hand on my shoulder and squeeze it in silent support.

“I’m glad he has such a supportive family,” I offer.

Her lips tick up in a small smile. “Well, we’re all doing what we can. I hope it’s enough.”

My whisper is so quiet, it’s barely heard over the soft beeping of one of the alarms.

“Me, too.”