‘Check her first,” I said through gritted teeth
The words came out harder than I meant them to but I couldn’t soften them, couldn’t make myself sound reasonable when every instinct I had was screaming that Athena needed to be examined right now, needed to be checked and monitored and made sure she was okay.
“Mr. Hayes, I need to establish a baseline for your recovery so I can…”
Check my pregnant wife and our children,” I interrupted, and this time I didn’t even try to keep the edge out of my voice. “Now.”
The room went silent.
I could feel everyone staring at me, could sense Orion and Derek shifting uncomfortably and Sarah drawing in a sharp breath, but I didn’t care.
Couldn’t care about anything except making absolutely certain that Athena and the babies were okay, that her reckless stupidly brave decision to save me hadn’t cost her everything.
Dr. Ben looked at Athena who nodded slightly, then he moved to her side and started his examination.
I watched every movement.
Cataloged every expression that crossed her face, every slight wince hesitation, every time she drew breath or touched her stomach, looking for any sign that she’d hurt herself trying to save me.
My jaw ached from clenching it so hard.
The doctor pressed his stethoscope to her belly and I stopped irregular or weak or gone.
thing, waiting for him to say something was wrong, that the babies‘ heartbeats were
“Heartbeat one is strong and steady,” Dr. Ben murmured. “Heartbeat two is also normal, no signs of fetal distress.”
Some of the tension in my chest eased but not enough, not nearly enough because just because they were okay right now didn’t mean they would stay that way, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be consequences we couldn’t see yet.
“Blood pressure is slightly elevated,” Dr. Ben continued, wrapping the cuff around Athena’s arm. “But that’s to be expected given the emotional stress
and the energy expenditure from the healing.”
Energy expenditure.
Like she’d just run a marathon instead of potentially sacrificing herself and our children to fix injuries that I would have healed from eventually anyway.
I was an alpha, healing was what we did, it just took time and patience and rest.
But this, what she’d done, this wasn’t natural healing.
This was something else entirely and we had no idea what it meant, what it cost, what it might have done to the babies growing side her.
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11:00 pm G P P P
GPP
Chapter 339
This was the second time she was doing it while pregnant, second. How can she be that careless, how can they be that careless?
“Everything looks normal, Dr. Ben said after what felt like an eternity of checking and rechecking and monitoring. “All vitals are within acceptable ranges, the babies are responding well, no immediate signs of complications.”
Immediate signs.
That meant there could be delayed signs, problems that wouldn’t show up until later, issues we wouldn’t know about until it was too late to fix them.
I’ll need to monitor you both over the next few days,” he continued, looking between me and Athena with that serious expression doctors got when they
were about to say something important.
“Regular checkups to make sure there are no delayed reactions to the healing, for either of you.”
“Fine,” I said shortly. “Whatever you need to do.”
“Mr. Hayes, I really do need to examine you now,” he said gently, moving back toward my bed. “The hospital will have questions if you leave without a proper discharge and we need to be able to provide them with documentation.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to tell him that I didn’t give a damn about hospital protocol or documentation, but I could see the logic in his words.
The last thing we needed was to draw attention to what had happened, to raise questions about how I’d recovered so completely from injuries that should have taken weeks to heal.
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
