Chương 3: Chapter 3 Bedside Vigil
Marcus’s POV
The door clicked shut behind her, and the office went wrong.
Wrong smell. Wrong air. Wrong everything.
Her scent still hung in the room, wet rain and something warmer underneath, something that made my teeth ache. I sat back down at the desk. Picked up the pen. Set it down again.
You’re a fool.
Ronan’s voice surfaced low and ugly in my skull.
Not now.
You put that woman on your lap. With our mate in the doorway. Our mate, Marcus. You let Viviana paw at you while our mate bled on the floor.
It was necessary.
Necessary. He laughed. A wolf’s laugh is not a pleasant sound. You tell yourself pretty words. I watched you. You could barely keep your hands off Elena and you know it.
I pressed my palms flat to the desk. Wood. Solid. Real.
When I first discovered she was my mate at twelve years old, she had been just a child. The mate bond had been a whisper then, barely a hum. Easy to walk away from. But now that she is eighteen, the intense attraction she displayed completely shocked me. Today she had walked into my office with a split cheekbone and a mouth full of fire, and the hum had become a roar.
Tall. Almost my height. Hair like pale silk. Eyes that did not lower when I looked at her.
I’d wanted to put my hand on her throat and feel her pulse. I’d wanted to put my mouth on the blood at her cheekbone. I’d wanted a great many things that an Alpha in a three-piece suit cannot want in front of his political girlfriend.
Political. Ronan spat the word. You keep saying it like it’s a shield.
It is a necessary political alliance. Her uncle is an incredibly busy Alpha, and we need this connection. You want war? Because I don’t.
I want our mate.
You cannot have her. Not openly.
Ronan went quiet. That was worse.
I stood. Straightened my cuffs. Smoothed my waistcoat. Viviana was waiting in the car.
Lunch. Smile. Squeeze her hand across white linen. Order the wine she liked. Do the job.
The restaurant was the best in town, which wasn’t saying much, but the owner knew me and the corner booth was kept empty. Viviana slid in beside me instead of across. Pressed her thigh to mine under the table.
“You’ve been quiet, Marcus.”
“Meetings.”
“Mm.” Her red nails walked up my sleeve. “That little stray in your office. She’s been handled?”
I didn’t answer. I picked up the menu.
Ronan growled under my ribs.
“Marcus.”
“Drop it, sweetheart.”
She pouted. Reached for my water glass like she owned it. I let her.
The waiter came. I ordered for both of us without looking at him. Viviana talked. Something about a boutique. Something about a necklace. Her voice slid over me like oil over glass, not sinking in.
I was thinking about a bloody cheekbone and a mouth that said you’re a coward without saying it.
Then, behind my eyes, Beta Hugo slammed in.
Alpha.
Mind-link. Tight. Panicked. Hugo was never panicked.
Speak.
It’s the girl. Elena Fairfax. She was attacked in the alley behind Cramer’s. Five males. I got there too late. She’s en route to County. It’s bad, Alpha. Skull, ribs, internal—it’s bad.
The room went white around the edges.
Ronan exploded.
MOVE.
I was already on my feet. Chair scraping. Viviana’s hand falling off my arm.
“Marcus, what—”
“Stay here.”
“Where are you going? Marcus—”
I threw bills on the table without counting. I heard her call my name again, sharp now, wounded. I did not turn around. I walked out of the restaurant and broke into a run the second the door shut behind me.
The hospital corridor reeked of bleach and cheap coffee. I smelled her before I saw the room. Blood. Her blood. A great deal of it.
And underneath, another male’s scent, all over her.
Ronan lost his mind.
I shoved the door and a man spun away from the bed with his hands raised. Dark hair. Apron under his jacket. He had the hem of her shirt lifted, her ribs bared to the fluorescent light.
I hit him.
I had him against the wall before I’d decided to move. Forearm across his throat. His feet left the floor.
“Get your hands off her.”
“I’m not—” He wheezed. Didn’t fight. Didn’t even flinch. “I’m a dishwasher. Cramer’s. I pulled five guys off her in the alley. Staff here won’t touch her. Her ribs are broken, I was checking if they’d punctured—”
“You were undressing her.”
“I was saving her life.”
His eyes stayed level on mine. Grey. Calm. I hated him on sight.
He moved one slow hand to his pocket and pulled something out. Held it up between two fingers.
A watch.
“One of them dropped this. Thought it might mean something.”
I took it. I recognized it immediately. It was the timepiece my father had given to Elena’s father.
Ronan made a sound in my chest I had never heard before.
I let the dishwasher down. He straightened his collar without comment.
“Out.”
“She needs—”
“Out.”
He went.
I turned to the bed.
She was grey. Her lips had no color. A bruise was blooming black across her temple, and her breathing was shallow, catching on something broken. Dried blood crusted at her ear. An IV drip swung beside her, untouched.
Two nurses hovered by the door. A doctor stood with a clipboard, not writing.
“Why isn’t she being treated.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Sir, Elena Fairfax is low-pack. Our policy for intake—”
I did not raise my voice.
I lowered it.
The Alpha rolled out of my chest and filled the room, and the doctor’s clipboard clattered to the floor.
“You will start a transfusion. You will administer intravenous antibiotics for her cerebral swelling. You will move her to a private suite. You will do it now. If she stops breathing while you consult your policy, I will tear this building down with my hands. Do you understand me?”
“Yes—yes, sir—”
They moved.
They moved her to a private suite at the end of the hall. Beta Hugo guarded the door outside without being asked. I did not look at him. Blaming myself for leaving her in such a helpless situation, I sat in her room and held her hand for hours.
Her fingers were cold. Small, for a girl so tall. Calluses along the knuckles where she’d hit something, someone, and meant it.
I turned her palm up in mine and pressed my thumb to the pulse at her wrist.
Come on, Ronan whispered. Come on, little one. Feel us.
The mate bond flickered between us, thin as thread. I leaned into it. Poured what I had through my skin into hers. Sparks. That was what they called it in the old stories. A mated Alpha could sew a wound shut with his own hand.
The bag emptied. A new one went up. Her color came back in fractions.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Again. Again. I didn’t have to look.
Viviana.
I silenced it and dropped it face-down on the bedside table.
Her fingers twitched in mine.
I sat up.
Her lashes fluttered. Lifted. Blue. Clouded. Confused.
“What…” Her voice was sandpaper. She tried to swallow. “What happened.”
Relief hit me so hard my ribs ached.
I leaned in. Brushed her hair off her forehead. My thumb against her temple, gentle, the way I had not been gentle with anyone in a very long time.
“You’re safe. You’re—”
And then her shirt shifted against the pillow, and that scent rose off her, and I stopped breathing.
The dishwasher. All over her collar. Her hair. Her skin.
Ronan surged up behind my eyes and I lost the reins.
I stood. The mattress tilted under my weight as I pulled back and set my palms flat on either side of her head, bracketing her. I heard myself growl. It came from somewhere low and not quite human.
Her eyes widened. She tried to shrink back into the pillow.
“Who was he.”
“What—”
“The dishwasher.” I leaned closer. My nose almost at her jaw. I dragged in a breath and my wolf snarled at what I found there. “Why is he interested in you. Why are you covered in his scent. Answer me, Elena.”
