Becoming Luna

11 - Broken Beyond Repair part 2

Siena has a few ideas what to expect will happen when she returns back to their territory, but it’s definitely not this.

Not at the hospital, watching Andrew from behind a glass window outside the ICU, as he is still unconscious. Apparently, he was driving last night when he had an accident, and they pulled him out of the car, just in time before it exploded.

He’s alive and should be okay once his wolf starts healing him, but the sacred beast doesn’t seem to be doing that for now.

“Why was your phone turned off!? We have been trying to call you all night!” Andrew’s mother, Luna Cristina, growls but Siena doesn’t respond.

The said phone, which Xander had taken and returned to be fixed for her, was turned off after being repaired, and when Siena did try to switch it on the morning after, she found out that the battery was drained and it had to be charged first.

She didn’t have much time before her train’s scheduled departure early that morning so she just put the phone in her bag and promptly forgot about it, forgetting to charge it during the train ride.

The moment she entered their territory, though, she was assailed by panicked mind-links demanding where she’s been and telling her to go straight to the hospital because Andrew had an accident.

So now she’s here, staring at her unconscious mate. Was he driving when the cheating pain started? Did she unwittingly cause his accident? It makes her sick to her stomach to think she did. Even though she’s furious at him for cheating on her a second time, she never wished him broken…or dead.

All she wanted was for him to feel what cheating feels like from the other side, but her reckless decision might as well cost him his life. It’s so… unfair.

“The alpha ceremony is tomorrow! We’ll have to postpone. The guests of honor have arrived but they’ll understand, nobody wanted this to happen.” Andrew’s father, Alpha Warren, mutters.

Luna Cristina gives Siena a scathing look. “Maybe someone did.”

Siena closes her eyes. They know. How did they find out? She wonders who else in the pack knows.

Alpha Warren grunts before turning away, leaving her and Luna Cristina alone.

“How could you do that to him!?” Their Luna asked in a bitter voice. “After all he’s done for you, how dare you betray him!? I was right all along! You are not worthy of becoming Luna!”

Siena says nothing, for what’s the point? Luna Cristina worships the ground where his son threads, and she’d never believe anything Siena will say at this point. She wonders how they knew, how they found out, but she’d rather cut off her own tongue than to ask the woman who had never approved of her from the very beginning.

Luna Cristina left, muttering about bastard pups and how she'll make sure Siena never becomes Luna after this.

The pack’s doctor arrives after a few minutes, and stands beside her in silence for a little bit before turning to her with an earnest look in his eyes. “I think you should talk to him.”

Siena looks at the old doctor in surprise. “What?”

“You’re his mate, his other half, as willed by our Moon Goddess. Perhaps his wolf will listen to your wolf and help heal him.” He gestures for her to follow him into his office. “It’s a terrible accident but he should have had no problem recovering from it, if his wolf had healed him right away. Unfortunately, for reasons we can’t understand, his wolf is not doing it. Perhaps, as his mate, you could persuade him to…do his duty to his human.”

Doubtful that she could be of any help. Especially given her very recent escapade that probably caused the accident.

“I’m not sure—”

The doctor frowns with disapproval at her apparent hesitation. “Whatever has happened between you two…whatever issues you have with each other, you need to get past it, for the sake of your duty to our pack. He’s the next Alpha and he needs you now.”

She nods, hoping that she wouldn’t make things worse. If Andrew’s wolf is refusing to heal his human, it’s probably because he’s very angry and offended. Or terribly hurt. She’s already dealing with a lot of hurt and guilt of her own…she’s not really sure she can handle his as well.

Yes, guilt. Because she just had the most magical night of her life and it wasn’t with Andrew. Xander has opened her eyes to a whole new world of possibilities and made her realize how much she was being neglected in that particular area. It was wrong, she knows that. And yet he made her feel so good it made the wrong feel right.

Does it even make any sense!?

Maybe she shouldn’t be blaming Andrew too much after all. Which is f*cked up, because the point of sleeping with Xander was to teach her mate a lesson, not sympathize with him for cheating on her! And what is she supposed to say to him now!?

Sorry? The word feels neither right nor even appropriate…or even fair, considering how this sh*tstorm started.

The door to the dressing area clicks shut behind her, sealing out the noise of the hospital. It feels a bit…suffocating in there, a little too bright, and smelling faintly of detergent and latex. It’s that kind of sterile room no one lingers in. Just a pass-through. A stop before grief or hope, or whatever is in between.

Siena stands still for a moment, arms hanging loose by her sides as she tries to clear her head, but even the silence seems too loud, and in here, her own thoughts are deafening.

The folded scrubs sit on a metal shelf by the lockers. Blue, crisp, impersonal. She reaches out and takes a set in her arms, holding it carefully, as if handling something fragile, even though there’s nothing delicate about the starch in the sleeves or the coarse cotton.

With a sigh, she sets them down on a bench and begins to undress slowly. Her jeans come off first, and then her sweater, folded and placed with a kind of nervous neatness on top of her bag. Her heart is thudding a bit too hard for a room this quiet. As she reaches for the scrub pants, her hands hesitate for a second or two.

‘What if he doesn’t wake up? What if I say something and he doesn’t hear it anyway? What if I make it worse?’

She shoves the thoughts aside, frustrated, just as she’d do whenever she shoved clothes into a too-full and too messy drawer, after she’d told Andrew to be careful when looking for his stuff through the carefully folded clothes.

The pants go on easily, the elastic waistband too loose around her hips, the fabric pooling slightly over her ankles. She pulls the top over her head and tugs it down, adjusting it with both hands. It’s oversized, and smells faintly of industrial materials.

Her fingers move more slowly when she reaches for the surgical cap. She stares at it for a moment, then gathers her hair with practiced hands, pulling it into a tight knot. She slides the cap over it and tucks stray wisps underneath. The gloves come last. She doesn’t put them on yet, but just holds them, letting the thin latex dangle from her fingertips. She stares at her reflection in the narrow mirror above the sink.

She barely recognizes the woman she sees, her face too pale and drawn. There are dark circles under her eyes, from lack of sleep and from something more brittle, more complicated.

Displeasure from unmet expectations and broken promises.

Hurt after his betrayal.

Guilt from her revenge that took a detour and bit her in the ass after spending a night in Xander’s arms.

Impatience…and coldness that seeps through her soul, knowing there’s nothing else to do but to move forward now. Even if Andrew should wake up not remembering anything, Siena knows deep in her heart that they are well and truly over.

Her throat tightens as the ache from her heart spreads like wildfire.

This must be why the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was forbidden. Now she wants more. Craves for things Andrew has never given her. Longs for everything her fated mate was unable to satisfy…

She clenches her jaw and slides the gloves on, one finger at a time. It’s a small sound, the snap of the wrist cuff, but it sounds louder, magnified a hundred folds. No, there is no going back to the way things were before.

Her hands fall to her sides and she squares her shoulders before walking out of the dressing area toward the ICU, each step heavier than the last. The scrubs whisper softly against her skin with each movement.

She stops just short of his door. There’s a narrow glass window in it, and she doesn’t look in yet. She doesn’t feel ready. Instead, she just stands there staring at the floor, trying to slow her breathing.

And she hears it all.

The soft, rhythmic hiss of the ventilator. The steady, precise beeping of a heart monitor. So faint and faraway through the door, but unmistakable. Machine sounds. Unnatural things keeping him alive and trying to put him back together instead of his own wolf.

This is not how she imagined their reunion. She thought maybe there would be screaming…begging…talking… Saying all the things they’ve been holding in all this time. But instead, it’s this: her in blue scrubs, him surrounded by wires and tubes.

She presses her palm lightly against the doorframe, grounding herself.

The door opens with a muted sigh, and cool air greets her like a ghost. Sharp. Sterile. Too still. Siena steps inside, and her gaze finds him immediately.

There he is. He’s lying so still it feels… unreal. His chest rises and falls in a shallow rhythm, but it’s not his doing. The ventilator beside him hisses softly, inflating his lungs, pushing breath into him. Machines beep steadily nearby, too calm, too precise as they do their job but uncaring, really, whether he lives or dies.

She walks closer, barely breathing.

The bruises make her cringe. Mottled purples and deep yellows bloom across his temple and cheekbone, fading into his jaw. There’s a cut along his forehead, stitched with small, black sutures. A darker mark peeks from under the edge of his hospital gown, his shoulder maybe, or his collarbone. She’s not sure.

Even beneath the injuries, he looks like him. Pale, but still the same Andrew. Lips slightly parted around the breathing tube, there’s a faint crease between his brows, as if even in unconsciousness he’s troubled. Still fighting something.

His hair is messy, unwashed. Flattened in places. She wants to run her fingers through it, fix it like she used to when he was too distracted to care. But her hands stay at her sides.

She takes another step closer.

His hand lies on the blanket, limp and unmoving. She stares at it. That hand once curled lovingly around the back of her neck, warm and calloused. That hand once held hers in the dark, as familiar as her own. Now it looks foreign. Like it belongs to a stranger.

Tears well, but she blinks them back. Now’s not the time. She doesn’t want her sorrow to be the first thing he hears if he’s listening somewhere deep inside.

“You look like hell,” she whispers, voice rough with the ache in her throat. “How am I supposed to be mad at you now?”