Kneel Alpha: The Surgeon Omega's Revenge

Chapter 2

Damien’s POV

I came back to consciousness like surfacing through deep water.

There was a ceiling. White, flat, with recessed lighting that made no sense for where I thought I was. I lay still and took inventory the way my father had taught me — start at the feet, move up, don’t assume anything until you know everything. Both legs. Left side wrapped and stiff and burning with a low, deep throb that told me the silver was still working its way out. Right hand had something in the back of it, IV, at least two lines. Mouth dry. Head clear, which surprised me.

I was alive.

I turned my head. Hospital room. Clean, modern — not pack territory. The window showed a city I recognized from council maps: Ironveil. Someone had brought me to Ironveil Medical.

I must have been in bad shape.

My wolf was restless in a way that wasn’t just the wound — something felt close and wrong and familiar all at once, like a frequency just below what I could name. He’d been like this since before the ambush, actually. Some nights for the past year I’d wake up with my wolf pressing against my ribs like a fist, pointing at nothing, furious about something he couldn’t tell me.

The door opened.

My first coherent thought was: I’m hallucinating.

The second thought, a half second later, was: No I’m not.

She walked in the way she’d always walked into rooms — like the room was lucky she’d decided to enter it. White coat, scrubs, stethoscope, hair pinned back so tight it had to hurt. She was looking at the chart in her hands and not at me. She had a pen tucked behind her ear. She looked like three years hadn’t touched her, which was a lie — she looked older in the way that means something, in the way that means she’d gone somewhere difficult and come back from it and stopped pretending it hadn’t happened.

She looked better.

That was the thought that shamed me most. Three years of whatever she’d been through, and she looked better.

“Dr. Quinn.” I said it just to say something. Just to put a sound in the room.

Her eyes came up from the chart. Amber, like I’d always known them. She looked at me the way you’d look at a patient — assessing, clinical, moving methodically from my face to my lines to the monitors without stopping anywhere personal.

“You’re awake,” she said. “How’s the pain on a scale of one to ten?”

“Nora—”

“Pain scale,” she said again, patient as stone.

I stared at her.

“Four,” I said.

“That’s accurate for where we are in recovery.” She made a note. “The silver level was at point-six-two on intake. We’ve gotten it down to point-one-eight. You’ll stay on the neutralizing drip for another forty-eight hours and then we’ll reassess.” She turned a page. “You had a splenic laceration, which we repaired. Moderate blood loss. No permanent damage as far as we can see. You’re going to be here two weeks minimum — the silver suppression protocol requires the full course or the residual toxicity will spike.”

She was going to just — do the whole appointment. Like this was nothing. Like I was nothing.

“How long have you been here?” I said.

“At the hospital?”

“In Ironveil.”

A pause. So small most people wouldn’t have caught it.

“A while,” she said.

“Nora. Please.”

“Mr. Ashborne—”

“Don’t call me that.”

She looked up from the chart. Just for a moment, one unguarded second, her face did something complicated — pain and anger and something else moving through it too fast for me to read. Then it was gone, smooth and professional again.

“You need to rest,” she said. “I’ll be back at rounds.”

She walked out.

I listened to her footsteps go down the hall and tried to figure out what I was feeling. It was too big to name. It was the particular kind of gutted that comes from having exactly what you deserve happen to you.

My wolf sat in my chest and said nothing. He’d gone very still the moment she walked in.

Like he’d found something he’d been looking for and didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.

The door opened again and a young guy came in — early twenties, brown skin, her nose, her jaw, her eyes in a masculine version. He was wearing a front desk badge and carrying a pitcher of water, and he looked at me the way I imagine people look at car crashes before they decide whether to pull over.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“Apparently.”

He set the water down with more care than it needed.

“I’m Marcus,” he said. “Nora’s brother.”

“I know,” I said. He was twelve the last time I’d seen him. He’d followed her around the pack clinic like a shadow, always underfoot. I’d liked him.

He looked at me steadily.

“She saved your life,” he said.

“I know that too.”

“You should know,” he said, still steady, still very calm, “that I wanted to let you die. For the record.”

He walked out.

I lay there for a while in the silence.

The monitor beeped. The IV dripped. Outside, Ironveil moved through its day like I wasn’t there.

I thought about Nora’s hands, precise and unhurried above me. Keeping me alive while I was still too unconscious to deserve it.

I turned my face to the window.

I had a lot to answer for.