Kneel Alpha: The Surgeon Omega's Revenge

Nora’s POV The radio in the break room was playing something old and slow when my pager went off. I didn’t look at it right away. I was mid-bite into a sandwich I hadn’t touched in two hours, and I had learned a long time ago that the world would not actually end if I finished one meal. Wren was sitting across from me with her feet on the table and a chart balanced on her knees. “You’re going to look at it,” she said. “I’m chewing.” “You already stopped chewing.” She was right. I set down the sandwich and looked at the pager. ‘Bay 4. Emergency transfer. Alpha-class patient. Silver toxicity. Trauma attending required immediately.’ I was already standing. The elevator felt slower than usual. I pulled my hair back in the ride down, snapped on gloves in the hallway, caught the vitals board from the nurse who met me at the door. Male. Late twenties. Blunt abdominal trauma, suspected internal bleeding, silver compound in the bloodstream running at a level that was going to start shutting down organ function in under an hour if we didn’t— I pushed through the bay doors. And stopped. Just for a second. One second, between one breath and the next, where the whole room went quiet and small and wrong. Then I started moving again, because I am a professional, and because people were watching, and because the man on that stretcher was going to die if I let myself feel anything for the next forty-five minutes. Damien Ashborne looked smaller unconscious. That was the first thought. The stupid one. I’d spent three years building a version of him in my head that was wall-sized, that filled a room, that took up all the air. And here he was, strapped to a gurney with an oxygen mask over his face and blood soaking through the emergency wrap on his left side, and he looked — human. Breakable. I had not thought about what I would do if I ever saw him again. I had not let myself. “Talk to me,” I said to the paramedic, and my voice came out exactly like it was supposed to — clean, calm, in charge. “Ambush on the north ridge. Three attackers, one got away. Silver-tipped blades, looks like. He took two hits — left side, possible splenic involvement. Pack medic got him stable enough to transport. Blood pressure’s been dropping for the last twenty minutes.” “What’s the silver level?” “Point-six-two on intake.” High. Not fatal yet, but trending fast. “Okay.” I put my hands on either side of his chart and looked at it properly. Didn’t look at his face. “Get me a full panel and an ultrasound cart. I want imaging in three minutes. Page Dr. Calloway and tell her I need a second set of hands.” The team moved. I moved with them. The next forty minutes were the kind that don’t belong to you — they belong to the work, to the sequence of things that have to happen in the right order to keep a body alive. I cracked the left side. Found the bleeder. Fixed it. Flushed the silver buildup from the tissue with the neutralizing compound we kept for cases like this, because cases like this were more common than humans ever knew. I stitched what needed stitching. Wren appeared at my elbow at some point. She looked at the patient’s face and then she looked at me. She didn’t say anything. That’s the thing about Wren — she knows when the talking can wait. I closed him up. I stripped my gloves off at the sink and ran cold water over my wrists and stared at the drain. My hands were steady. I noted that. They were completely, perfectly steady. I had made sure of it. Behind me, I heard the monitor settle into a strong, even rhythm. Wren appeared in the mirror over the sink. She crossed her arms. “You want to tell me,” she said carefully, “why the Alpha of the Ashborne Pack just bled out on your table?” “I don’t know why he was ambushed.” “That is not what I asked.” I turned off the tap. I reached for a paper towel. “He’s going to need round-the-clock silver monitoring,” I said. “ICU for the first forty-eight, then we can move him to a private room for the remainder of recovery. Two weeks minimum. He can’t be moved.” “Nora.” “I’ll write the orders.” “Nora.” Her hand landed on my shoulder, not hard. “That’s him, isn’t it.” I looked at her in the mirror. She looked back, steady and careful and already braced for whatever I was going to say. “Yes,” I said. Silence. “What do you need?” I thought about it for a second. The question was genuine — that was the thing about Wren, her questions always were. She would do whatever I asked. She would make him disappear into someone else’s caseload if I told her to. She’d run interference for the next two weeks straight. I took a breath. “I need him to not die,” I said. “And I need to be the one in charge of making sure he doesn’t.” Wren looked at me for a long moment. “That,” she said slowly, “does not sound like mercy.” I didn’t answer. I walked out to write the orders.