Chapter 3: In His Arms
1270 Words
Four hours later, Vespera Morcant woke in the recovery ward with blood running into her arm and an empty monitor stand beside the bed.
Someone had removed the fetal screen.
The absence was cleaner than the straight line had been.
Sable Wythe sat in a plastic chair near the window, eating half a packet of crackers without looking at them. Her stained scrubs had been replaced. Damp hair clung to the back of her neck.
“How much blood?” Vespera asked.
Sable stopped chewing.
“Two units so far. Possibly a third.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“You nearly bled out.”
Vespera tested her fingers. They moved. Her legs felt too far away beneath the blanket.
“The pup?”
Sable folded the cracker packet closed. “I’m sorry.”
The words did not create anything new. They only confirmed the shape of the room.
Vespera turned her face toward the window. It was dark outside. Her reflection floated against the glass, colorless and indistinct.
“Did Tavian come?”
“No.”
Her phone rested on the bedside cabinet, connected to a charger that belonged to the clinic. Vespera reached for it.
Sable stood. “Leave it.”
“I need to check the northern shipment schedule.”
“You need blood.”
“The drivers need authorization before midnight.”
“Someone else can authorize it.”
Vespera unlocked the screen.
No missed calls from Tavian Roarke.
Three messages waited.
Leaving now.
Mirelle collapsed when we tried to move her.
How are you?
The final message had arrived twelve minutes earlier.
Vespera typed: Alive.
She erased it.
Stable.
She erased that too.
The door opened before she decided.
A clinic worker pushed in a cart holding water and a bowl of broth. The smell turned Vespera’s stomach.
“You need to try a few spoonfuls,” the worker said.
“Set it there.”
Sable took the bowl instead. “She’ll try now.”
“I won’t.”
“Then I’ll tell the entire ward you argued over broth after losing half your blood.”
Vespera looked at her.
Sable held out the spoon.
The first mouthful tasted of salt and nothing else. Vespera swallowed four before the corridor outside filled with fast footsteps.
A man called for help.
Another voice answered, louder than necessary.
Tavian.
Vespera put the spoon down.
Sable heard him too. She set the bowl on the cart and crossed to the door.
It opened before she reached it.
Tavian Roarke came through the ward entrance carrying Mirelle Dacre.
Mirelle’s arms were wrapped around his neck. Her shoes were in one hand, and her bare feet hung several inches above the floor. A red mark crossed the side of her throat, narrow and raw where a scent diffuser strip had burned her.
Tavian’s coat was around her shoulders.
He saw Sable first.
“Good. Examine her.”
Sable blocked the doorway. “General intake is downstairs.”
“She can’t stand.”
Mirelle lifted her head from his shoulder. Her face was pale, but her eyes found Vespera’s bed without difficulty.
“I told him I could wait,” she said.
Tavian adjusted his hold beneath her knees. “You nearly collapsed in the car.”
A drop from Vespera’s blood line moved through the clear tubing and disappeared into her arm.
Tavian followed Mirelle’s gaze.
His expression changed.
“Vespera.”
He said her name as though he had expected a different bed. A different version of her.
Sable did not move out of his way.
“How bad is the burn?” Tavian asked.
“Minor, from what I can see.”
“You haven’t examined her.”
“I can see that her airway is open. She is speaking clearly. Her scent glands are irritated, not failing.”
Mirelle touched the mark on her throat. “It feels worse now.”
Tavian looked back at Sable. “You’re the senior scent-healer.”
“I’m also Vespera’s attending healer.”
“She’s awake.”
Vespera watched the exchange from the bed. She had spent years stepping between Tavian and rooms that said no to him. She knew the exact point at which his confidence hardened into rank.
Sable knew it too.
“Put Mirelle in a chair,” she said. “Intake will assess her.”
“There aren’t any chairs in the corridor.”
“There is one behind you.”
Tavian glanced back.
A clinic worker had brought a wheelchair and stopped several feet away. Mirelle’s fingers tightened at the back of Tavian’s neck.
“I become dizzy when I’m lowered,” she said.
Sable looked at Vespera. “Do you want the door closed?”
Tavian stepped farther into the ward before Vespera answered.
“What happened?” he asked.
Vespera looked down at the line in her arm. “Sable told you what was happening.”
“She said the rhythm was unstable.”
“And then it stopped.”
Mirelle’s bare foot shifted against Tavian’s leg.
Tavian’s face lost color. “The pup?”
Vespera did not answer.
The blood bag above her bed was answer enough.
He moved as if to approach, but Mirelle made a small sound and pressed her face against his shoulder. Tavian stopped.
“I came as quickly as I could.”
Sable’s hand closed around the doorframe.
Vespera noticed because she had no reason to look at Tavian anymore.
He had not come quickly.
He had read her messages. He had declined her calls. He had waited for Mirelle to be well enough to move, then carried her into the ward where Vespera was replacing the blood she had lost with their child.
No one had blocked the road.
No one had taken his phone.
“What do you need?” Tavian asked Vespera.
The question arrived hours late.
“Nothing.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Not from you.”
Mirelle lifted her head. “Tavian, I can go downstairs.”
Her feet remained off the floor.
He turned toward the waiting wheelchair, but he did not lower her. “I want Sable to look at the burn first. It may be deeper than it appears.”
“It isn’t,” Sable said.
“You haven’t touched it.”
Vespera reached toward the cabinet and disconnected her phone from the clinic charger. The movement pulled at the line in her arm.
Sable noticed. “Don’t get up.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“What are you doing?” Tavian asked.
“Checking tomorrow’s appointments.”
His brows drew together. “There won’t be appointments tomorrow.”
There were always appointments. Problems did not stop because Vespera had.
The northern carriers would arrive at seven. The clinic supply account needed her approval. Garran Roarke expected her revised trade numbers before breakfast. Tavian’s elder meeting required a seating arrangement that kept two rival families apart.
She could complete all of it from this bed.
She opened the calendar.
Then she closed it.
Tavian looked from her phone to her face. “We’ll talk when Mirelle has been treated.”
Sable stepped fully into the corridor and pointed toward the wheelchair. “Put her down.”
Tavian’s jaw set. “You are refusing an Alpha’s direct medical request.”
“I’m prioritizing the patient who nearly died.”
“She looks stable.”
Vespera placed the phone facedown on the cabinet.
Tavian shifted Mirelle higher in his arms.
“Vespera is stable now,” he said. “Mirelle can’t stand. Examine her.”
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD