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“Two Lagavulins. Neat. And three…three Rekorderlig, I think. The strawberry ones. He liked those.”

“And how much have you had, Ruari?”

He counted. The four measures from the flask. Two Lagavulins, done in one. Three pints, or four. “A fair bit.”

“Is he your bonded mate?”

“No.”

“We’ll take it from here on contacting his next of kin,” she said.

The waiting area had plastic chairs bolted to the floor in rows of four, separated by armrests that prevented anyone from lying down on them. Ruari sat in the one closest to the double doors and stared at the lino between his feet.

He could still feel the texture of vomit between his fingers. He’d washed his hands twice in the hospital toilets, scrubbing under his nails until his knuckles were raw.

He’d told Cassian to down spirits. Down it. One go. Don’t sip.

Cassian wasn’t much of a drinker; he sipped at people’s wines at the table. Ruari had handed him Islay single malt and told him to throw it back, as though Cassian had spent the same decades Ruari had pickling his liver into professional-grade tolerance.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until the dark behind his lids went red.

The automatic doors at the end of the corridor clacked open. Shut. Opened again for a porter pushing an empty wheelchair. Shut. Each cycle let out a pneumatic sigh, followed by the slap of the rubber seals meeting. Ruari stopped hearing it after the fourth or fifth cycle.

He didn’t know which room they’d taken Cassian to, or what they were doing to him. Nobody had said whether they’d got the vomit out of his lungs. Nobody had said they’d come and find him when Cassian woke up. He should get up and go to the desk and ask.

The doors clacked open again, and this time Ruari’s head came up at a sound he knew: Tala, wailing, down the corridor. Cassian had taught him to read her cries by pitch and level of wateriness.

Colin came through the doors first. He had Tala against his shoulder with one arm under her, her face buried in the collar of the coat he’d pulled on over pyjama bottoms. His bare feet were shoved into trainers.

He walked straight past Ruari without acknowledging him, though he had to have seen him, going through the double doors with a stride that said he would get to Cassian whether he was allowed to or not.

Diwa was three steps behind him. He got a fistful of Ruari’s shirt and hauled him upright off the plastic chair, swinging him backwards until his shoulders hit the wall and knocked the air out of him. Diwa’s forearm pressed across his collarbones, pinning him flat.

Diwa’s face was very close to his. The calm alpha who’d never had anything but smiles for Ruari snarled at him now.

“What the fuck did you do?”

Fourteen years of professional sport, six of them in the Premier League, had taught Ruari what to do when a smaller alpha got in his face. Men half a foot taller than Diwa had tried to intimidate him off the ball every Saturday afternoon. His shoulders wanted to square, and the part of him that had once been lethal inside the eighteen-yard box was telling him to shove Diwa off him and into the middle of the corridor.

He needed to put this little man back in his place.

But he didn’t have it in him. Not tonight, with Cassian behind those doors, grey-faced and breathing wrong.

“I gave him whisky,” Ruari said. “Two singles, neat. Then he got onto the strawberry cider. People kept buying him rounds, and I wasn’t watching him. I should’ve been, because he doesn’t say no to anything he’s offered. You know how they raised him. I fucking knew that, and I let it happen anyway.”

The forearm dug in. “You’re supposed to know better than that.”

“Yeah.” Ruari’s head dropped back against the wall. “I know.”

A nurse rounded the corner with a clipboard, and saw the two alphas locked against the wall. Diwa’s hands released Ruari’s shirt. The snarl vanished from his face between one breath and the next.

“Excuse me,” Diwa said, turning to the nurse with his mobile already in his hand. “My name is Diwa de la Vega. The patient who was just brought in, Cassian Calyx, is a member of our family. I’d like to arrange a transfer to a private suite. As soon as possible. And I’ll need to speak to whoever is overseeing his care.”

The nurse led Diwa away through a side corridor, past a sign marked PATIENT LIAISON. Diwa didn’t look back at him.

Ruari sank back into the chair. The chair was built for someone with shorter legs, and his knees jutted up near his chest. He shifted his weight, trying to find a position that didn’t press the armrest into his hip, and gave up.

The Huxley-de la Vegas were done with him. He wasn’t family, and he wasn’t a partner, not on any form. There was no box on that clipboard for what he was.