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* * *
He could have called 911 himself. Didn’t. It wasn’t like he had anything against the emergency services, either. It was just… that was an Ant service. Paras didn’t need that shit.
But his mate did. Her brother, too.
For the first time in his life, he was glad he knew a human. From the moment Wright arrived in downtown Grayson, his cruiser speeding down the main street, his sirens blaring, waking up the whole fucking neighborhood, the cop took charge. In his own way, he was an alpha. And Colt, clinging to his mate’s hand like a lost pup, let him have all the control.
They brought the pair to the nearest hospital. Grayson Main was a mixed facility, treating both human and Para patients. It was also a few miles out of the downtown area and, in no time at all, the paramedics had wheeled the gurneys ferrying the unconscious siblings into the ER.
Colt stayed with Shea every step of the way. While Wright talked to the doctors, the nurses, the technicians about what had happened to Hudson and Shea, Colt paced at her side, snapping at the doctors when it didn’t seem as if they were fixing her fast enough.
He was… if not good, then at least okay so long as he could keep on touching Shea, sensing her labored breathing, knowing she was still with him. Once the medical team ordered him to move away from the bed, the powerless feeling transformed into out and out rage.
He needed Shea awake, needed to see the sparkle in her purple eyes, needed to feel the warmth on her end of the bond—and now.
Wright was the one who had to shove Colt out into the hall. In a reversal of the night Evangeline was targeted, the Ant talked Colt down from his furious state. It got through. Sure, Colt’s wolf came within inches of lunging at Wright’s throat, but he managed to leash his beast in time to really listen to what Wright was saying.
The medical staff was threatening to have security drag Colt out. They recognized that Colt was obviously a bonded shifter whose mate wasn’t responding. They wouldn’t hesitate to invoke the Claws Clause if they had to; their priority was their patient, not the spitting, snarling shifter who was in the way.
Wright promised to stay near Hudson, who—thanks to Shea’s healing—was already stabilized. The head doctor said that Colt could stay, but that he needed to wait out in the waiting room until they put Shea in her own room.
Colt insisted that they make it private. Only the best for Shea.
As he paced the lengths of the waiting room, he remembered how Shea once explained the shields she usually kept herself cocooned in. How it wasn’t so much a desire to hide her scent and her emotions, but more of a defense mechanism when it came to being bombarded by the suffering of the people surrounding her. With her brand of magic, her healing talent, Shea could… could see someone’s pain as well as she could sense it.
She’d tapped herself out with her latest healing. When she finally came to again—and she would, he assured his frantic wolf—she wouldn’t have the strength to protect herself from the needs and injuries of the other patients inside of the hospital.
And if Shea couldn’t protect herself, Colt would.
Back when he was trying to scrounge up a witch who would help Maddox with his bond, Colt had taken a meet with Luciana la Sorcière, the head of Coventry. She was the one who first alerted him to the fact that he was touched by a witch, and the one who flirted with him just to see if she could get a reaction out of the buttoned-up shifter.
She’d even gone so far as to offer him a discount on her services the next time she needed a witch. Then, when Cilla was proven to be the villain behind Evangeline’s cursed memory loss—when one of Luciana’s own tossed Colt out of a sixth-floor window—Luciana did something a witch rarely did: she promised him a favor and it wouldn’t cost him a single diamond.
Colt called it in.
While he waited for the head witch herself to come down to the hospital, he stepped out into the winter chill, wincing as the sun started to rise. How many hours had passed since Shea collapsed?
Too fucking many.
Since the medical staff had basically kicked him out, Colt decided there was enough time to make one more call. It was important that he get in touch with his Alpha, giving his dad a head’s up about the latest strike. Didn’t matter to Colt that Hudson was a human or a Donor. He was Shea’s brother and, by extension, that made him pack.
Or, it would, once he finally claimed her.
The Nightwalkers were going to regret using Hudson Moonshadow as a pawn. It was bad enough when Julian believed he had some kind of claim too Shea.
Now?
Now they had just made it extremely personal for Colt.
* * *
“Wolfe?”
Colt’s head whipped around, caught sight of Wright heading toward, and turned on the speed.
He’d been taking laps around the back of the hospital’s lot, working off his adrenaline, trying to distract his wolf. He was already on the medical staff’s shit list from nearly wolfing out earlier; the Claws Clause prohibited unauthorized shifting this close to the hospital without medical clearance so he needed to hang on to his two-legged shape so he didn’t get himself into any more trouble.
The waiting room had driven him stir-crazy. He felt contained, the sterile room with the tacky tile and uncomfortable, overstuffed chairs too much like a cage for him. The hospital itself smelled of harsh chemical cleaners and the underlying sweetness of injury and illness.
