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Before we could dig into our breakfast, my phone rang, shattering the peace. The frantic voice on the other end belonged to Elliot Elkins. “Ridge, it’s Zander. Something’s happened. He’s in critical condition. I can’t lose him, Ridge! I can’t lose him!”
“Elliot, calm down,” I said evenly. “Tell me where you are, and we’ll be right there.”
“We’re at the ER. He’s bad. Real bad.”
My heart went out to the old man. Before being kidnapped by the hunters and having his wolf removed by a witch, Zanderwas a pain in the ass—a drunk half the time—but he was all Elliot had. He didn’t deserve this. Neither of them did.
Elliot had broken down crying and just kept repeating himself between sobs. “He’s bad. So bad.”
“Okay, Elliot, hang on. We’re on the way,” I said, ending the call. “Something’s happened to Zander,” I told Tori and Kyle.
The lighthearted atmosphere had vanished when I’d answered Elliot’s call. Leaving our breakfast uneaten, we rushed to the ER without exchanging another word.
When we arrived, Elliot and Lola were already there, watching frantically as doctors struggled to stabilize Zander.
“He was fine, Ridge,” Lola said. “Well, when I say fine, he still didn’t know his wolf was missing. He was sitting in bed, speaking to Elliot and me. He made a silly joke about mushrooms being ‘fun guys,’ which is not a funny joke at all, but he seemed to think so.” Lola was babbling, and much as I wanted to shout at her to tell me what the fuck had happened, I knew I couldn’t. She stopped talking, took a deep breath, then continued, “Then he was down. He crashed. He stopped breathing, and I couldn’t find his pulse. I got Elliot to hit the alarm, and I started CPR.” She finally looked up at me. “It came out of nowhere, Ridge. It just came out of nowhere.”
I moved to stand with Kyle and Tori. No matter where we were, Tori was at risk from the hunters. I had to protect my mate. A chilling realization hit me. What had happened to everyone else the hunters had “cured” of their inner wolf? The wolf was an intrinsic part of us. The hunters were effectively lobotomizing these people. They were missing a huge part of themselves. Was it even possible to survive without one’s wolf?
“Kyle,” I said urgently, my gaze never leaving Zander. “Have you seen this happen to other supposedly cured wolves?”
I watched his face as the same conclusions I’d come to entered his mind. He looked just as alarmed as I felt.
“No, I…I…I had no idea,” he stammered.
“If you’d gotten to Tori sooner and tried to fix her, this would’ve been her future,” I said.
Suddenly, Zander flat-lined. The room erupted into chaos as the shifter doctors worked to revive him.
I moved to support Elliot, who was sobbing. “My boy! My beautiful boy!”
Tori stood beside me, tears pouring down her cheeks, but Lola transformed before our eyes. Gone was the shy, timid woman. She stood tall and bypassed the doctors. “He can’t just be gone,” she snapped.
A cold calmness that gave me the chills settled over Lola as she took command of the situation. She started performing CPR on Zander, but something was different. The air in the room became still, and the temperature dropped sharply. The smell of ozone surrounded us. It was like standing outside before a thunderstorm struck. Then, suddenly, the entire room crackled with energy. As Lola continued pumping Zander’s chest, electricity sprang from her fingers, jolting his body.
The lights in the room flickered, and the machines monitoring Zander short-circuited. The staff stood back, unsure of how to react. Fortunately, they were all shifters and were aware of the existence of magic, even if anecdotally. From what I could see, it was only happening in the room we currently occupied. From the window in the door, no lights were flashing in the other rooms.
Lola did not falter. Her eyes glowed white, and her hair floated around her head, creating an aura of pure magical energy as she channeled real magic for the first time. Without warning, the room was briefly plunged into darkness when, just as swiftly, the power came back on. As the power in the room returned, the machines that had been inoperative came back online. Everything was working properly again.
The silence gave way to the steady beep of the heart monitor, signaling that Zander was alive.
Exhausted and quaking, Lola fell back. Tori rushed over to her while I kept my hold on Elliot. The old man slowly gained his footing, watching the incredible scene unfold before him.
Lola began freaking out. “I used magic! I can’t believe it…I used real magic!” It was like she wasn’t fully present in her own mind. Her breaths came in rapid, shallow gasps as she hyperventilated.
“Deep breaths, Lola,” Tori said gently, rubbing soothing circles on Lola’s back. “You did it. You saved Zander.”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I said, not just to Elliot but to myself. And for the first time in a long while, I truly believed it.
Chapter 17
Tori
The shifter doctors ran forward to check the readings on the machines surrounding Zander’s bed, disbelief in their voices as they talked among themselves. Lola and I were pushed to the side. The small space filled with a different kind of electricity—a whirlwind of energy and urgency. They called out instructions to one another, moving with quick precision, giving injections, and attaching pads to his body, adjusting machines to monitor his vitals. A nurse placed a mask over Zander’s face, administering oxygen to the unconscious shifter. The tension seemed to make the room smaller as they worked tirelessly to stabilize him. The perfect synchronization of their movements made it seem like they were a single entity, united in their desire to save one of their own.
“Is this really happening?” Lola’s voice quivered, her breathing shallow and rapid. She stared at her hands, as if the lightning would start up again if she just stared at them. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of shock and disbelief, and she was trembling so violently that her teeth chattered.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” I took hold of her shoulders and made her focus directly on me. “You did it, Lola. You broughthim back. Do you know what this means? You used magic. Real magic. This is a good thing. A very good thing.”
