My hand weighed as much as a brick but I managed to lift it and settle it against the back of Dodge’s head, working my stiff, sore fingers into his hair. I blinked at my hand and the kaleidoscope of bruises and cuts that decorated most of it. I could have sworn at least two of those fingers were broken by the goons. It didn’t seem possible that they could have healed already, unless I’d been in a coma or something. I tensed, staring at my feet where they were hidden by blankets and sheets and Dodge’s arm.
Could I have been in a coma for weeks or months? My heart stuttered and started to beat faster as I looked around. Dodge definitely looked worse for wear: his beard shaggy and unkempt, his hair standing out in wild tufts, and even his eyebrows looked like they needed a weedwacker to be brought under control. My eyes burned. If ithadbeen weeks or months, he was still there beside me and hadn’t been taking care of himself.
I couldn’t breathe and my fingers tightened in his hair. I’d almost gotten him killed and he was still there with me. Maybe he just wanted to tell me to my face that he didn’t want anything to do with me, that he hated me for the trouble I’d caused. The machines clicked and one beeped, a warning sound as something else switched on. A light flashed near the door.
Dodge tensed, then lifted his head. He blinked sleep from his eyes and looked disoriented for just a second. Then all of his attention went immediately to me. I couldn’t look away.
A blinding hope filled his face. Both hands captured mine with infinite gentleness. Dodge’s voice emerged as a rusty shadow of his previous deep, commanding tone. “Am I dreaming?”
“I don’t think so,” I whispered, and it sounded just as hoarse.
Dodge tried to get closer, almost climbing into the bed next to me. “You’re here. You’re alive. Talk to me more. Persephone. Are you okay? How do you feel?”
My cheeks burned with tears and grief, and the overwhelming hope that he wasn’t furious with me and didn’t resent me.
But the tears agitated him. He sat on the bed and tried to gather me close, squeezing my hands. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I’ll get you whatever you need. Are you in pain?”
I shook my head but froze and swallowed a cry as his knee bumped against my hip. Something that still hurt with a bone-deep agony that set my heart racing and lit up with the movement. The monitors and machines switched into alarm mode, blaring warnings, and activity erupted in the hallway. Dodge growled deep in his chest as the door opened, and leaned over me to brace on the other side of the mattress. He created a massive, muscular barrier over me.
A familiar voice called from the hallway, “Don’t move, Percy. Just stay still. We’ll deal with him. He won’t hurt you.”
Deirdre stayed near the door as her husband and Todd and half a dozen other guys I didn’t recognize slid into the room. Doctors and nurses tried to crowd in with them, but with every new person through the door, Dodge growled and snarled louder. His fingers bit into the mattress, his nails dark and sharp and hair sprouting on his arms and fingers. My breath caught. What was happening?
I tried to lift my arms to push him away or try to draw the sheets up closer to my chest, but it just hurt more and sparked more tears. Which in turn sent Dodge into some kind of rage.
Static charged the air as Deirdre moved her hands. Evershaw growled and advanced. “Cut it the fuck out, Dodge. Get your shit together. You’re scaring your mate.”
I stared at him, trying to understand the words that definitely meant something more than what I expected. Mate? What the hell was a mate, and did he mean me? Did he think... Was I something to Dodge after all? But was he about to… was he going to lose control and go rampaging through the room as a wolf? What happened tomeif he flipped out?
My breath caught and another machine cheeped rapidly. A nurse moved around the perimeter of the room, trying to reach the machines, and Dodge growled more. When Evershaw jumped forward to protect her, Dodge leapt to meet him. Dodge changed mid-leap. His body twisted and turned and then he dropped to the floor on all fours as a wolf. A giant, furious wolf. He charged the people who tried to come in the room, including his friends, and the doctors and nurses scattered. Evershaw pushed my bed into the corner and snapped orders at everyone else as I stared in horror.
Dodge whirled and snapped at Evershaw, and my eyes locked on the madness in the wolf’s eyes. There was no hint of humanity left in the beast. No flicker of Dodge’s humor or flirtation. Just rage and blood-lust. I choked on a scream. How could someone who’d been so gentle with me turn into such a terrifying beast? He lost control until he could have hurt anyone, might have tried to attack or kill anyone who got in his way. He bit Evershaw and blood splattered on the floor, but the man just tackled Dodge and more bodies piled on.
Shouting and snarling deafened me and I sank lower in the bed, trying to bunch the pillow up around my ears. More of the wounds I’d almost forgotten about pulled and tore, and I whimpered.
The snarling ceased immediately and I found a wolf’s golden eyes fixed on me. He went completely motionless as he stared at me, and I saw a flicker of recognition. I opened my mouth to say something but choked on air and the words that needed to be said. Then Deirdre said something strange that I didn’t quite hear, and three men trussed up Dodge and hauled him out of the room. The moment he was in the hall he started fighting again and more shouting started, mixed in with copious amounts of cursing. But by then the doctors and nurses filled the room and surrounded the bed, dragging it away from the corner where Evershaw had shoved me. The chaos swallowed me up.
Even with the voices asking me questions and dozens of hands doing things and adjusting tubes and changing sensors, the only thing I saw and heard was Dodge’s fierce fight against all of his friends. People he lived with, people he worked for, people he cared about. If he attacked them when he became a wolf, what did that mean for me? Would he lose his mind and attack me at some point when I made him mad? He barely knew me and I’d already gotten him shot. It grew harder to breathe. How could I trust him to stay sane? He was the second shifter I’d seen lose total control. If it happened that often... how would I ever be safe around him?
Chapter 44
Dodge
They chained him in the cellar where they’d kept Silas. Dodge could hardly move from the restraints, at least until he was almost in his right mind and Evershaw forced him back to human. The moments after Persephone woke up and Dodge ended up in the cellar flickered and blurred until he wasn’t sure what had really happened. But Persephone was awake. He survived. He hadn’t been able to smell her to know whether she’d turned, but there would be time for that.
If Evershaw ever let him out of the fucking cellar.
He was losing his mind. Dodge felt sanity slip further and further out of reach with every passing minute that they kept Persephone away from him. He felt her far away from him, somewhere in the city, and the pain radiated from his heart and soul and every bone in his body. It turned into a physical ache, like a deep bruise, that throbbed as his heart beat.
Silas stayed underground with him, although the other wolf remained stuck but wasn’t chained. Whatever Deirdre had done with her magic shifted Silas back to his full wolf form, the human fully in control, but he couldn’t do anything else. He just lazed around and kept Dodge company. Dodge told Silas everything – every fear and hope, every wonderful memory of Persephone and all the things he planned to say to her the moment he saw her again.
Dodge nearly freed himself a couple of times before Evershaw grew fed up and stalked down to the cellar to stand over him. The alpha’s fury radiated from every inch of his body. “Look, asshole. You need to calm the fuck down. I don’t want to keep you away from your mate, but you’re in no condition to be around her.”
Dodge growled even in his human throat. He managed to rasp, “She’s mine.Mine.”
“Yeah, and she’s fucking terrified of you.”
The comment left him cold all the way to his core. Persephone feared him? He’d blamed the alpha for keeping him away from his mate, but what if... what ifshedidn’t want to see him? Dodge shook his head to try and jostle the memories loose from in the hospital. She’d woken up and he’d been there with her. She’d cried out in pain and then there were too many people in the room. The wolf took over, wrestled control away from him, and fought to keep everyone away from her.
