“No,” she said defiantly, lifting her chin and fixing a determined look on me.
“Blake, you need to calm down,” Cade said from behind me as he put his hand on my shoulder.
I wanted to shake it off but he was my alpha and I had to obey him. I tightened my fist, trying to fight against the command Cade had given me, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t go against it. Defeated, I took a deep breath and released it.
“It wasn’t Kyle’s fault and you know it,” Cade reasoned when I turned to face him.
He was right, but it didn’t help the turmoil of emotions I was experiencing.
“She’ll be okay,” Cade assured me when I remained silent, trying to figure out how to deal with the overwhelming emotions I was feeling. I knew he was telling me that to calm me down but there was no way he could know that for sure.
Werewolves healed fast, so she must have been really badly injured to have to go into surgery and that meant there was a chance she wouldn’t make it. My whole world revolved around Keri now and without her it would end. Anger seeped out of me and all I felt was overwhelming fear that she was going to die.
I turned back to Kyle and Scarlett. She held Kyle’s hand in hers as they looked to me.
“How bad is she?” I asked softly, scared of the answer.
There was a moment of silence.
“Really…bad,” Kyle answered. His voice broke on the last word. I felt a pain in my chest that felt like my heart had been ripped from my body.
I rubbed my hands over my face as I tried to keep myself from falling to my knees. There didn’t seem to be a lot of hope, but I held on to what I could to keep myself together.
When I closed my eyes for a brief moment, I saw Keri’s smiling face. I traced every feature in her face, trying to imprint her face into my mind. When I opened my eyes, Kyle was still watching me with Scarlett standing beside him.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled to Kyle.
“I deserved it,” he softly admitted. “I should have done more. And if anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Scarlett looked from me to her brother and gave him a hug as she tried to console him.
I’d always been so jealous of Kyle and I hated when he was around Keri, but in that moment he was one of the few people who felt the same fear that I did and I didn’t feel so alone. Emotionally raw and tired, I sat down in a chair and leaned my head back against the wall, closing my eyes for a moment.
I heard movement in the chair beside me and I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it was Cade. He was my best friend and he’d been through everything with me and now he was giving me all the support he could. What was only a minute felt like an hour and I thought I was going to go crazy when I looked up to finally see Curtis walking toward us. He still had his medical scrubs on.
I stood up, frantically searching his face for any slight indication of what had happened, but his face was like stone. For one of the first times in my life I felt true fear. Fear that the person that I was supposed to spend forever with was gone.
“Keri?” I managed to whisper as Kyle stood beside me, anxiously looking at Curtis.
“She survived surgery, but I’m not sure if she’s going to make it,” he admitted as he let out an emotional breath. He looked like he was already grieving and I felt like someone had pulled out the rug from underneath my feet. I felt something brush my shoulder and Cade was standing on the other side of me.
“He doesn’t think she is going to make it,” I repeated, feeling like I was in nightmare that I was struggling to wake up from.
“She’s strong, she’ll make it,” Cade assured me despite what Curtis had just said.
“Where is she?” I asked. I need to be able to see her and touch her.
“They’re putting her into a room now,” Curtis said, nodding his head in the direction just behind him. Two nurses were coming out of a room.
I rushed past the nurses to the room. I stopped for a moment in the doorway and the sight of her lying still in the hospital bed stopped my heart for a beat.
She looked so fragile, like she was sleeping, but all the machines and tubes that surrounded her told another heart-wrenching story. I took a tentative step into the room. Beside her, I reached for her hand and the moment my fingers touched her skin I felt our bond join us together. Calmness settled over me, easing the emotions that had been tearing me apart.
I bent down and kissed her on the cheek.
Wake up, baby, I said to her through the mind-link.Please.But no matter how much I willed it, she never moved or opened her eyes. I pulled up a chair beside her bed and held her hand. My only consolation was the feel of our bond when I touched her hand.
The door opening made me look up to see Kyle standing in the doorway with his eyes glued to the form of Keri.
