Mercer.
“You came,” I whispered.
His attention zeroed in on my neck. The bite mark. It ached under his intense stare, but I ignored the throbbing and threw myself on Mercer in an aggressive hug.
He held me tight, leaning us forward until I was lounging on my nest of pillows again, with him tucked beside. “Of course, sweetheart. We got here as soon as we could.”
“Where’s Conrad? I smell him too.”
West and Mercer exchanged a glance. “He’s… sleeping. Recovering, so we can’t wake him. But I brought his scent in here for you,” Mercer said.
The gunshot wound. His hospital bed... The way he’d growled at me. Ruin and chaos, most of it a blur, the last solid memory I had before it was only the delirium of gargoyles and car gardens.
I whimpered. “Is he… OK?”
“We think so. We’ll know more when he wakes up.”
“Can I visit him?”
Mercer brushed a strand of hair from my forehead. “When your heat breaks, you can,” he promised.
My chest tightened. I wanted to beg them to let me see Conrad before then, but they would never agree, and I knew why. He’d been feral when I’d left him, and my heat pheromones would only drive a feral alpha closer to madness.
We’d learned that the hard way.
“Your heat scent is fading,” West reassured me. “The heat-reduction meds the nurse gave you when you first arrived are working. You should be out of it soon.”
“Agreed,” Mercer said. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”
I melted into the mattress between my two alphas, making sure I had a hand on each of them. Mercer’s question was… complicated. I didn’t want to delve too deeply into how I felt. If I did, the nest’s comfortable haze might fall away and bring me back to how I’d felt out on the street, at the moment my life had been ruined.
But Mercer was only worried about me, not trying to make things worse. For him, I tried to do a base assessment of myself.
Breathing deeply, I started with my feet and worked my way up my body. My feet were aching, sore, and scraped up. My knees, palms, and elbows were scraped the same way, throbbing faintly when I paid too much attention to them. While I laid still like this, my thighs and calves only felt heavy, but when I moved a leg, it became obvious how much exertion I’d put them through.
I wanted to stop there.
If I went further into this assessment, I’d have to acknowledge…
My stomach was twisted in knots, gnawing emptily at itself. The discomfort was stable, constant, but if I laid in the fetal position it helped me to ignore it.
Slick wet my inner thighs, the remnants of when my body had wanted me to tend the sexual needs of this heat, but my core was clenched tight. I didn’t want anyone near me in that way right now, not even my mates.
And my heart… it throbbed. Every beat was noticeable when I focused on it. It reminded me that my heart was with this pack, but my bond… I’d let my bond be taken by another alpha.
That bondmark on my neck seared with pain, a phantom of the moment he’d taken everything.
Tears beaded in the corners of my eyes, and I had to stop before going anywhere near my mental state.
“Everything hurts,” I said. “But it’s not all physical pain. The nurses patched me up well enough that it’s mainly just discomfort now, except when I think about how I ended up with all these scrapes and bruises.”
Mercer’s lips pressed against my hair. West grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Thank you for checking for me,” Mercer said. “We’re going to make it all better.”
He was lying to comfort me. There was no way to fix all my mistakes. I’d accept the lies, though. It was better than facing reality in my fragile state.
“You three always make me feel better,” I admitted.
