My blood boiled and I stopped pacing. This human male had to have been the driver who crashed into us.
“Kill him,”my demon growled.
A vein throbbed in my forehead and all I could see was red. It took centuries of self-control to prevent myself from losing control of my demon who struggled to come to the surface.
After ensuring Emma made it out alive, I would kill the man who tried taking my mate away from me.
Hours had passed, and I still hadn’t told Emma’s mother what had happened. I didn’t have my phone and assumed it was in the wreckage, along with Emma’s. Her parents were in a different hospital, so I couldn’t find Emma’s mom or dad here. All of my wounds had healed, and if the nurses at the desk noticed, they said nothing.
“Are you Emma’s husband?” a nurse asked as she entered the empty waiting room.
I stopped pacing and whipped around to face the nurse with a messy blonde bun.
“Yes,” I answered. This time it sounded more natural and less like a lie. “Is she okay?”
She stepped closer, and I looked at the badge clipped to her breast pocket. It said her name was Katie.
“She’s alive,” she sighed. That wasn’t comforting at all. “Come with me.”
She gestured for me to follow and walked out of the waiting room. I followed Katie down the hallway and into the elevator. The doors slid shut, locking me in a closed space with the human woman. My mind went straight to Emma and our first meeting. When I was in that elevator with Emma, all I could smell was her intoxicating scent and how it drove me wild. My inner demon had urged me to pin Emma against the wall and claim her as ours.
The elevator dinged, then the doors slid open. Katie got off first, and I followed.
Emma’s scent became stronger, but another scent joined it. Death clung to her, turning her musky and sweet smell sour and sickly sweet. My stomach churned.
I should have used my fucking shadows. Fuck everyone else.
Guilt plagued me, weighing heavy on my shoulders. If Emma knew how I took on the burden of the accident and her death, she would have scolded me, comforted me, and told me it wasn’t my fault. My sunshine would have hugged me and whispered how much she loved me into my ear. But the fact remained. It was my fault.
We passed by rooms with closed doors, then a nurses’ station where four of them gathered. They worked on paperwork or scrolled on their laptops, working on their patients’ charts.
Katie turned into room twelve, and I followed. My steps faltered, and I sucked in a sharp breath. Tubes connected Emma to a machine. One tube went down her throat and breathed for her. She looked smaller with all the equipment beside her, and she lay on the hospital bed with the blankets pulled up to her chest. One arm stuck out of the sheet, an IV on the top of her hand.
My demon bared his sharp teeth and stretched in my mind, testing the barriers to break through and go to our mate. It took every ounce of my power to hold him back.
“Now isn’t the time,”I snapped at him in my mind.
He snarled.“They’ll pay for what they did to her!”
Oh, I knew that. I had many plans for the people who crashed into my car. They had hurt my mate, and now they would pay with their lives. I didn’t get a good look at the man who collided with us, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t caught his scent when I got out of the wrecked car. When they had loaded Emma into the ambulance, another showed up, and I had watched them get the man out of his totaled vehicle. They brought him into the same emergency room, but not in the same condition as Emma.
“I’ll leave you alone with her while I grab the doctor,” Katie said. Her eyes softened and she forced a smile that was meant to put me at ease.
I stood at the end of Emma’s bed, staring at her with a blank expression, but I roared inside my head. My demon looked through my eyes, and he bared his sharp teeth. His rage became mine. My teeth lengthened, and my eyes flashed red as he pushed to the top.
“No,” I said, and forced him back.
“Let me be with her,”he snarled.
“Now is not the time.”
He growled and fought against me as I pushed him back down. I clenched my jaw and used all my strength to keep him there. After a minute of us fighting each other, he backed off.
I shook my arms, stretching my muscles, and went to Emma’s side. Her eyes were swollen shut, and dark purple and blue bruises colored the skin on her face. Dried blood crusted the edges of the stitches on her cheek. There was more of it at the corners of her mouth, and her jaw was lowered to make room for the tube.
The machine’s whirring filled the silence. Another beeped with her every heartbeat. Footsteps came toward the room, and knuckles rapped against the door before a middle-aged man wearing a knee-length white lab coat entered the room. Dark bags hung beneath his eyes, showing he’d been losing sleep as he saved lives.
“Are you Emma’s husband?” he asked.
