The rest of the evening passed with Xan pacing by Ray’s bed, fretting as his fever spiked and his coughing worsened. He administered Urho’s drugs again as soon as he believed it was safe and was desperately relieved when Ray’s fever broke. After a solid coughing fit, he fell into a deep sleep.
Once Ray was out, Xan held the tin in one hand and the bottle of black elderberry syrup in the other, like talismans against his own fear. When Joon had come earlier to check on Ray, Xan had given him tablets to slip to Pater. Xan didn’t want Pater to wait for medicine that could help him while Xan gathered his so-called courage to walk down the hall and face Father.
He stood by Ray’s window, looking out on the usually busy street below. Now it was silent, and not only because it was nighttime. The city was in the throes of this illness and it wasn’t letting go. He’d noted it on both the ride to his own house from the station in the taxi and during the drive to Urho’s place. The usually bustling city now looked like a resort town during the off-season.
He took off his suit jacket and draped it over the nearby chair, and then undid his tie, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Going back to the window, he took a deep breath and let it out. He wasn’t going to be kept from his pater any longer. Never mind the tumbling feeling in his gut when he thought of facing down his father—of staring into the man’s cold, blue eyes and telling him the way things were going to be. Demanding it. Because he was the heir and he had rights.
He wiped his hand over his upper lip, collecting the anxious sweat. He closed his eyes, determined to be strong. He took a slow, deep breath, and gazed out the window, searching the sky for the stars. They were the same ones that shone over Virona—that shone over the whole wolf-blessed world, after all—and he focused his thoughts on Urho, expecting to find comfort and strength there.
But instead Xan’s brain served up images of the sanctuary in Urho’s house devoted to his lostÉrosgápe. Xan didn’t know why he’d been surprised to find that Riki still dominated Urho’s most private and intimate rooms, but he had been. In truth, he’d allowed himself to nearly forget over the last several weeks that he wasn’t the most beloved man in Urho’s world. That he never could be.
Ray sniffled, and Xan glanced over his shoulder at him, ensuring that he hadn’t woken. Seeing his brother’s eyes were still shut and his breath was coming in even, long strokes, he gazed back out at the night, wishing he could see the night sky without all the light pollution of the city. The way he could back home in Virona.
Home. In Virona.
How odd that he’d come to think of it as home, but he had. He missed the sound of the waves coming in the open windows, the chill of the winter air, the scent of the sea wafting through the house or buried in a fold of bedding or clothing, and most of all he missed the sound of Urho and Caleb’s voices. The men that made him truly comprehend, for the first time in his adult life, the concept of home and family. He sighed.
Xan briefly let himself entertain the fantasy they could live together and never part. Urho had obviously entertained that fantasy, too, but it was absurd. As soon as Vale had delivered the baby, and once Urho knew the state of the sickness here in the city, he’d be on his way back.
And not just for duty.
Because, while he might love Xan, even care for him deeply, he’d never have room in his heart for Xan to be his home. Not in the way he was becoming Xan’s home. Not truly. All that precious space was already completely taken up by Riki—the way it should be betweenÉrosgápe.
Xan had been foolish to think he could be anywhere close to as precious to Urho as Urho was becoming to him, despite all they’d shared. Despite Urho’s promises. If Urho was entertaining the fantasy of staying it was only to escape the pain of having lost hisÉrosgápe, but in the end, Riki’s memory would win out.
Wouldn’t it?
Tired of that line of self-pitying thought, Xan turned to another. He wanted to see his pater so badly he ached, yet here he was in the same house and he was cowering. Enough was enough. He would see Pater, and he would see him now.
Before he could take a step, shouts from the hallway made him jump. Hesitating for a moment, pierced through with anxiety, he strained to hear words, but could only make out shouts.
Racing out of Ray’s room and down the hall toward the staircase landing, he swallowed back his terror. The shouts grew louder as he ran down the other wing toward his parents’ room.
When he burst into the familiar room, his heart pounding and his pulse rushing loudly enough to obscure the cries, he came to a halt beside his parents’ raised, canopied bed. The room was blazing with lights, illuminating the striped maroon wallpaper and the disarray of a sick room.
Father was the source of the commotion. He sat on the bed by Pater in rumpled pants and shirt, shouting, crying, and begging. And Pater only lay there, skinnier than Xan had ever seen, clearly unconscious, paper white, and struggling to breathe. Father clutched Pater to his chest, and between wordless shouts he called for help and a doctor. His eyes went wide when he saw Xan, confusion and rage flashing briefly beneath his utter terror, but he only shouted at him to get help and to hurry about it.
Xan climbed onto the big bed and shoved in close to his pater. His father tried to push him off. “Get help!” he shouted.
But Xan held up the medicines. Father, eyes wild, balled up his fist and reared back as though to punch him. “I said get help!”
“I have help!” Xan yelled back, a hot rush flowing into him, rage pure and strong. “I have medicine for him! Get out of my way!”
He used all of his strength to shove his father aside, wrenching his pater’s limp body from his father’s arms. Then he propped his pater up on the pillows as his father struggled to get between them again. The last time Xan had seen Pater, he’d been a robust, happy man. But now he looked horribly thin and scarily sick.
He didn’t have time to think about that, though. He shoved his father back again, opened the bottle of elderberry syrup, and managed to get some of the reddish purple syrup between his pater’s lips. Father tried to get between them, a growl in his chest.
But Xan was stronger now. He’d been taking boxing lessons from Urho, and he was over thirty years younger than the frightened, tired man who was frantic for hisÉrosgápe’s life. Xan massaged Pater’s throat, working the liquid medicine down as Father begged Pater to breathe.
“Please George.” His voice cracked. “Please breathe, baby. Breathe, my sweetheart, my one. Breathe. Breathe.”
Xan poured more syrup into his pater’s mouth and hoped it didn’t choke him. He couldn’t be sure how much was getting into his stomach.
“Get a doctor,” Father said desperately. “What are you giving him? He needs a doctor!”
Joon appeared in the doorway then, wearing pajamas and a sleep-addled expression. He gasped as he came closer to the bed. “I’ll call for a doctor, sir. I’ll see if I can find one.”
“Call for an ambulance if necessary,” Xan said over his shoulder, wondering if there were any hospitals still accepting patients.
