I miss him so much it kills me, even if I can’t get past what he’s done to our bond, and I’m still broken
by him. It adds to my urgency in looking around for some kind of pointer in what to do. I shake myself
and I remind myself that the girl I was, she’s dead. Little Alora of the Whyte pack and Elren farm,
peacefully living a carefree life. The war seen to my parent’s unplanned leaving, and Juan saw they
never came back. She died a long time ago, when her life was turned upside down, and it altered
everything she knew. Her path disintegrated, and all those dreams and hopes, they fluttered away on
the breeze.
That unwanted, rejected, feeble little no one, who imprinted on a boy ten years later, who stood in her
place …. also, dead! She who couldn’t be allowed to love her fated mate, because of what she was.
She never really existed anyway. She was a lie that was fed to me and made me live under a mask of
my own making, because I never knew the truth and this girl, this one right here. She’s the Alora who’s
been holding her breath and waiting for me to find her.
She’s the daughter of a warrior. A daughter of a prophetic Queen, who was slain for her power. She’s
the heroine of a prophecy, and she’s a god damn white wolf with red eyes, that makes her some kind of
hybrid with gifts, a witch thought so powerful that she bound them until a time when she needed to get
them back. A witch who sacrificed her life, and the sanity of her son to protect her. She’s someone to
be reckoned with, she needs to find the way to bloom.
That doesn’t sound like any kind of weak no one to me, not a reject, or unworthy of an alpha mate, and
I need to own that shit. Everything I’ve done in my life for the past ten years has been overshadowed
by a black cloud of shame and failure and believing I was never good enough, because they told me
so. It’s gone. Almost like someone lifted that lid and finally uncaged my soul. There’s nothing over my
head weighing me down now, and that little voice that second guessed it all. It’s dead too. That was
never my voice, it was theirs, out there in the world around the mountain. I am deaf to their sounds
now.
This girl, she has a right to stand up and be counted as someone worthy, and the fates for whatever
reason, led me here and I need to see it through. They knew me before I existed, and I was part of the
plan. They know what I’m capable of and they set on my way to be sure I showed everyone else. If
they got me this far then maybe they have a plan, and I should stop fighting and listen. Close my eyes
and let the fates send me some kind of message through the cosmos and the air… because this is not
how it ends.
Th noise of the elevator interrupts my train of thought, a noise so perfectly on cue I blink and open my
eyes and my head spins towards the source. Half expecting to Deacon strolling on in and making my
day worse, if that was even possible, but it’s the doctor, and he’s pushing a cabinet on wheels with all
manner of things sliding off the top as he dashes to Sierras room. Drawn to the wall to watch him,
suspicious of his behavior. Forgetting my pep talk and all my internal boosting of confidence.
He seems different somehow. Wired maybe, a little erratic in his abrupt walking around and hurried
movements. He drops a scattering of implements on the floor, the noise of cascading metal, and hard
objects clattering and echoing in this large space as he abandons the cart outside Sierras door and
swipes the panel to open it. He stops before entering, picks them up, and throws them back on top,
scooping anymore he disturbs with his ungraceful and somewhat rushed movements, and then rushes
into her room and starts frantically pressing buttons on machines by her head.
I can’t do much else but watch, and as he starts picking up small mobile devices and sitting them on
her bed, his face ashen and serious and fully focused on what he is doing, I realize he’s not just
checking on her and something’s up. His expression says it all, and there’s no hint of gentle jovial
eccentric doctor in this moment. He looks frayed and afraid.
Even from here I can see he’s sweating, his forehead blushed and shiny and the underarms of his
white jacket are beginning to darken with excessive body heat. He’s in a state of panic, and I look
around expecting his staff or the guards to come flooding down, suddenly worried about why. My own
nerves hitching as my stomach ties itself in knots, and I end up flat to the window, palms pressed by
the sides of me against the glass, heavily breathing as I watch, anchored to my spot.
Maybe Sierra is crashing… maybe all I was to do was witness her die. God no, please, Colton needs to
see her one last time. She can’t die…. he needs her!! I can’t stand the thought of him losing her without
saying goodbye. I need to know what I’m supposed to do now.
The doctor unhooks her from the machine, keeping her heartbeat monitored loudly, and I hold my
breath, inhaling sharply as the beep, beep, is stalled so suddenly the air becomes unbearably silent. I
don’t get why he would take that off, but when he yanks another box from under the bed and plugs her
onto that instead I exhale, slightly confused. That familiar beep, beep, starts up again, in a subtler tone
from a different machine and he moves to the next, and next, replacing everything he can with smaller
mobile devices as my brain pulls together amid my own frantic fear and gives me a shake.
He’s not trying to save her, or trying to take her off the machines, he’s making her mobile so he can
move her.
He stops, rushes off out of sight as he heads into the elevator once more, abandoning everything he’s
left in chaos and a moment later, comes crashing back ungracefully, pushing another bed. This time it’s
on wheels, back to her room. I press my cheek to the cool smooth wall in front of me, eyes locked on
and heart rate hitching as it filters through. He catches me watching him, notices me with a second
snap of his head as though he didn’t glance me the first time and makes a weird wave gesture with his
hands that translates to nothing. I don’t understand.
“What?” I yell back, unsure what the hell he’s doing, and he does it again, waving two fingers in the air
which I can only assume means two minutes. I move back, confusion overtaking but intrigue definitely
the dominant feeling. Everything else that had been coursing through me is replaced with a thousand
questions, about why he’s moving her. I watch as I’ve nothing else to do, and over here it’s all I am
capable of anyway, as he struggles to get her from one bed to the other and shakes his head in defeat,
getting redder faced, and sweatier as he does. He pulls out a handkerchief from his top pocket, pats his
face and puts it back, while he seems to be taking a moment to size up his plan. He clicks his fingers in
mid-air like he just had a eureka moment, and then abandons her, turning and heading out towards me
at speed. A complete look of determination on that furrow browed, overly serious expression, as he
dashes at me.
He crosses the bay so quickly and without hesitation, opens my door and gestures me with flicking
hands that I should come with him. His face is almost beetroot, and soaked, and he looks like he’s just
run a marathon
“What’s going on?” I eye him warily, unsure how to feel about his current behavior and trying to figure
out if the doc is drunk and realize he’s breathless as hell and can barely talk.
He gestures again after blowing out an incoherent sound that I assume was meant to be words, to
follow. I shrug and do it. I don’t see any reason not to, he’s proven himself to be a half decent human
who isn’t out to hurt me, and a voice at the back of my mind is telling me this is how I get close to her.
As soon as he knows I’m with him he turns on his heel and we head back to sierra.
“Help me… here to here” he motions wheezily when we get in her room beside her, from her bed to the
new one he wheeled over here. His voice is low and labored and he’s struggling to get sound out.
Definitely been running about like a maniac before coming down here, and I can feel his heart rate
pulsing rapidly in the air around me. He’s composing himself as he works, but it’s obvious he’s not in
the best physical shape.
I turn my eyes to our sleeping beauty, surprised at this distance how unwell she looks, and a whole lot
less ethereal. Sierra up close, looks like a porcelain doll, so silently still and unresponsive, with flushed,
rosy cheeks, on a milky pallor, dark lashes fanning her face under smooth dark brows, and I can see
Colton in her features immediately. I don’t argue but take her upper arms under her armpits as firmly as
I can without hurting her and lift her over while he gets her legs.
She’s light in weight, surprisingly so, nothing to her, and painfully thin as the blankets pull away and I
see her body under her own thin medical gown. Her skin is almost translucent from lack of sunlight, yet
she seems so very warm and alive, and I’m convinced she’s going to open her eyes at any moment.
It’s unnerving, and I can’t stop staring at her face as we place her on the new bed, brushing her dark
hair from her face as he tends to her limbs, and tubes, and settles her neatly.
“What are we doing?” I whisper it back, keeping my voice hushed as it’s pretty obvious with the lack of
helpers he’s not meant to be doing this. As soon as he fully arranges her on the gurney, he takes a
moment to inhale, calm his breathing by pressing a hand to his chest and points at the door.
“We’re taking her and leaving…. I drugged……. Fixed…. phew…” he struggles, wiping his brow with
the back of his hand and takes another exaggerated breath, annoying me to the point of getting
frustrated with his lack of vocabulary, and he tries again. I raise my brows at him and throw a ‘and?’
look his way. “I drugged dinner; we don’t have much time…. few hours at the most.” He wheezes and
goes back to picking up tubes and arranging them around her in a hurried fashion.
“You did what?” I gawp at him, this unassuming little feeble doctor that wouldn’t stand up to Deacon
earlier, and now it registers how quiet this place is when he’s making so much noise with carts and
beds and no one’s appeared. My face pales as my blood drains away and my brain catches up with
exactly what’s happening.
He nods at the bay outside her room and motions to start pulling her bed. Making it clear I’m not
dreaming, and we are in fact staging a bust out, and a heist, in that Sierra is the gold, and we’re taking
it. I swallow hard, pull myself together, and throw a glance up at the roof and a silent’ Thank you’ to the
fates. They answered my prayers.
I do as he motions, tugging it backwards out the door with all my might to get it rolling, as he throws
machines and such almost on top with her as we begin to move. He picks up, and dumps more items
on the bed as we pass a couple of free-standing trolleys, pulling the saline drip, and bag feeding her
fluids with him, and its trolley at the end while stretching all her tubes almost taut.
“I doped the soup and pretended to eat in the canteen to watch that they all did, we always eat
together. Had to wait on them all passing out…. to the truck over there.” He nods at my shooting point
and I pull the bed and aim for it, gaining speed as we go, and he grabs the medical trolley in passing to
tug behind him too, making it awkward for him to keep hold of the bed at all, and I end up pulling it
alone as he deals with that and the other wheeled necessities he’s hauling, dropping things as he does
so.
If this is an escape, it’s a haphazard one, and he’s the worst kind of saving hero ever. He’s making
enough noise to wake the dead, and I’m not convinced he’s not going to keel over and have a heart
attack with how unfit he is. He’s puffing, and heaving, and losing more than half his weight in body
sweat, and I think he might need to lie down. Humans really are a weak race.
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