Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“Well. That happened.”
Blade laughed as well, then looked around—and recoiled.
“She’s not there anymore,” he said, pointing to the spot in the trees where the ghostly gray wolf had been.
Xhex went back to the night she had come up the trail for the first time, and had found the old woman. She had never thought it would lead here, to her… beginnings. But maybe that was the thing with healing. If only the surface of a wound reknits, the injury festers as an infection. Only by going deep, to the very source, and clearing the base of it all, could health be restored.
Family had betrayed her… but family had ahvenged her, too.
“I guess her job with us is done.” Xhex glanced down at her body, then patted at herself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. “With me… with you.”
When she looked back up, she had to know. “Blade… about my grid…”
There was a long moment. And then her brother slowly smiled. “The rebuilding is happening, as we speak. I can see it plainly, so no, you are not deluding yourself.”
“I can feel it.” She touched her ribs again and her head. “I swear I can.”
“Good. I am glad.”
As a smile stretched her mouth—it didn’t stay put. Just as he could read her grid… his was obvious to her, and the stress remained.
Only this time, it was unhappiness, not regret.
And she knew what it was about.
“You’ve got to leave Lydia alone,” Xhex said roughly. “If not for her own good, for yours. You don’t know the hell where I’ve been in my head, my soul—and we don’t need two people in the family there.”
Blade took a deep breath. “Family.”
“Yeah. Family who looks out for each other. And if you keep holding on to the thing with that wolven, what happened to me… is going to happen to you.”
THIRTY-FIVE
THINGS WENT DOWNHILL so fast, Lydia thought as she sat at the bedside.
Daniel had been fine in the library, and then he’d gotten to their room, collapsed on the bed, and started coughing up all that bright red blood. And now, as she found herself in the midst of a throng of medical staff, with all kinds of drugs being pumped into him and vitals monitoring that was going badly, she couldn’t grapple with where they were. How was it possible that he’d been doing so well—hell, they had had sex, twice, for godsakes—but then all of a sudden, he was slipping into a coma?
But come on, like making love was a physical fitness test.
“I’m right here,” she said roughly as she stroked his dusting of hair. “I need you to stay with me—”
“Lydia.”
The sound of her name, so close by, and spoken so insistently—like she hadn’t heard it a couple of times—made her jump and glance up. “Gus…?”
“Hey, honey.” The doctor got down on his knees in front of her, his bruised and swollen face a reminder of how much other people were suffering right now. “Can you focus on me for a sec?”
She nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she could look away from Daniel for even that long. “What can we do?” she asked. “Please…”
“He’s had a bleed in his left lung from a bronchial arterial breach inside one of the tumors. Remember how I told you this could happen?”
“He’s had them before, though. Why is he…”
“The bleeding’s under control and he’s better, right? You can see, he’s breathing more easily and he’s relaxed. Look at the monitor, no alarms going off.”
She glanced to the screen behind his head, with all its numbers and the mountain ranges of his heart rate. “He’s had that happen before. So why… did he collapse?”
“His oxygen got low because of the coughing, but we’re supporting his breathing and he’s stable now, and I need you to start breathing again yourself.” As she began to well up, Gus put his hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me, I’ve got him, okay? You can trust me.”
“But then what. What happens tomorrow. What happens…”
When there was no getting control of whatever took him down. When one of his mets invaded a vital organ and his liver stopped working or his—
“We’re staying in the moment, Lydia. And right now, he’s okay, and that’s where we are. We’re here—”
“But what does it mean,” she cut in as he pointed at the floor tile. “For the long run.”
Stupid fucking question. That had already been answered by those scans they had done a week ago, the ones that showed Daniel was riddled with disease.
“We’re just going to keep making sure he’s comfortable, and keep after the—”
“He was doing so well.” She grabbed on to Gus’s arm like it was a lifeline. “His strength was back, he was walking better, he was—”
She looked to the hospital bed like she expected Daniel to sit right up and start ticking off the fact that he’d had a pair of orgasms, he’d driven the SUV, and he didn’t need his cane once he’d recovered from that breakneck Harley ride on the highway… except of course, there was no awareness on his part—and no possibility of any kind of response that she could see: Behind the mask that was forcing air down his throat, he showed no signs of consciousness.