Page 191 of My Unhinged Alphas
I look at the slip of paper again, then at Vale. “We get Knox fixed up first. Then we can check the address, circle it, not go in dumb. See what this Apostle wants.”
Vale nods once. “Exactly.”
Knox looks at Lena then. Really looks at her. Like he’s trying to calculate risk and distance and timing and whether she can be kept alive in a fluorescent emergency room while the rest of the world keeps moving without us.
She crosses her arms. “I’m not thrilled either, in case that helps.”
It doesn’t. But he almost reacts.
Almost.
I say, “Look at it this way. You get oxygen, a chest X-ray, and Lena gets the exciting experience of discovering whether hospitals are somehow worse than motels.”
She says, “At this point I’m open to being surprised.”
Vale’s mouth shifts slightly at that, then settles. He looks tired enough that even almost-smiling seems expensive.
Knox still isn’t giving in.
Lena looks like she thinks everyone else is being grim and impossible and she’s tired of feeling like cargo. “Maybe I’m the secret killer weapon.”
All three of us look at her.
She shrugs. “Maybe that’s the twist. Maybe the Brotherhood’s been overthinking this and what they really need is a Sisterhood built entirely around me.”
I laugh first. A real one.
Vale huffs a breath that hurts him and makes him stop.
Even the paramedic looks confused enough to almost smile.
Knox closes his eyes for half a second, his version of surrender. When he opens them again, the fight in them has changed shape. “You stay with one of us at all times,” he tells Lena.
She blinks. “That’s your acceptance speech?”
“It’s what you’re getting.”
“Touching,” she says. “Now let’s go. Let’s get you fixed.”
Chapter 31
Lena
By the timethey discharge Knox, the sky outside the hospital windows has started turning that weak, colorless gray that comes before proper morning.
A doctor checked him twice, listened to his lungs, shined lights in his eyes, made him sit through scans and monitoring he hated every second of, and finally let him go with instructions he has already mentally thrown away. Smoke inhalation, mild airway irritation, low oxygen at first, no reason to keep him if he promises not to do anything stupid.
He did not promise that.
None of us believed it would have helped if he had.
We spent the rest of the night half-asleep in the waiting lounge because nobody wanted to separate again. Vale dozed sitting up with his arms folded and his face turned toward the wall. Havoc somehow slept like a man on vacation, one leg stretched out, head tipped back, mouth barely open, even with soot still under one ear and his shirt scorched at the sleeve. Knox sat rigid for a long time before finally giving in and sleeping for maybe an hour with his head against the chair behind him.
Still, when I wake and see all three exactly where they should be, I feel something warm spread through me before I can stop it.
Tired, yes. Filthy. Shaken. Confused. But happy too, in the quietest, stupidest way.
They’re all here. No one is dead. No one vanished into smoke and left me with only the shape of them.
