We’d found her.
We’d actually found her.
And now, I was in the same waiting room in the same hospital I’d been in forever ago when Samantha had gotten hurt.
But this time it wasn’t just me and Michael waiting. It was me, Michael, Axel, Claudia, Lucas, and Samantha.
I couldn’t believe how life always came back around. I didn’t think it would. I thought Van was wrong. I didn’t want him to be wrong, but this little voice in my mind just kept thinking that we’d never find her.
And now we had found her. Except she was in a hospital room.
A hospital room where I wasn’t allowed inside.
At first, I hadn’t been allowed in because I’d been arrested. We called our friends in the FBI to vouch for us, and that took forever. They didn’t believe it was really Tessa in there.
And then once they decided to maybe believe us—it was a whole other thing to make them let us deal with it. They wanted to ask Tessa questions and run DNA and a whole bunch of other stupid shit.
They couldn’t ask her anything. I did, and she had some sort of massive seizure.
I wasn’t sure what we were going to do now. We were waiting for her to wake up before we tried any magic.
But I’d seen Tessa. For a second, I’d touched her, and I could see through all the magic.
She was back here. She was okay. Or she had been until I started pushing her to break through the magic.
Why had I done that? I should’ve been thankful that I had found her. I shouldn’t have pushed. Now she’d been unconscious for almost a full day, and it felt like I was on the verge of losing her again.
Why wasn’t she awake?
I needed her to wake up.
She had to wake up.
I got up and started pacing.
“Dastien,” Claudia called out to me. “She’s a werewolf. She’ll be okay. Something like this can’t kill her. It’s just the magic.”
She didn’t know that. She couldn’t fucking know that. Tessa had been kidnapped for six hundred and twenty-seven days. Who knew what they’d done to her? Who knew what that magic had done to her? “Have you ever seen any magic do that?” I knew I shouldn’t yell at her, but I couldn’t stop myself.
She flinched, and Lucas’s arm went around her, protecting her.
I was a jerk. Yelling at Claudia was like kicking a puppy. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.”
She stared at the ground for a second before looking up at me again. “I’ve never seen magic do that, but I don’t know enough about fey magic. That could be a normal reaction.” Her voice was quieter now. “Cosette’s almost here. She’ll know more. She can figure this out.”
“Tessa’s in a fucking coma! How can Cosette figure that out?” I wiped a hand down my face. “Sorry.”
“That word only means something if you change your behavior.” Lucas had been patient with me, but I could hear in his voice that he was about to be done with that.
“I am sorry.” I stared at the ceiling, counting the tiles for a second, before trying to speak again. “I’m sorry that I’m losing control and patience and everything else. I just—”
“It’s okay.” Claudia put her hand on Lucas’s arm, stopping him from speaking. “I’m not upset. If yelling helps you, then you can yell at me.”
Now I felt like an even bigger asshole.
A nurse cleared her throat. I turned too quickly—moved too quickly—and the sickly sweet stench of fear filled the hallway.
I was scaring everyone. “I’m sorry. Did you need something?”
“No. The yelling…”
“I’m sorry. I’ll keep it down.”
“Thank you. I’ve got other patients…” The nurse trailed off, but she didn’t need to say anymore.
I went back to quietly pacing and trying to convince myself that we were making progress. And we had. Tessa was here. She might not be conscious, but that would change. It had to.
And now that we had her, we knew a lot more—her name, what she’d been doing, where she lived. We knew it all.
Tessa thought her name was Cassie Wolffe, which Samantha thought was freaking hilarious. Whoever decided that should be her name was either an idiot or thumbing their nose at us. It was definitely the latter because it took a lot to pull this off for so long.
And it was really that poor choice of names that got the FBI to really believe me. They’d gone to the hospital to touch her—they wanted to see through the magic themselves—but it hadn’t worked. Humans couldn’t see through magic when they had none of their own.
But when Samantha went into Tessa’s room and grabbed Tessa’s arm, and then the FBI agent’s arm—he saw.
That’s why they’d left. They were letting us deal with Tessa. There was no threat to humans, unless they interfered.
I was technically allowed inside the hospital room now, but the last time I…she had another seizure. So, we were waiting for her to wake up before I was allowed in again.
Tessa would wake up. Because Claudia was right. Under all that magic, Tessa was still a werewolf. Tessa was just so clouded, so camouflaged, so entirely cloaked in fey magic that I couldn’t feel her wolf. Not even when I was touching her.
I couldn’t feel her magic either.
As far as I could tell, the person in that bed wasn’t even the least bit supernatural.
It’s like Tessa wasn’t there. Everything that made her who she was…it was all gone.
Except she was there.
That was Teresa McCaide Laurent. My Tessa. I knew it. I believed it. And so I knew everything I was feeling, everything I was seeing, was a lie.
I knew from the books in her bag that she was in school. From her ID, I knew that she had an apartment here. A life. But it wasn’t real. She was living a lie.
I stopped my pacing and looked at the row of seats. My friends—my family—were there. Michael sat watching me. His wolf was close, ready to take me down if I lost control.
Axel was sitting with his head bowed, and his knees were bouncing. He was gripping his hands together and releasing them. Then squeezing them again. He wasn’t losing control, but he was close.
Tessa was my mate, but she was also his sister.
I needed to control myself better. If for no other reason than because Axel was taking his cues from me. He was still so new to the world of werewolves and magic, but I’d been born into it. If I panicked, he would, too.
Samantha had silver skull earbuds in, and her eyes were closed. I knew she could see things that I couldn’t, and I wasn’t sure what was hanging around a hospital. I would’ve thought she was sleeping, but the slight citrus scent of her anxiety was enough to tell me that she was awake.
Claudia was leaning against Lucas, who was also watching me. If Michael and Lucas both came at me, I was pretty sure I’d lose. Which meant I needed to calm down. But how?
I’d waited so long to find her, and now that I had… I couldn’t lose her again. But how was I supposed to fix this? We’d found her only because the archon finally decided to act.
Why? I wasn’t sure.
“What am I going to do?” I met Lucas’s gaze. “What do I do?”
“Do what my mate said and wait. You’re going to wait patiently for Cosette.”
“I don’t know what another fey can do, but…” Samantha spoke without taking out her earbuds, but she opened her eyes, and the scent of her anxiety sharped.
I wondered again about what she saw. Something told me her anxiety didn’t have anything to do with being in a room of witches and werewolves.
“The magic is woven into her soul,” Samantha said, staring straight into my eyes. “It’s blended into the fabric of her being. It’s had so long to permeate her that when you touched her—when you forced her to confront the magic—she nearly died. Instantly. It might not be what you want to hear, but messing with that magic feels dangerous. It was dangerous for me more than a year ago when I tried to reach through the void in your bonds to find her. Messing with the source of that magic now? It’s clearly deadly for her.”
She was right. It made me want to punch something or someone, but I couldn’t. So I rubbed my hands down my face and breathed.
There was always an answer. Always a way. I just had to find it.
I’d spent so long looking for her and then…
An idea came to me. “Eli. I need to talk to Eli. If he set up the run-in, then he knows more than he’s told us.”
Claudia shook her head. “I don’t know if that’s—”
“You can try, but he might not come.” Samantha stared off into space for a minute before looking at me again. “Angels have a duty. A cause. And it’s more sacred than anything us mortals can understand. It’s ingrained. So, they don’t help out when it’s not warranted, when it’s not directly tied to their duty. Archons are like angels, but with the freedom to fulfill their duty in any way they see fit. They can disobey their orders. They can even act outside the lines of their duty, but because of that, they’re unpredictable.”
I didn’t care about predictability. Eli already helped us. I just needed a little more help. “How do I get him to come?”
Samantha rose from her chair and walked to the nurse’s station. On the way, she dodged something invisible and reached into her pocket. She threw something that looked like sand, but smelled like smoke into the air.
“What was that?” I asked.
“It’s better if you don’t know. Trust me.” She stopped in front of the nurse. “Is there a chapel in the hospital?”
The nurse nodded and gave her directions, but I wasn’t listening. I would follow her, so it didn’t matter. What mattered was what I said to Eli. How could I convince him to help me? He had the power to do it. I knew he did.
I could tell him that the rest of us needed her—that she was pivotal to keeping the earthly realm safe—but I wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
A lot of time had passed since she’d been kidnapped. Sure, there had been incidents, but they’d done okay without her.
It was me that wasn’t okay without her.
Just me.
Which was selfish. Tessa had a peaceful, quiet life here. One without danger. Was I doing her a favor by dragging her back into that?
If I loved her, could I let her go?
I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to answer that question.
We walked through the hallways, but I didn’t see them. I didn’t see the people we passed. I didn’t see the rooms or hear the cries or smell the scents of sorrow and sickness and injury. I didn’t see anything until we stopped at the door. I only heard the quiet in my head as I prepared to argue for my life. Because Tessa was my life.
Samantha pushed open the door and waved me forward.
The chapel room was small, with a single stained glass window across from the door. Three rows of pews long enough for four people filled the room from the door, all the way up to the tiny altar in front of the window. The only light in the room came through the colored glass, giving it a somber feel.
Which was the room’s purpose. Solemnity.
No one ever came to a chapel in a hospital to celebrate. It was always out of despair. A plea for help. For mercy.
And that’s why I was coming here, too.
I needed mercy.