114 Chapter 114
114 Chapter 114
Damien’s POV 1
Time crawled like a dying animal.
I sat in that godforsaken hospital waiting room, my hands clenched into fists so tight my knuckles had gone
white, watching the clock on the wall tick away seconds that felt like centuries. Each minute stretched into
an eternity of torment. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry wasps, casting everything in harsh,
clinical white light that made my skin look corpse-pale and waxen.
*How long had it been?* Three hours? Four? A fucking lifetime?
The antiseptic smell burned my nostrils, mixing with the underlying scent of fear and death that seemed to
permeate every hospital corridor. My enhanced senses, usually such an advantage, now felt like a curse as
they picked up every nuance of suffering from the rooms beyond these walls.
The doors to the emergency wing remained closed, sealed against me like the gates of hell. Every few
minutes, I’d catch a glimpse of medical staff rushing past through the ss windows-scrubs stained with
blood, faces grim and focused, moving with the kind of urgency that made my stomach clench with dread.
But never any news. Never any answers.
Just endless, suffocating silence.
My wolf Alex was going insane inside my chest, pacing and snarling like a caged beast. He wanted to tear
down those doors, to find our mate, to protect what was ours. But I couldn’t let him loose. Not here.
*She has to be okay,* I told myself for the thousandth time. *She has to be.*
I buried my face in my hands, trying to block out the images that kept shing through my mind. Sera
unconscious and broken at the border, The finger-shaped bruises around her throat.
“Alpha. Lucas’s voice cut through my spiral of despair.
I looked up to see him settling into the chair beside me, two cups of coffee in his hands. His face was drawn with exhaustion and worry, but he was trying to project calm. For my benefit, probably.
“Drink something,” he said, pressing one of the cups into my hands.
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I took it without looking, my eyes immediately returning to those damn doors. The coffee was bitter and
scalding, but I barely tasted it. Everything felt muted, distant, like I was watching the world through thick
ss while drowning in my own fear.
The liquid burned my throat, but the pain was nothingpared to the agony tearing through my chest.
Every breath felt like swallowing broken ss.
“Any word from Adrian?” I asked, my voice hoarse from hours of silence.
“Ophelia’s got him. He’s asking for his mom, but she’s keeping him distracted with games and stories.” Lucas
paused, studying my face carefully. “Should I bring him here?”
“No.” The word exploded out of me with enough force to make Lucas flinch. “Not until we know more.”
Thest thing I wanted was for my son to see his mother like that. Broken. Barely breathing. Looking more
dead than alive.
*My fault,* the voice in my head whispered. *This is all
my
fault.*
The memory of my hands around her throat made bile rise in my throat. I’d been ready to kill her. My own
mate. The mother of my children.
“Stop,” Lucas said quietly, reading the self-destruction in my expression. “This isn’t your fault, Damien. You
couldn’t have known.”
I closed my eyes, trying to push away the image of her battered face. The way she’d felt in my arms when I’d finally realized who she was-so light and fragile, like a bird with broken wings.
My hands shook as I brought the coffee cup to my lips again. The ceramic rattled against my teeth, betraying
the fear I was trying so hard to contain.
Hours crawled by. Nurses walked past without making eye contact. Doctors disappeared behind those sealed doors, taking pieces of my sanity with them. Lucas tried to make conversation, but I couldn’t focus on
anything except the silence from the emergency wing.
*What’s taking so long?*
Then, finally, after what felt like a lifetime of torture, I heard footsteps approaching.
“Damien’?”
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The familiar voice made me look up so fast I nearly gave myself whish.
Dr. Morgan stood in the doorway, her surgical scrubs stained with blood that made my stomach clench
violently. She looked exhausted, her silver hair escaping from its bun in wispy strands, deep lines of fatigue
etched around her eyes like cracks in weathered stone.
But she was smiling.
Tired, worried, but genuinely relieved. That small upturn of her lips was like a lifeline thrown to a drowning
man.
I was on my feet before I even realized I’d moved, the coffee cup ttering to the floor and sttering across
the linoleum.
“How is she?” The words tore out of my throat like they were made of razors.
“She’s alive.”
Those two words hit me like a physical blow, relief so intense and overwhelming it nearly brought me to my
knees. My legs went weak, and I had to grip the back of the chair to keep from copsing.
“She’s stable,” Dr. Morgan continued, her voice cutting through the roaring in my ears. “Critical, but stable.
Her vitals are strong, and she’s responding well to treatment.”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. The relief was so intense it felt like dying and being reborn all at once.
“The baby?” I managed to whisper, barely daring to voice the question that had been eating at me for hours.
“The baby is fine.” Dr. Morgan’s smile widened slightly. “Surprisingly resilient, considering what she’s been
through. The fetal heartbeat is strong and steady.”
Dr. Morgan gestured toward the chairs, and I sank back down, my legs finally giving outpletely.
“However,” Dr. Morgan continued, and that single word made my blood turn to ice water in my veins.
My heart, which had just started beating normally again, resumed its frantic hammering against my ribs. The relief that had flooded through me began to curdle, turning sour and cold.
Dr. Morgan’s expression was grave, painted with the kind of professional sympathy that made my skin crawl.
“I can’t detect any trace of her wolf’s presence. The neural pathways that should connect Seraphina to her
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wolf consciousness have been… severed.”
“But she’ll heal, right?” The desperation in my voice was pathetic, but I didn’t care. I was grasping at straws, begging for miracles.
Dr. Morgan’s expression grew even more sympathetic, which somehow made everything worse. “Damien,”
she said softly. “Her wolf healing is gone. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She’s essentially human now. Completely human.”