What else can I do now?
He didn’t have the knowledge or tools to do anything for the alpha’s other serious injuries, which no doubt included broken bones and perhaps something internal. He also didn’t dare move Jace and risk aggravating anything. So, what could he do? Why the hell had he been so eager to step up and try to do something that he couldn’t?
“Stop,” he hissed under his breath. “Assess the situation. When the doctor arrives…”
When the doctor arrived, his first order of business would be to get Jace’s clothing out of the way so he could see everything. Precious seconds would be wasted on that, so Keiran went ahead and did it himself. Once that was done, he froze up again, but it didn’t matter this time because just then a howl rose up from nearby. Only a second later, a tall man wearing a white robe strode up and Keiran backed away, sagging with relief.
“Please help him,” he whispered as the doctor passed.
No response came as the man immediately set to work, opening his doctor kit and pulling out clamps, gauze, a stapler…
Keiran turned away as the stapler came out. Even though Jace was unconscious, he didn’t want to see this. He already knew he would never be able to forget the way Jace looked right then, covered in blood and so close to dying… His shoulders shook and tears came in rivulets down his cheeks, but he tightened his chin against the sobs, strangling them in his throat.
Someone touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Marvin.
Keiran turned, trying to look past the captain of the Guard, but Marvin moved to block his sight. “Is he… No…”
“No, no.” Marvin held up his hands, flashing a ghost of a smile. “No, he’s not dead. Uh, Dr. Sanjay is just… packing the wound and it doesn’t look very pleasant.”
“Oh.” Keiran wiped his face and sniffled, only to find a handkerchief shoved into his hands. “Thanks. Why are you sorry?”
The alpha sighed, rubbing his face now as well. “I’m sorry that I acted that way toward you. It’s just that… I’ve known Jace since we were both children. I’m not that much older than he is.”
That was startling to hear, though Keiran realized it was true when he took a closer look at Marvin. The Guard was so callused and wrinkled from his hard life that it had prematurely aged him, giving him the roughened, weathered skin of a middle-aged man, covering the supple muscles of a young man’s body.
“I understand,” he said. “I think I got it across to you pretty accurately that he’s special to me, too.”
“Yes, you did.” Marvin tried to smile. “You got it across to me and the entire Guard. We aren’t known for our gossip, but you know that the rest of the castle will somehow know about this by morning.”
“Yeah.” Keiran sighed and handed Marvin the handkerchief. “How come you just carry that thing around?”
Marvin smiled in earnest now, though it clashed with the tension on the rest of his handsome face. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. If you pass by someone you’d like to get to know better, you walk past them and drop your item of choice. They pick it up and you take the chance to strike up a conversation.”
Keiran laughed a little. “And then what? You’re mated for life after that?”
“I hate to interrupt your little chat, but I need your assistance.”
Keiran spun around at the dry voice. The doctor—what was his name? Keiran was so bad at remembering names—gestured them both over to Jace. The alpha looked so pathetic, so much smaller than he really was. “Is he going to live?”
“I do not know,” the doctor said, honestly. “I’ve done what I can do out here, but I need to get him to the hospital where I can get him under an x-ray and prepare for surgery. Sounds like a punctured lung.”
How can he say all this so calmly?
“My assistants stayed behind to prepare. I have a folding cloth stretcher here with me in my kit. I need help taking him.”
“I’ll do it,” Keiran said, immediately.
“And I as well,” Marvin volunteered. But then he shook his head. “No, I need to stay here and round up these prisoners. Trix, Pasha, you do it.”
Working as a team, the group of four slid Jace’s body onto the cloth stretcher, grabbed onto the handles, and headed back toward the castle. The journey seemed far too long. As much as he tried not to, he listened intently to every single breath and knew that he was waiting for them to stop.
But, they didn’t. Jace continued breathing all the way to the hospital, where a group of assistants waited at the door with a proper stretcher. They wheeled their prince away, speaking in high, rapid voices and using words that Keiran didn’t understand.
Left alone now, with the two members of the Guard leaving to return to Marvin, Keiran slumped down to the ground and put his head in his hands. Alphas were abnormally strong creatures and Jace was just strong in general; plus, shapeshifters had remarkable healing powers. But was Jace strong enough to overcome this? He’d hardly looked like a person anymore…
“I did the best I could, Abigail,” he whispered into his fingers. Oh, he wished she was here. Not for healing now, since there was nothing she could have done that wasn’t already being taken care of. No, she was his only friend. He just wanted someone to talk to, but he’d only made friends with Ty and Jace and both were unavailable. That left no other option but to wait.
Rising to his feet, Keiran staggered inside the hospital and dropped into a waiting room chair. No one asked why he was there, since it was obvious. Folding his hands on his lap, he looked down at his feet and waited.
Chapter 14
For a moment, Jace thought he was seeing an eclipse. A circle of darkness, surrounded by bright light.
Pretty, he thought, hazily. I could just reach up and touch it.
Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he knew his thoughts were all wrong. Some sort of medication if he was correct, presumably a painkiller because he knew he should be feeling some sort of pain and wasn’t. However, he couldn’t quite bring the thought to the surface of his mind; slithering like some sort of tadpole, it flicked out of reach and rested in the shadows.
Jace blinked, and blinked again as dried crud nearly glued his eyelids together. The blinking served a secondary purpose, in that his vision cleared and the eclipse revealed itself to be his advisor leaning over him with a bright hospital light directly behind his head.
“Hey, Don,” he said. His breath fogged up the oxygen mask that he hadn’t been aware he was wearing until right at this moment. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
His advisor drew back slightly, face no longer silhouetted by a light directly behind him. His lips pressed into a thin line and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t particularly find that funny. If you weren’t the prince, I would punch you.”
Jace focused on breathing for a moment. Saying even that much had taken far more effort than he was capable of giving. And now that he had become aware of himself, he felt pain, but it was distant and not really bothersome, like those thoughts lingering in the back of his mind. “I think someone already did that for you. A bunch of someones. Did we get them?”
“Yes,” Don murmured. “Well, we captured a few. The others managed to escape and there wasn’t enough manpower at the time to pursue them. I’m sorry for that, Jace.”
He lifted one hand to wave his advisor’s concerns away, but the tug of an IV needle in the back of his hand put a stop to that. Dropping his hand back down, he said, “It’s okay. I know everyone did their best. How’s my dad? How’s Keiran?”
Just like that, Don’s expression became his default grimace of disapproval but for an entirely different reason this time. “Really? You’re lying in a hospital bed and you know that you’re very hurt, but you don’t care about yourself even now? You’ve always been that way, but you would think that just this once you might ask about yourself first.”
Jace let out an impatient growl, but it turned into a cough as the effort made his chest ache. No
more growling. Fine.
“Let’s do it your way, then. How am I doing, Don?” Jace asked, sarcastically.
“I’m not sure I should tell you,” the advisor said. “As I am not a doctor.”
“So… get the damn doctor for me!”
“Sanjay will pass here as part of his rounds. We will both wait for him here because I am fully aware that the moment I leave this room, you will try to get up.”
Jace scowled down at the blankets pulled up over his chest and tucked in at the corners of the bed. “I hate that you know me so well. I can’t get away with anything anymore.”
“Yes, well, as your advisor, it’s my responsibility to remind you that you are a very stupid person and are not immune to half the things you would try to do.” Don moved away from the bed and perched in a chair near Jace’s bedside. “So, we will wait. Don’t worry. There’s plenty of time.”
“The prey shifters have declared civil war and you think there’s plenty of time?” Jace glared over at the dark man, who stuck out like a thumb in this overly-bright hospital room. “Who’s the stupid one now?”
“Who’s the fool who went for an unguarded walk with a boyfriend that he isn’t supposed to have?” Don snapped.
Jace’s heart did two very strange things all at the same time: it warmed happily at the mention of his lover, and it sank deep in his chest at the word Don used. “What do you mean?”
The advisor sighed, anger suddenly fading as quickly as it had come. “He really had no choice but to say it, from what I’ve heard of the story. Marvin wasn’t going to let him near you when you were downed after the fight. It was Keiran’s insistence that he be allowed to help ‘his boyfriend’ that finally convinced him. Had he not said that, I don’t think you would be alive right now.”
That was a problem. A huge problem. “I guess everyone in the castle knows by now.”
“Everyone in the Capital knows,” Don said wryly. “We have so many reporters pressed against the gates that they can almost climb over each other to get inside.”
Jace sighed. “Damn. How’s the council taking it?”
“Let me put it this way… if you weren’t in and out of consciousness for these past three days, the council already would have nailed you to a cross by now.”
Alarm shot through the alpha. He grabbed at the railing on either side of his bed and tried to push himself up into a sitting position. “Three days?” he said, aghast. “Three days?”
“Lie down,” Don snapped.
Jace obeyed mostly because he didn’t have the strength to do otherwise. Unfortunately, all that moving around had really awoken his self-awareness and pain rose up from the depths, waving cruel tentacles. Soon it would be unbearable.
“Yes, three days. I’ll let Sanjay explain it all when he arrives, but you weren’t in a coma. Just, when you were awake, it still seemed as if you dreamed. You fought. You needed to be restrained several times.”
Jace closed his eyes. Don went silent so that the only sounds filling the small room was that of their breathing, and of course the various whirring and beeping tones of the many machines connected to Jace. Three days… how could that be? It seemed as though he might remember some of it if he thought very hard, but the images made no sense and had no sound. Everything seemed out of proportion or hazy in all the wrong places, like trying to remember a dream. He gave up on it, figuring perhaps it was for the best.
Nothing to do but wait for Sanjay.
He took stock of the room he was in to pass the time, since he hadn’t yet. Really, it looked no different from the room his father stayed in. White walls, white door, white curtains on the window. Everything was white, even the frame of the decrepit old television mounted up high on the wall. The only things that weren’t white were the bedsheets and the gown he wore beneath them, both of which were incredibly pale blue, and the machines to which he was hooked up.
After looking around, Jace looked at himself. He felt Don watching him for this part, waiting for him to do something stupid, but he really just wanted to find out for himself what might be wrong with him. There was the IV in the back of his hand, the oxygen mask covering his face, and any number of electrodes stuck all over his body. He followed the path of the wires over to a boxy monitor that recorded his heartbeat, but the others led to an impossible tangle that not even he could decipher. He was covered in bandages, especially around his stomach and chest. In fact, he was wrapped in so many layers of the stuff that he wondered why they didn’t just stick him in a full-body cast and call it done for the day.
However, there was no way he could actually know the extent of his injuries, so he lay back again and nestled his head against the pillow. Closing his eyes, he counted the beats of his heart. They perfectly synced with the soft pulses of pain shooting through him, gathering at certain places before spreading outwards through the rest of him.
Clearly, I am no match for an elephant. Not even for a deer.
“Hey, Don? Do you think people will think it’s funny that I got my ass kicked by a deer?”
His advisor laughed, but very politely, clearly making an extreme effort to do so. “A kick from a full-grown stag could break a wolf’s neck. I would say you’re fine.”
“He’s not fine,” a new voice interrupted. At the same time, the door to the room opened and Sanjay walked inside. “Don, if you’ll step outside, I need to examine my patient.”
The advisor knew when not to argue. Bowing his head in respect, he stood up and scurried outside.
Jace looked up at the man standing over him and cracked a weary grin. “I bet you’re tired of seeing me.”
Sanjay didn’t smile. “I much preferred it when you were capable of storming out of my office. Now I have to stand here and deal with you.”
“Sanjay, are you joking with me?”
“I am.”
Wonders never cease.
Jace allowed himself to be examined, though the whole process made him feel like some sort of experiment. It also hurt. A lot. Gritting his teeth, he just tried to bear it and finally Sanjay pulled away, seeming as satisfied as he ever could be. “Well, my young prince, you are healing at a most remarkable rate. You’re ahead of schedule, in fact.”
“I’m sure that would be delightful news if I knew what was wrong with me,” Jace replied, slightly breathless despite the oxygen being pumped into his lungs. “Don didn’t tell me. I would think it’s important for me to know though.”
“And you are right,” Sanjay said. “Now, before I tell you anything, I must remind you that even if this news upsets you, you must accept it. It’s important for you to be as calm as possible during these coming days.”
“I am perfectly calm. Do you see how calm I am?”
“Hmm.” Sanjay raised one eyebrow. Jace waited as patiently as he could as the doctor gathered his thoughts. “You have seven bruised ribs, two of which are broken. One of those punctured your lung. It required surgery to repair and shouldn’t bother you in the future as long as you let it fully heal. That means abstaining from most, if not all, physical activity.”
Oh, great. I guess I’d better get a taste for TV because it sounds like I’m going to need a lazy distraction.
“You were shot in your shoulder.” Sanjay patted his own shoulder to demonstrate. “The bullet did not pass through, but it did not shatter apart or run into any bones, luckily. We removed the bullet quite easily out on the field and your shoulder will have no great loss of mobility if you give it time to heal.”
“No great loss?” Jace asked. “That still means some loss.”
“You must understand that these injuries are very grievous, Jace. While I have no doubt you will make a full recovery now that we’re past the first few days, scar tissues will form and your body will need time to adjust to all these changes forced upon it. Physical therapy will help and, in time, I don’t think you will see a difference.” Sanjay looked very stern. “That’s only if you do not worsen your injuries at any point in time.
Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Now, those were the most life-threatening injuries. You obtained numerous bruises, abrasions, and assorted gashes. You have several torn ligaments and a badly sprained ankle, as well as whiplash in your neck. We have stitched and braced you extensively. All of those minor injuries will heal without much in the way of interference on my part or yours.”
“And how long am I going to be bedridden?”
Sanjay hesitated.
“Doctor? I’m the prince. I need to know.”
“If you continue healing at this rate, you will be allowed to start taking small walks out of bed within a week. At two weeks, I might fully release you, but you will not be back to your normal self for several months, and that is with physical therapy and in optimum conditions. Any other questions before I allow your advisor back into the room?”
“How is my father? How’s he taking this?”
“His memory comes and goes. You know this. He is stable for the moment, but the condition in which he’s decided to stabilize is… not optimal.” Sanjay sighed. “We decided not to tell him of what happened. It wouldn’t help him.”
Jace nodded. That’s what he’d been hoping for. “And Keiran? Is he hurt? Did you treat him?”
“I haven’t treated him. He sits out in the waiting room. Hasn’t left since you got here.”
“Can he come in to see me?”
“No. Not for a few days yet. An excitable reunion isn’t what’s best for my patients, one of which is you right now.”
“What if I commanded you? As your prince?”
Sanjay shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, I am prince of this hospital. I put my word over yours. Now, I have to move on to my other patients. A nurse will be along shortly to change your dressings and to administer more pain medicine. It sounds as though you need it.”
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