“Hey, baby,” I said into his maw, breathing out to let him inhale my scent.
White eyes peered into mine. A deep growl rolled from him.
“Very scary,” I told him softly. “I’m terribly impressed.”
He snarled. Teeth clicked a hair from my throat.
“Curran,” I whispered. “Remember me.”
He inhaled my scent. His ears twitched. He was listening to the shapeshifters at the door.
“Close the door, Jim.”
Jim hesitated.
“I’m his mate. Close the door.”
A moment later the door clicked shut.
I put my arms around his neck. “You’re mine. You can’t let her win. She can’t have you.”
He was listening but not hearing.
“I love you,” I told him. “You said you would always come for me. I need you now. Come back to me. Please, come back to me.”
I put my head against Curran’s mane.
“Come back to me. I know you’re in there. You brought me here. You didn’t kill me. You must know who I am.”
Fur slid under my fingers. He stood rigid.
“If you come back to me, I’ll never leave you,” I whispered into the furry ear. “I’ll make you all the pies you could ever eat.”
All of the magic I had, all of the power of my blood, all of it was useless with the magic down. He was slipping away, farther and farther, with each passing second. “Come back to me. Please. Remember you wanted me to say please. I’m saying it now. Please come back to me.”
Nothing.
“Who’ll protect me from myself if you’re gone? Who’ll fight with me? I will be all by myself. You can’t abandon me, Curran. You can’t orphan the Pack. You just can’t.”
He clenched me to him. Pain exploded and I cried out.
Curran snarled and gripped me tighter.
He didn’t remember me. Curran was lost. She took him from me. She ripped him right out of my life with her dying breath. The world broke to pieces and caved in on me. I couldn’t even breathe.
My eyes grew hot. Something inside me broke and I cried. I hugged his thick neck and cried and cried, because he was dying second by second and I could do nothing.
“Come back to me. Don’t leave me all alone. Don’t die on me, you stupid sonovabitch. You goddamn fucking idiot. I told you to stay out of the damn fight! Why the hell don’t you ever listen? I fucking hate you. I hate you, you hear me? Don’t you dare die on me, because I need to kill you with my bare hands.”
The fur boiled under my hands and my fingers grazed human skin. Curran’s gray eyes looked at me from a human face.
“Talk to me, baby,” I whispered. “Please talk to me.”
His lips moved. He struggled for a long moment and forced it out.
“Not dead yet.”
His eyes rolled back in his head. He swayed and we crashed to the floor.
DOOLITTLE WIPED HIS HANDS WITH A TOWEL. “HE’S comatose. His body is human, but whether his mind returns is the question. However, he spoke. We heard him through the door and it was clear and coherent. That gives us hope.”
“When will he wake up?”
Doolittle looked at me, his eyes troubled. “I don’t know.”
“Can you do anything? Can’t you fix him?”
He shook his head again and pulled back from me. “I’m out of cures. It’s up to his body and time now.”
Jim thrust himself into my view. “You need to let him fix you.”
I stared at him.
“Let the doctor fix you,” Jim said, as if to a small child. “You’re hurt. It’s not good for you to be hurt.”
I wanted them to leave me the hell alone. “Since when did you turn into my nursemaid?”
Jim crouched by me. “By now the whole Keep knows the Beast Lord is in a coma. They’re scared and pissed off and they want blood. What they need right now is the Beast Lord’s mate standing on her own two feet. You need to be up and running, so I can walk you through the Keep to keep people from panicking.”
“I’m not going anywhere while he’s like this.”
Jim shook his head. “You’re going to pick yourself up and take up right where he left off. That’s your job now.”
“Leave me the hell alone, or I’ll hurt you,” I growled at him.
“That’s real nice,” Jim said. “But first we’ll need to fix you.”
Doolittle put his finger on my jeans a couple of inches above the knee. “Cut from here to the ankle.”
Jim flashed a knife, slicing my jeans along my right leg. Doolittle pointed down. “Look here.”
My knee had developed a large bump on the left side. The muscle around it had swelled, disfiguring the leg.
“You know what this is,” Doolittle said.
“Dislocated kneecap.”
“Good girl. You have two broken ribs, severe bruising, a wound in the stomach, and at least four deep cuts that I can see, and all of them are filthy. Your wound did seal itself, but if we don’t take care of it now, you won’t be here if he wakes up.”
He said “if,” not “when.” If he wakes up.
Doolittle grasped my ankle. “Hold under her knee.”
Jim caught the underside of my knee in his hand.
Doolittle’s eyes found mine. “You know how this goes.”
I clenched the armrests of the chair. “Do it.”
He twisted my leg. A red-hot shaft of pain shot through me, tearing a scream.
Doolittle peered into my eyes. “That ought to bring you back to earth. Are you with us now?”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.
“Good,” Doolittle said. “Now let’s see to those ribs.”
DEREK KNOCKED ON THE DOOR. I KNEW IT WAS him, because he always knocked twice.
I closed the book I was reading out loud. “Yes?”
Derek stepped in. The boy wonder looked me over with a worried look on his face. “How are you feeling?”
“Same.”
It had been three days since Curran collapsed. He showed no signs of waking up. I had him moved to the couch, because the bed was too high, and I’d made a bed for myself on the floor next to him. I hadn’t left his side longer than the few minutes I needed to go to the bathroom. The boy wonder had the devil of a time getting me to eat.
“Julie called me,” he said. “She says the school won’t let her contact you.”
“It was a precaution against Erra. I didn’t want her to find out Julie was alive. Is she angry with me?”
“She’s hurt,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”
I could tell there was more. “Give, Derek. What else?”
“The Pack Council is going to convene in four hours. They are going to debate what to do if Curran doesn’t come around.”
“And?”
“There is some talk of expelling you from Curran’s quarters, since you’re not officially an alpha.”
My laughter rang through the room, sounding cold and brittle.
Derek took a step back. His face softened, his voice gaining an almost pleading quality. “Kate? Bring the creepy down a notch. Please.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. The magic had hit for a few hours yesterday and Doolittle spent most of the wave putting me back together, since he could do nothing for Curran. I wouldn’t be able to fight Erra again right this second, but I had enough left in me for one good show.
“Any calls from Andrea?”
“No.”
The shapeshifters had reported that Andrea had survived the fire at the Mole Hole, but she’d made no attempts to contact me. My best friend had abandoned me and I missed her. But then I probably wasn’t good company right this second. Maybe it was for the best.
“Still no word on Naeemah?” I asked.
He shook his head. “But there are two people from Clan Bouda here. They say you have some sort of arrangement with Aunt B.”
I pushed myself off the chair and handed him the book. “Page 238. Read to him while I talk to them. Please.”
Derek licked his lips. “I’m not sure he can hear us.”
“When I was out after the rakshasas nearly killed me, I heard voices. I heard Curran, Julie, you, Andrea. I didn’t know what was being said, but I recognized the voices. That’s how I knew I was safe. I want you to read to him, so he knows he’s not dead and he isn’t alone.”