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Faint pulse. Faint pulse. Faint pulse.
Heels clicked along the floor.
I smelled her perfume, hating it immediately ’cause it drowned out the very faint smell of Kate, gettin’ lost amongst all the cleaners and disinfectants in this fuckin’ place.
Freya pulled a chair to sit down beside me.
I didn’t look at her.
“I can sit with her,” she offered. “So you can get something to eat. I know better than to ask an alpha male to go and get some sleep—even though he’s been awake for over twenty-four hours—when his woman is…” she trailed off, staring at Kate, probably. Her breath hitched. “When his woman is healing,” she finished, her voice stronger, after clearing her throat. “But I happen to have hard evidence that even though they may be able to exist on no sleep, alpha males do need to do things like eat. You know, to sustain life?”
I didn’t answer.
The sound of the monitors took up the silence in the room.
Freya sighed and reached over to squeeze my thigh. “Do you think we should call her daughter?”
Now my eyes darted away from Kate to Freya. I tried to read the emotion I saw in her eyes. Fear? But she didn’t flinch back. She was married to Hades. This bitch was not one to spook easily.
Almost anyone else probably would’ve gone running from the room. Old Ladies weren’t just anyone, though. They were one of a kind.
Irreplaceable.
“No,” I ground out.
Her expression was soft, eyes brimming with tears. “Sweetheart, her mother is on life support. Her father…”
Her father was hopefully being tortured by Freya’s husband.
“No,” I repeated. I looked back to Kate. “She would not want Violet to see her like this.”
Kate had lived through fucking hell for her daughter. She loved her with an intensity that radiated from her. She would want to protect her from seeing her in this condition. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to make that or any other decision right now.
But I could.
I would.
Freya’s gaze bore into me, and I knew she was debating over whether to push me on this. It was brave to even consider that. She was doing this ’cause she cared for Kate. Rationally, I knew that.
But there was nothing rational about me right now.
So I prayed she didn’t push it.
She squeezed my thigh one last time.
“Okay,” she stood up. “I’m going to bring a cheeseburger in here and you’re going to eat it. You won’t even have to let her go. I’m pretty sure a badass can manage a cheeseburger one handed.” There was a heavy silence as she stood there, not leaving. “Kate will be pissed if you faint from hunger when she wakes up. It’ll also damage your street cred.”
She lingered for a few moments longer before she walked out. Sometime later—exactly two thousand one hundred and thirty-one of Kate’s heartbeats—she returned with a cheeseburger.
I ate it one handed, holding on to Kate with the other.
