Chapter 147 Chapter 147
Violet
"Someone spiked your drink." His voice dropped lower, taking on that dangerous edge that I'd heard right before he'd destroyed Nate.
The room seemed to tilt sideways. Someone had deliberately drugged me. Had planned to... what? My stomach turned violently, and for a moment I thought I might actually be sick.
"Hey." Elijah's voice softened immediately, his hand moving from my cheek to the back of my neck, steady and grounding. "You're safe now. I've got you. Nothing's going to happen to you."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to sink into the security of those words and let them wrap around me like a blanket. But my mind was racing now, cutting through the fog with sharp-edged panic.
If Elijah hadn't shown up when he did... if he hadn't read the warning signs in my slurred texts... if he'd been even five minutes later...
I couldn't finish the thought. How could he have even done that?
I looked at him again, slowly this time.
Elijah looked terrible in the morning light. Not disheveled but exhausted in a way that went beyond lack of sleep. There were shadows under his eyes so dark they looked like bruises, and when he reached for the coffee cup the nurse offered, his hand shook enough that the liquid sloshed against the rim.
'Did you sleep at all?' I asked.
'Enough,' he lied.
As he lifted the cup to his lips, his sleeve rode up, and I saw them: marks on his forearm, angry red welts that looked almost like claw marks. Four parallel lines, too evenly spaced to be accidental.
My breath caught. 'Elijah, what happened to your arm?'
He glanced down, expression unchanging, and tugged the sleeve back down. 'Sparring accident. Nothing to worry about.'
Sparring accident? He had beaten the shit out of Nate and I never saw Nate even be able to deliver a scratch in retaliation.
And I didn’t think he had been sparring when I was passed out in the hospital, in the same room as Nate. He would never leave me alone with him.
Besides, these looked too fresh to have happened yesterday when I'd last seen his inked arms deliver blow after blow.
What was he hiding from me?
The door opened with a soft click, breaking through my spiraling thoughts. A doctor walked in, middle-aged with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and gray hair that was thinning on top. He was followed by a nurse carrying a tablet, her shoes squeaking softly on the floor.
The doctor's gaze went first to Nate's side of the room and Nicole immediately shot to her feet, nearly knocking her chair over in her haste. Her hands twisted together anxiously.
"Doctor, please." Her voice was thick with tears, breaking on the words. "Please, how is he? Is he going to be okay?"
The doctor moved to check the monitors beside Nate's bed, his fingers moving efficiently over the screens.
"Ms. Clarke," he said gently, not looking away from the readings. "Your fiancé has suffered significant facial trauma. A broken nose, fractured orbital bone, multiple contusions and lacerations to the face and upper body." He paused, then continued more carefully. "However, we've administered a specialized healing serum that we reserve for members of certain communities. It accelerates the healing process considerably. The bones are already beginning to knit back together. He should make a full recovery within the week."
It must be the highly potent medicine reserved for alphas and founding family members, I realized with a jolt.
Because no ordinary medicine could heal him in a week.
"Oh, thank the Goddess." Nicole's knees seemed to give out, and she collapsed back into her chair like a puppet with cut strings. "Thank the Goddess. I thought... when I saw all the blood, I thought..."
She didn't finish, but she didn't need to. We all knew what she'd thought.
Madison put a hand on Nicole's shoulder, squeezing gently. Veronica moved closer, creating a protective circle around their friend. For a moment, despite everything, I felt a pang of something that might have been sympathy. She was willingly getting married to that leech after all.
The doctor made a few notes on his tablet, his stylus moving quickly across the screen. Then he turned to my side of the room, and his expression shifted slightly. I could instantly tell he saw me as the not important patient by the way his posture relaxed.
"Ms. Violet." He moved to check the IV drip, adjusting the flow slightly. "You were brought in heavily intoxicated with a blood alcohol content of point two-one. However, our toxicology screen revealed that your drinks had been spiked beyond normal levels. Combined with the alcohol, it's why you lost consciousness."
He gestured to the IV bag. "We've been flushing your system with IV fluids and administering activated charcoal to help absorb the remaining toxins. You should make a complete recovery, though you'll likely feel groggy and disoriented for another few hours. Nausea is normal and so is the headache."
Someone had drugged me, had slipped something into my drink with the express purpose of incapacitating me.
I saw Elijah’s face contort in fury the second he heard those words and glare at Nate’ bed as if he wanted to finish off what he started back at the club.
Had Nate really gone that far to drug me or he simply showed up at the wrong time? I couldn’t believe this was the man I had once dreamed of spending a life with.
I must have made some sound, a whimper or a gasp, because Elijah's hand tightened on mine immediately. "You're safe now," he murmured, leaning closer so only I could hear. "I've got you. No one's going to hurt you. I promise."
The doctor glanced at Elijah, his gaze dropping to those bloodied, split knuckles.
His expression shifted. "Alpha Lockwood, we really should clean and dress those wounds. Some of them look quite deep. There's a risk of infection if they're not properly treated."
"I'm fine," Elijah said flatly, not even looking at the doctor. His eyes stayed fixed on me.
"Alpha, I really must insist."
"I said I'm fine." Elijah's voice dropped lower, taking on that edge of command that left room for no argument.
The doctor opened his mouth to protest again, seemed to think better of it when he saw the look on Elijah's face, and nodded reluctantly. "As you wish. But if you develop any signs of infection, fever, increased pain, or redness, please seek treatment immediately."
"Noted."
The doctor turned back to his tablet, making more notes. "I'll leave you all to rest. Ring the call button if you need anything. A nurse will check on you both in an hour."
He was halfway to the door, his hand reaching for the handle, when it swung open from the outside and he was pushed back a few steps due to the impact.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.