Chapter 219 The Night I Lost Him
ADRIANA
I hadn't planned on going to his room today. I'd told myself that every morning for six months and every morning I'd found a reason that wasn't the real reason. Too busy. Too many decisions to make. The kids needed me. The pack needed me. The doctors needed to update me. There was always something.
The real reason was simpler and harder than all of those. I wasn't ready to see what he'd become in that room. Elijah had always taken up space in a way that had nothing to do with his size. He walked into rooms and something shifted. His stillness was loud, his attention was heavy, his presence was the kind that registered in your chest before your brain caught up.
I didn't want to go in there and find someone who looked like him but felt like nothing.
I'd been holding that door closed for six months.
Then the doctor had stopped me in the entrance hall on his way out this morning, and said something that made me stay very still.
"My Queen, the blood matching issue - I treated a patient recently. The type is a match." He'd smiled carefully, managing expectations. "I still need to speak with him, run the standard panels. But the preliminary indicators are very strong."
I'd stared at him for a moment before I trusted my voice. "You're confident?"
"I'm optimistic. More than I've been in some time."
We'd been spending significant money sourcing compatible blood for Elijah in small quantities from distant locations. It was never quite enough, always provisional. His blood type was rare. The night he was attacked, he'd lost so much that the deficit had become one of the central obstacles to his recovery.
This was the first real opening we'd had, and the doctor knew it, and I could see he was being careful not to promise me something he couldn't deliver but also couldn't quite contain his own cautious hope.
After he left I stood in the entrance hall for longer than I probably should have.
The day had already started well, in the messy, loud, completely chaotic way that counted as well in this house. The twins had been arguing at breakfast about their upcoming birthday gifts with intensity that only seven year olds can sustain. Elijah Junior had announced, very seriously, that he wanted a motorcycle. Liam had countered with a dog. Lorain had sat between them drinking her juice with the expression of someone who had long since made peace with the fact that her brothers were ridiculous. Leo had come down late, dropped into his chair, reached for the toast, caught me watching him, and raised one eyebrow in a way that was so precisely his father that I'd had to look at my coffee for a moment.
Lana was doing better. Her fever had broken overnight. The doctor had checked her after he delivered his news about Elijah and told me she was recovering well. I'd held her after breakfast while the others scattered and just breathed her in, this small, warm, entirely unaware person who had no idea how much was resting on the adults around her.
She looked like Elijah around the eyes. All of them did, in some way or another.
After the morning settled and Lana went down for her nap, I found myself standing outside his door again.
The guard stepped aside without a word. He'd clearly been waiting for this day longer than I had.
The first thing that hit me when the door opened was the smell. Clean and medicinal and completely wrong for a man who smelled like pine and something warm that I'd never been able to name but could have found in the dark. The monitor beeped its steady rhythm in the quiet. The room was cool and dim, the way I'd asked them to keep it because Elijah hated waking up to bright light.
He wasn't waking up. But I'd kept it dim anyway.
I stood at the door for a moment before I made myself cross the room.
He'd lost weight. That was the first thing I registered when I sat at the edge of the bed and made myself look at his face properly. His features were the same but quiet in a way Elijah's face had never been, not even in sleep. There had always been something running behind his eyes. Some current. Now there was just stillness and the machine breathing and the beep of the monitor marking time.
I took his hand between both of mine.
"I got good news today," I said. My voice came out rough. I cleared it. "About the blood. The doctor found someone. A match. It's not confirmed yet but he thinks it'll work." I pressed his hand against my face. "I needed you to know that. I needed to tell you something good for once."
I sat with that for a moment.
"The kids are okay. Leo is being a teenager, in the way that makes me feel like I'm looking at you twenty years ago and it's honestly inconvenient. The twins are convinced they're getting a motorcycle and a dog respectively and Lorain has been keeping a list of questions for me that apparently requires a formal appointment." My voice broke on the last word and I stopped, pressed my lips together, tried again. "Lana is better. Her fever broke last night. She's - she's good. She's really good, Elijah."
I couldn't keep my voice steady after that. I wasn't going to pretend I could.
"Please come back." I laid my head against his chest, found his heartbeat, slow and real and stubbornly present. "I'm so tired. I'm doing everything I can but I need you here. The kids need you here. Lana needs to know who you are before she's old enough to understand that she missed it." I pressed closer. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what happened. I should have been smarter. I should have seen it coming and I didn't and you're the one who paid for that."
I cried in the way I hadn't let myself in six months. The kind of crying that came from somewhere deep and animal and had nothing to do with dignity. I cried until there was nothing left and then I laid there against his chest in the quiet and listened to his heart beat and eventually I slept.
It was the first time in six months I didn't dream about the night I lost him.