Chapter 303 Sold His Soul
Setting the brightly colored water bottle down with a hollow, pathetic thud that echoed in the silent office, Dr. Chatmory forced himself to stand. His legs felt like lead, weighed down by the sheer, paralyzing terror still coursing through his veins. The primal survival instinct driving him, however, was far stronger than the bone-deep exhaustion threatening to pull him under.
He moved frantically, almost clumsily, to his desk. The harsh, blue light of his computer monitor illuminated his pale, sweat-slicked face as he pulled up every single encrypted file he had just filled out for Ginny Ellery Blackwood. His fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing firewalls of medical ethics to print every detailed, damning note of her toxin exposure. The printer hummed and whirred, spitting out the paper like a confession. He gathered the warm sheets, the lab slips, the toxicology requests—anything and everything he could get his hands on that the group had touched or breathed on while they were in his care.
His desperation pushed him completely past the boundaries of his medical training and his dignity. Dropping to his knees on the sterile linoleum, he dragged the small wastebasket from the corner of the room. He rummaged blindly through the discarded paper towels and empty alcohol swabs until his shaking fingers closed around a tiny, crinkled plastic mint wrapper. Leela had tossed it away hours earlier. It was a piece of trash, but to them, it was a scent profile. A physical tether. He smoothed it out with trembling thumbs and placed it carefully, almost reverently, on top of the growing stack of files on his mahogany desk.
Then, he turned his attention to the thick, red plastic sharps container mounted on the wall—the ultimate violation.
Swallowing hard past the agonizing throb in his throat, he grabbed a pair of long, stainless-steel medical forceps from a sterile tray on his counter. He forced the metal prongs down past the protective safety lid, the plastic snapping in protest. It was an incredibly dangerous, reckless thing to do; a single slip could mean exposure to a myriad of bloodborne pathogens. But the thought of those silver-eyed monsters returning and finding him lacking—finding him useless—was far more terrifying than the risk of an accidental needle stick.
His hands trembled so violently the forceps clattered against the inside of the bin. He gritted his teeth, fishing blindly through the hazardous waste until he finally managed to extract the specific syringes he was looking for. He recognized the gauge of the needles he had used to draw Ginny's poisoned blood, and his stomach violently rolled as he pulled out the tiny, delicate butterfly needle he had used for baby Iggy.
He dropped the used sharps, their tips still carrying microscopic traces of Blackwood blood, into a thick, clear biohazard transport bag. He sealed it tight, the heavy zip-lock sounding agonizingly loud in the quiet room, before setting it next to the paperwork and the mint wrapper. He was completely, irrevocably compromising his integrity, his career, and his patients. But as he stared at the pile of evidence he had just built, he found he didn't care. He just wanted to make absolutely certain that when those men inevitably came back, he had given them exactly what they demanded.
He stared at the morbid collection on his desk, his chest still heaving with ragged, uneven breaths. He was taking absolutely nothing for granted with these people.
Over the years, he had seen the reality of what lived in the shadows. He had treated some of the wolves Jax had brought in—pack members who had been too critically injured, too close to the edge to make it all the way back to the Blackwood territory in time. Chatmory knew the lore; he knew they were supposed to heal faster and better than any normal human. But the sheer, gruesome brutality of the wounds he had witnessed still haunted his darkest nights. He had seen flesh shredded as if by industrial machinery, bones snapped into jagged splinters, and the terrifying, violent extent of the punishment they could survive. More importantly, he knew the unspeakable violence they could inflict upon anyone who crossed them.
It was enough to give a hardened, veteran trauma surgeon cold sweats.
Dr. Chatmory lifted a hand to rub his aching throat again, wincing as his fingertips brushed the skin. He could already feel the distinct, heavy bruising forming, the swelling perfectly mimicking the shape of the Council member's inhumanly strong fingers. He was just a fragile, mortal man living in a world completely out of his depth. He wanted absolutely no part of the bad end of those types of monsters. If handing over a few medical files, a crumpled mint wrapper, and some dirty needles kept him from being torn to bloody shreds in his own office, he would gladly sell his soul to do it.
As he stared at the red-tagged biohazard bag and the neat stack of stolen privacy, the horrific reality of what he had just done settled heavy and cold like a stone in his gut.
He was a doctor. He had taken a sacred, lifelong oath to do no harm, to protect his patients and their secrets at all costs. But catching a glimpse of his pale, terrified reflection in the darkened office window—seeing the dark, finger-shaped bruises already blooming around his throat—Chatmory felt the last remaining shreds of his integrity burn away to ash.
He knew exactly what he was doing by handing over Jax's mate and that innocent newborn baby to those silver-eyed monsters. He was selling his soul to the devil.
And as he slumped back into his leather chair, pulling his sleek vape pen back to his lips with a trembling hand, he knew he didn't even have the courage to care. He just wanted to survive the night.
For now, it was just him and his vape pen in a quiet doctor's office waiting for big scary monsters to come damn his soul by taking the stack of Blackwood papers he was handing over.