Page 50 of The Alpha's Surrogate

He turned on the car and pulled up beside the pair. “Get in!” he hissed. He glanced down the way they’d come, watching to see if they were followed.

Josie got in beside Callahan and wrapped her hands around his. He gave her a puzzled look but remained quiet. Fannar drove slowly as he returned to the road, only accelerating as soon as the tires were on asphalt.

The three-hour drive back to Whispering Oaks seemed longer than an eternity to Josie. Fannar drove faster than a lunatic, and Josie did her best to keep Callahan engaged in a steady stream of conversation.

Whenever she stopped talking, his eyes grew heavy and she had to smack him hard to bring him around again. So she talked about everything. After the first hour, she stopped making any sense at all, and after the second hour, Callahan was struggling to sit upright.

He’d already come further than anyone she knew would have accomplished, and she felt proud of him, but that didn’t console her. She didn’t care about anything more than him surviving. She wasn’t only concerned with how good a fight he put up. She wanted him to win.

There were no guarantees that her research would even work. The last tests she had done had borne the same result. If she used her current formula on Callahan, she was sure to kill him.

But an idea had hit her. It was a fool’s gambit, but it was all she had. There was no way of knowing if it would work. In her head, there was a sixty-five percent chance of success, seventy at best. It was better than most of the results she’d gotten in the past, but thirty-five percent was still a lot to gamble on.

One thing was certain. He would die unless she tried. It boiled down to two questions. Was she willing to take a chance for him to live or die, or was she going to condemn him to certain death. When she put it that way, it didn’t seem like much of a choice, really.

She swallowed her fear and tried to think only of the possibility of survival. She mopped a patch of sweat on his head and held her breath as he slipped into unconsciousness again.

She saw Fannar looking at her through the rearview mirror. In his eyes, she saw everything she was trying to run away from. He didn’t think Callahan was going to make it home in time for her to even try, and that possibility terrified her. The realization that she could, in fact, lose Callahan was something that left her shivering with fear.

Callahan had been unconscious for five minutes by the time the car pulled into the driveway of their home. Josie jumped down and ran to the front door, leaving Fannar to bring Callahan inside. “The lab’s in the back!” she shouted as she ran into the house to prepare the drug.

The formula she’d created churned in her mind as she rushed into her lab and cleared a table for Callahan. She’d worked it over and over and over again in her mind and always arrived at the same conclusion.

She wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t afford to be wrong. If she made a mistake, Callahan died. Those were the stakes. He had gone through hell to save her life. She had to do the same now for him. And for me too, she realized. There was no altruism in her dedication to save him.

She emptied her thoughts and settled into a quiet place within her mind. She needed perfection. A single misstep would kill him. She noticed Fannar bringing him into the lab and setting him on the table, but she paid them no mind. She ignored Fannar’s restless pacing as well.

Moving swiftly, she went to work. She watched her hands move on their own as her mind dictated the measurements. She was an observer of the process, her body the perfect alchemist. The process was stunning and beautiful, and in the creation of her antidote, she made a discovery of sorts.

She held the tube up to the light when she finished. She felt Fannar behind her, his impatience and worry boiling out of him. She blinked and returned to her body. The trance had been something akin to sorcery, but there was time enough to reflect on that much later.

Now, she had to find out if her gambit was successful. “If I’ve made a mistake, it will kill him faster than the poison moving around inside him,” she said softly to Fannar. “There would be no time for me to make another one fast enough to undo what I’ve done.”

“Do we have a choice?” he asked in a similar tone. She and her alpha had never been particularly close, but she’d never thought she would ever hear the warmth she heard in his voice now when he spoke about Callahan. The same could be said about her, if she was being entirely honest.

“No, we don’t.”

“Then do it.”

That was all the inspiration she needed. She drew the liquid into a syringe and held up Callahan’s arm. She glanced once at Fannar and he gave her a tight nod. No matter what they told themselves, if Callahan died, his death would be on their hands, and they were aware.

Josie took a deep breath and stuck the needle into his arm, emptying the contents into Callahan’s bloodstream. She released a shuddering breath and tossed the syringe into a disposal bag.

She glanced at her watch, folded her hands, and waited. There was nothing left to do but wait and hope.

Chapter 22 - Callahan

I know I’m delirious.

I’m in two places at the same time, it seems, both faces of the same coin. I’m torn in between two worlds.

In one, something deadly and potent is twisting living vines around me, pulling me into a deep dark sleep. I know the sleep will be permanent. It’s not sleep at all, it’s death. It’s warm and cold at the same time, and I’m tempted to stop fighting and give in. It’s the easiest thing to do, and the tighter those vines squeeze me, the more I want to let go.

But I don’t stop fighting.

In the second world, a part of my mind recognizes that I’m right where I’ve always wanted to be, in the embrace of the woman I love. She caresses me and her voice is a sweet music in my ears. It keeps me grounded, connected to the second world.

She’s talking endlessly even if it’s obvious that I’m floundering, making replies that don’t make one whit of sense. But she laughs, and she replies, and she keeps talking. I’m almost convinced that I am making sense, but deep inside I know I’m hopelessly delirious.

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