Page 90 of Wolf

He looked to the coffee and then back up to me, but I was alreadymoving.

“Lamb!” I heard Hunter bellow as I raced down the corridor, ignoring all the numbers until all I could see was the window at the end and the open door nexttoit.

Lamb stepped out the doorway just as I approached, light breaking around his tight, slender figure as he opened his arms to catch me. What he hadn’t expected, however, was the bottom of my heeled sandal in his thigh, knocking him sideways, and more importantly, out of my way as I rushed around his fallingfigure.

I heard his hand catch the doorway, stopping his fall, but by that point, it was too late tostopme.

My sandals slapping against the floor of the dark room had heads turning toward me, but their attention only lasted a second, when Ash ignored my entrance and turned back to the hulking man at the end ofherbed.

“Thank you,” Ash said softly, and when I turned to look at her, brown hair tied up in a bun on the top of her head, eyes shallow, and skin pale from lack of sunlight from her hospital room—the windows shuttered close since her sunglasses had broken, not to mention the three weeks spent in a coma—I saw her looking down into her hands, a gentle smile onherface.

“It’s fine.” Wolf’s deep grumble came from the other end of the bed. My head almost snapped off my shoulders as I spun to look at him. Wolf didn’t look much healthier from when I had last seen him; his eyes and cheeks were still hollowed and dark, but the wiry, wild hair growing on his chin had been cut and tamed into a smooth, dark brown beard around his face, and his long hair had been tied at the back of his head in a low ponytail. His clothes also looked new and clean, and his shoulders were straighter. He looked... freshsomehow?

Wolf then turned to look at me, and through my momentary stupor at his looks, I recalled the last time I’d seen him, the last time inthisroom.

He opened his mouth, his dark eyes looking down at me as a tendril of hair slipped loose across his eyes, and I felt as if I was dangling over a cliff, waiting for his next word, whether it would push me into a rage or silence, Ididn’tknow.

His mouth snapped shut. He shook his head at himself, took a deep breath, tightening the black shirt over his chest, before he moved his eyes back to Ash. He lifted his chin in her direction before turning on his heels and walking out, Lamb falling in step behind him as they lefttheroom.

I stood watching the empty doorway before I turned back to Ash, left feeling unsatisfied at the anticlimacticinteraction.

“What were you expecting?” Ash chuckled from my side, drawing my attention. She lifted her hand to tighten her bun and then stretched her arms above her head before wincing and dropping them. “I think last time was a once in a millennia event.Suchdrama.”

“Don’t be cocky,” I snapped, annoyed after finding out that people in comas were aware of what was happening around them periodically. Apparently, Ash had been a front-seat comatose witness to mine and Wolf’s outburst last time. “What did he saytoyou?”

Ash looked out the window, her face solemn as she stared at the empty tree where pigeons had been sitting almost every day since Ash’s admission. “That I’m dead.” Her voice was so soft, I almost missed it. “It’s a bit bizarre and cinematic for my tastes,” Ash scoffed as she looked back to me, her mouth a wiry smile. “But apparently there’s a body in the morgue with my name on it, and all my hospital bills were paid under a false name, so in essence,I’mdead.”

“Wolf did that?” I said softly, my eyebrows furrowing as I tried to think of how on earth Wolf would have gotten his hands on pseudo-Ash’s body, only one name comingtomind.

“Yeah, I’m free now.” A long hand reached up and grasped the earring bejeweling her ear. “No longer a caged bird. I—why are you being soquiet?”

My eyes bore into the tiled floor, and all I could do was feel a swelling emotion inside of me. My mind was working faster than I could comprehend, my body receiving the message before my conscious thoughts as my feet turned toward the door. “I’ve gottogo.”

“What?”

And thenIran.

“Anna!” Ash’s voice echoed from the room miles behind me as my feet slapped against the hospital floor, shoving the blurry figures of doctors, nurses, hell, even patients aside as I rushed faster and faster across the floor, running past reception, barely stopping for the automatic doors as I slipped through the slight gap as they closed behind an entering patient, and burst out into the cold,chillingair.

My eyes jerked to the left and then to the right as I spun, looking around the parkinglotand—

“Anna?”

I spun to see Wolf’s wide, dark eyes looking down at me as I heaved for breath, the limits of my fitness now hitting me as I leaned over and breathed through the roll in my stomach, unsure if it was because of my unfit body or the baby. I heard Wolf’s feet move forward, boots coming into my vision but stopping just out ofreach.

“Why did you do it?” I breathed, standing up and straightening my spine as the need to throw upsettled.

Wolf didn’t seem to be paying much attention to my words as his eyes raked over my body, looking for something to focus on or panic over, only rising to my face when he saw that my only danger was sweat circles under the sleeves of my tight gray T-shirt.

“Why did I do what?” Wolf replied, his face visibly relieved as his eyes softened on me, his voice unusuallygentle.

“You’ve made a deal with Charon for Ash’s freedom, haven’t you?” I knew it the second Ash told me she was free. Our club didn’t have that kind of reach, and there was only one other man I knew that did. And I knew he wouldn’t do it forfree. “Why?”

I saw the back of Lamb and Hunter’s heads as they walked across the carpark to the black SUV I recognized as Hunter’s new one parked at the closest edge of the short-term stay car lot. Wolf didn’t pay them any attention as his eyes focused back on me and slightly narrowed before a deep sigh rumbled out of his chest, his eyes releasing me and drifting to look across the tall hospitalbuilding.

“‘Mistakes are forgivable if one has the courage to admit them,’” Wolf said, and my loud groanfollowedit.

“Ash,” I whispered, seeing as though she was the only self-proclaimed ambiguous advice guru any of us knew.Hopefully.

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