Page 44 of The Alpha's Broken Oath

Finding a sobbing Winter on the floor of her living room as she holds her unconscious son cements why they looked at me like that.

The boy in Winter’s arms and the boy standing in the middle of the room crying for his mommy—they both look an awfully lot like me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WINTER

I sit stiffly in the hospital’s waiting room, my hands clutching each other till my knuckles turn white. The waiting room we are in smells faintly of disinfectants and mildly of ammonia, the scent itself being something my nostrils can’t escape, no matter what.

The stark white walls don’t do a thing to calm me down, and neither does the clock hanging on the wall. I can hear every second the second-hand ticks, the sound itself mocking me relentlessly till I'm nothing short of a nervous wreck.

My eyes dart to the other people in the waiting room, and aside from me and Deacon, there’s an elderly woman coughing into her handkerchief, a young couple murmuring to themselves with their voices strained, but even from here, I can feel their anguish.

I can almost relate to the sense of self-guilt clinging to their shoulders because that’s what happened to me, too.

Adrian needed me, and I choked. I let him down. I just knelt there on the floor, watching him suffer in pain, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. All I had done the entire time was scream his name and hold his cold body, praying to the Goddess that I was somehow stuck in a bad dream, and when I woke up, everything would be fine.

Everything hadn’t been fine, though. Not when I failed to calm down and especially not when I had spooked Asher to death with my screams.

What kind of mother couldn’t protect her own child?

What kind of mother would I have been if I continued cooking while my son was fighting for his life on the cold floor of my own living room?

What if Deacon hadn’t called me? Would Adrian have gotten to the hospital in time?

My eyes water and I sprout another bout of tears from those thoughts alone. A warm, large hand splays on my back, rubbing my back up and down. If I’m being honest and Deacon wasn’t seated right next to me patting my back, I would have already succumbed to the tears and tore myself apart limb by limb for neglecting Adrian.

My wolf has been quiet the entire time, but her fear goes down a notch due to Deacon’s presence and his scent, which act like a warm comforting blanket.

Looking up again at the wall clock reminds me that the healers have been checking up on Adrian for almost an hour and a half. I don’t know whether to be worried that they are taking a lot of time on Adrian or to be thankful altogether.

Unlike the healer we had in the pack back in Moonstone, here in Bracken all healers capable of saving lives assemble in hospitals and help all those who need their services. When I gave birth, I had the best team of healers helping me out, and today while I sit on this uncomfortable, warm couch, my faith in them wanes a little.

There’s been the nurses who’ve been of no help at all in assisting me to figure out if things are going well with Adrian. Then, there’s the nauseating smell of ammonia from the clean white floors that has been grating on every nerve inside my body and making me feel like vomiting the little food sloshing in my stomach.

The nausea and the unease, however, fade away like smoke when I see Luka and Julie down the hall heading to us with Asher in tow. I wipe my tears quickly, and Deacon, who’d been by my side since the ambulance brought us here, stands up from the couch and gives me space.

“Mommy!”

I stand up and meet Asher halfway into the room.

Kneeling on the floor to hug him somehow takes the stress and the tension away. I hug his tiny body, listening to his little cries.

“Mommy is so sorry for screaming, baby. It won’t happen again. I promise. I promise you it won’t.”

Asher’s hands wrap around my neck tightly, and when I pull away from him, wiping the tears on his already red cheeks, he asks me, “Will Addie be, okay?”

I don’t know, baby, but I hope so.

“Yes. Your brother…he’s a fighter just like you, right? You are both Mommy’s little band of fighters. Of course, he’ll be okay.”

My baby nods, and I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, trying not to cry and scare him more than I did tonight.

“Mmhmm. Addie knows how to fight, Mommy. I prayed to Daddy. He promised to watch over Addie from heaven and make him better again.”

The mention of their “daddy from heaven” raises a few eyebrows. The man who hasn’t spoken a word to me since he helped carry Adrian to the ambulance only shows a blank expression at Asher’s words.

I can’t tell what Deacon is thinking, and then again, I don’t think I care about anything other than my baby making it through the night.

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