Page 25 of His Reward
But as soon as the fire was out and that part of my job was over, I would go to my omega, and nothing in the world could stop me from seeing and protecting him.
CHAPTER NINE
Lucien
Pain. That was the only thing in my awareness for I don’t know how long. The pain was unbearable, excruciating. It made every fall on the ice, every blow taken from a sadistic alpha play partner, every headache or injury I’d ever had to deal with seem laughable in comparison. It was like the entire left side of my body was on fire. Still.
I’d been on fire. That memory came back to me in waves. I’d been in the sauna, then the power had gone out, then I’d stepped into the smoke, then fire had lit everything with an infernal glow. I’d tried to run back to the locker room, but part of the ceiling had crashed down around me and I’d fallen.
From there, everything went hazy. I remembered my lungs burning, my side burning, passing out…and an alien rushing in to abduct me? No, that couldn’t be right. I remembered going from dark and hot to bright and cold. I remembered Boston reaching for me, his rich, tobacco scent rising above the smokethat filled my nose and lungs. I remember the feeling of my alpha protecting me.
But no, that couldn’t be right either. Boston hadn’t even texted me after the auction event. He probably wasn’t interested. My mind was definitely playing tricks on me.
And yet, I continued to see his face now and then, in amongst those of my mom, occasionally my father and Marco, and an endless string of people wearing white who hurt me.
“Is all this medication really necessary?” my mom said at one point in a sea of fuzzy consciousness, God only knew how long after my nightmare had started.
“Second-degree burns are the most painful kind,” Boston’s voice explained. Boston’s? “Third-degree burns destroy the nerves so you don’t feel anything, but second-degree means that the skin has been damaged to a deep level, but the nerves are still intact. It’s better to keep Lucien heavily sedated until he gets through the worst of it.”
That was all I was able to grasp before sinking back into throbbing, fraught oblivion.
More time passed, but I had no idea how much of it. I had a few moments of semi-coherence, but there was nothing to see or hear, really, except the bright, sterile white of the hospital room where I must have been, my mom sitting in a stiff chair that was pretending to be cozy and comforting, reading a book. That was the same thing I saw every time I pried my eyes open just a fraction, so I didn’t know whether ten minutes had passed or ten days.
Gradually, the oblivion lifted. I wasn’t sure that was such a great thing, though.
The first time I woke up to a sharper level of coherence, all I could do was groan. The pain was so bad it had awakened me from my senseless sleep. Right away, I wanted to go back to being aware of nothing.
“Lucien, you’re awake,” Mom said, her voice too high-pitched as she tossed aside her book, stood, and rushed to the side of my bed.
I went to reach for her with my left hand, but quickly realized that entire side of my body was restrained with bandages and machinery. Even if it hadn’t been, I wasn’t sure I would have had the strength to lift that arm at all.
“Mama?” I huffed out through a sore, dry throat. That had me blinking and frowning at the inexplicable feeling.
“Don’t try to talk too fast, honey,” Mom said, coming around to the other side of my bed so she could take my right hand. “They only just removed your breathing and feeding tubes this morning.”
What?
I raised my right hand to touch the side of my nose, which, sure enough, felt just slightly sticky from medical tape. I was relieved that I could move my right arm at all.
My little investigation was followed by a short, painful round of coughing that tasted like smoke. The coughing jolted my body, causing another round of pain that had me wincing and wishing I was unconscious again.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said, squeezing my hand and resting a comforting hand on my forehead. She wore the miserable expression of a mother who had to watch her child suffer. “The doctor says you’ll be coughing for a while as the effects of smoke inhalation heal. I don’t remember the details of what he said, but it seems when you fell in that hallway, you turned your head in such a way to block the worst of the smoke. Well done, you.”
I smiled despite my pain and the simplicity of Mom’s praise. It didn’t matter what the circumstances were, I was hurting and my mom was lavishing me with praise and affection. So what if it made me feel like I was five instead of twenty-five? I needed my mom so badly just then.
“I don’t remember everything that happened,” I said, starting to cry like I was in a play scene. I guess that made sense, though. I cried to release emotion, and being burned alive carried a fucking huge amount of emotion with it.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You don’t have to remember,” Mom said, bending down to kiss my forehead and sort of gingerly hugging the undamaged part of my body as she did.
The undamaged part of my body.
I caught my breath, which led to more coughing, which caused more pain. I hardly noticed for a second as a deeper realization hit me. My entire left side was burned. Right now, I couldn’t move it. I had no idea how long it took to recover when you’d been burned as badly as I had. I had no ideaifI would recover.
My body was my career. My body was my life.
“Ah, I see Lucien is awake,” a broad-shouldered, middle-aged alpha in a scrubs said as he walked into the room.
I frowned slightly at him, though facial expressions of any kind pulled at the bandaged skin on the left side of my face and caused, you guessed it, horrible pain. There was something familiar about the doctor, though. He must have been the alpha I’d mistaken for Boston in my dreams.
