Page 63 of Haze

“Don’t apologize.” Cade cuts me off. “We never had that. It’s nice to see someone love you enough to call me and threaten my life.”

Nodding is the only answer I can formulate. Despite my feelings of how Cade’s handled Lena’s submissive wolf, I’ve been blessed with the most extraordinary second family.

Chapter 21

Lena

When I open my eyes, the ugly yellowing ceiling tiles of the empty office, which has been set up as a temporary hospital room, greet me.

“You lucid this time?” Cade’s voice alerts me to where he is in relation to the ceiling.

I roll my head over to look at him. Dread of his disapproval makes its way along my spine.

“Ish,” I answer.

Looking at him sitting in the chair, which Finn had been occupying every other time I opened my eyes, dredges up a hollow feeling inside me. The deepest part of my mind plays right into my insecurities. He abandoned me.

I look away from the chair and subsequently from Cade.

My wolf is missing. The mild sedative has kept her tucked away.

“Ish is better than before. Going back to sleep?” Cade squeezes my hand.

“I’m kinda awake.” I yawn and stretch a little bit. My pelvis feels funny, full, but not in an appealing way. It’s swollen like it’s stuffed with cotton. Stiff from lack of movement, my back aches. I look over at him again. “What day is it?”

“Sunday,” he answers with grit in his voice from holding back The Leviathan and, subsequently, his anger. “You’ve been hospitalized for five days.”

“Well, better than six,” I quip.

A knock at the door interrupts us.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Dinah looks as tired as Cade does.

Without any sort of invitation, Dinah starts a variety of poking and prodding when she arrives at my side. When she presses down a little harder on my left side, above my pelvis, the pain hits, and I jolt.

The squeak and wince come involuntarily.

“Sorry.” She winces on my behalf.

“Finn is at church, Mass, he called it. He’ll be back to take the rest of the day shift,” Cade says, keeping up with our conversation.

Dinah’s eyes catch mine. She nods before looking at Cade. “I want to check her out while she’s awake and can tell me what hurts. So, unless you want to get...”

Cade’s eyes widen, and he looks at me. Picking up my hand, he kisses it. “Love you. I’ll text Thalia and Deacon and let them know you’re doing better. I’d expect Finn in thirty minutes. Apparently Mass is an hour.” He heads out the door, patting Dinah on the shoulder.

He’ll really be back. I don’t know why it makes me feel both relieved and a new form of unease. Am I anxious or excited? They feel the same.

Dinah follows him to the door and closes it with a soft click behind him.

When she turns back around, I ask about the nightmare that’s been haunting me on and off in my dreams. “Am I pregnant?”

It’s been five days since my heat, so being a shifter means it would absolutely show up in a test result. Dinah struggles to formulate an answer, telltale in the way she wags her head back and forth before drawing a deep breath.

Her response comes out as a single exhale. “No.”

“Was I?”

The strain of my condition could have caused a miscarriage. I wouldn’t be surprised.

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