“No. He didn’t, really. He stopped himself, but he drew back his fist, and I thought he was going to knock my head off. He stopped himself and seemed upset by what he’d almost done. He took off then, and I don’t know where he is. ” Logan squeezed his shoulder gently.
“No, I’m okay, really,” Nicky said. “It’s just—God, I can’t stop shaking. I’ve never seen him like that before, Logan. It was like looking into the face of a stranger—a stranger who hated my guts. ”
“I’m going to call Ian. He needs to know what’s going on. ” Logan pulled out his cell phone but before he could even punch in the number, the phone rang. “Oh, it’s you,” Logan said into the receiver. “I was just about to. . . what? Oh shit. Okay. Okay, we’ll be right there. ”
Logan put down the phone and took Nicky’s hand again. “Nicky, that was Ian. Be strong, Nicky. Something’s happened to Marco. He’s collapsed downstairs, Nicky, and they’ve taken him to the infirmary. The doctor’s with him, but. . . I’m sorry, Nicky. He’s unconscious. They… God, Nicky, they had trouble getting a pulse at first. It doesn’t look good. ”
Marco was having the strangest dream he’d ever had. He was wandering in a deep, unfamiliar forest, searching for someone desperately, but unable to find him. He was growing increasingly frantic, his wolf close to the surface. He shifted then, giving into his wolf, and stood howling his frustration at the moon. He heard a slight noise close by and saw the man he was searching for. A beautiful boy, really, in his early twenties with golden blond hair and sapphirecolored eyes.
The boy was frightened of him and turned to run. Marco, in his wolf form, was on him in seconds, knocking him to the ground and rolling him to his back. The boy cast a hectic gaze up at him, screaming in terror and twisting wildly to get away. Marco bent over him and sank his fangs into the boy’s throat, furiously ripping and tearing with his teeth until the beautiful boy lay unmoving beneath him. He moved away from him then and stared down with satisfaction. He had killed him, had rid himself of the boy and would never have to love anyone so deeply again. He felt as if a huge and oppressive weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
He was free—free to make his blood thick and unyielding, strong and unfeeling. He would never again be a slave to his passions. He would never again have to fear the boy’s leaving him. He’d taken that option away. Backing away and licking his lips, he tasted the boy’s blood on his tong
ue, sweet and cloying. He turned and ran into the woods, leaving the lifeless, broken body in the clearing behind him.
Marco twisted his legs restlessly as the awful dream left him, slowly becoming aware that he was in a strange bed. Without moving, he opened his eyes a slit and looked warily around him. A white room, people moving in the corner, and someone sitting by the bed, his head bowed, his golden blond hair falling over his face—where the hell was he? His arm ached abominably, and he glanced down to see an IV running into his veins. A hospital, then. Where were Ian and the rest of his pack? Surely, they wouldn’t have allowed anyone to take him to a hospital—too much chance of arousing suspicion with his werewolf blood. So where could he be, and who were these people in the room with him?
Suddenly, the door opened and Rory, his nephew, came in, looking drawn and worried. He felt an immediate sense of relief. If Rory was here, then he must be somewhere safe. Marco wanted to speak to him, but couldn’t seem to summon the energy to move. He saw Rory come closer to stand by the man with the blond hair and put a comforting hand on his back. The young man raised a tear-stained face to look up at Rory and Marco was shocked at the boy’s beauty. Who the hell was he and why was he sitting here crying by Marco’s bedside? It was too confusing and too much to worry about, so Marco closed his eyes and let sleep drift gently back over him.
The next time he awoke it was darker in the room. A dim light over a sink in the corner showed the blond boy from before still by his bedside, this time sleeping in a chair he’d pulled up close to the bed. His clothes were rumpled, and he needed a shave, but he still looked beautiful and sad, tear tracks on his face and his full lips pulled down in a heartbroken frown even in his sleep. Marco wished he knew who he was.
The door opened and a man came in who looked like a doctor, wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope casually slung around his neck. He came over first to the boy in the chair and looked down at him with such tenderness and compassion that Marco knew the doctor must be in love with the boy. Strange that the thought gave him a little pang of jealousy and possessiveness. He didn’t even know the boy’s name.
The man turned to Marco and moved over to put a finger on his eyelid, lifting it up and then saying in a low but firm voice, “You’re awake. Good. Do you know where you are?”
Marco shook his head slowly back and forth as the door opened again and Ian walked in. Marco stretched out his hand wordlessly and Ian rushed over to him, taking his hand in a warm grip. “Marco! You’re awake, thank God. Nicky has been inconsolable—hell, all of us have been!” He turned to the boy in the chair, who still hadn’t awakened, though he was by now stirring restlessly. “Nicky, Nicky, wake up! Marco’s awake!”
The beautiful boy’s eyes sprang open and he threw himself onto Marco’s chest, tears streaming down his face. “Marco!” he cried. “Oh God, Marco, I was so scared!” He kissed Marco on the lips, and then began to kiss him all over his face, raining the kisses down, some soft, some passionate, until Marco pushed him gently away, uncomfortable at being kissed by this strange boy. He stared over at Ian and then back at the blond boy.
“Ian, what the hell’s going on? I’m sorry,” he said, turning toward the young man. “I can see that you obviously think you know me very well, but…who the hell are you? I don’t remember ever seeing you before in my life. ”
Chapter Two
The shocked silence that greeted Marco’s words erupted into chaos after a shocked little cry from Nicky. Ian gasped in disbelief, and the doctor put an arm around Nicky’s waist and spoke soothing words to him that Nicky couldn’t even focus on. He couldn’t have held back the tears that burst from his throat if he’d tried. He looked wonderingly from Marco back to Ian and then the doctor was pulling him from the room. He stared back at Marco as he left—was this some kind of cruel joke? It wasn’t possible that Marco could have forgotten all they were to each other —all they’d gone through to get to where they were?
The doctor pulled him down the hallway to a set of chairs in the waiting area near the nurse’s station. The doctor’s name was Jeremy Tate, and he was the brother of one of the bloodmates in their pack. His sister, Elizabeth, had been mated to one of the gammas for several years, and the pack had come to trust Dr. Tate implicitly. When Marco’s organs started to fail, the wolves grew frantic and called Jeremy, who was Chief of Staff of the hospital in Brevard, the closest town to the lodge. He’d arranged for an immediate transfer to the hospital, where they could give Marco the life support he needed.
Dr. Cornsilk was also now on staff at the hospital, so between the two of them, they were able to manage all of Marco’s care with the help of a nurse and a lab assistant who were mated to a pack members as well, making sure his blood work didn’t fall into anyone else’s hands. Dr. Cornsilk was a non-shifting wolf himself—what the wolves called a natural pet—from the Dark Hollow wolf pack and had recently been on staff at the Hunter’s complex, acting as a double agent for the wolves before the wolves attacked and closed the operation down. He was at the nurse’s station looking over some early lab results when he saw Jeremy bring a tearful Nicky into the hall, and he quickly came over to them in alarm.
“Oh my God, has Marco…” “No,” Jeremy said, “but something’s badly wrong. He’s awake, and doesn’t seem to remember his own bloodmate. Can you go in and check on him? I need to take care of Nicky. ”
“Of course,” he said, already sprinting down the hall to the Alpha’s room. “Don’t worry, Nicky,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m sure he’s just disoriented. ”
“He’s right, you know,” Jeremy said softly, his arm still wrapped around Nicky’s shoulders. “Marco couldn’t forget you. Please don’t be so upset. ”
“I-I’m sorry. I know I’m being an idiot. It’s just…Marco’s been so sick, and I thought he was dying. Then to have him wake up and look at me like that. Like I was some stranger…”
Jeremy patted his arm. “Give him a few minutes and we’ll go back in there. I’m sure it’s just a temporary thing. He seemed to know Ian. ”
Nicky stood up, wiping away his tears. “Can I go back in now? I have to see him—I won’t make a scene and get him upset again. ”
“All right,” Jeremy said, getting up to stand beside him. “But if I see him getting upset, I’ll have to take you out of there. The lab work is still out and we don’t know what caused this collapse. Until we do, we have to be careful with him. He came close to not making it. We used up all the alpha blood we had on hand to transfuse him and get him this far. There can’t be any more relapses. Casey and Zack have given too much blood as it is,” he said, referring to two of the other alphas in the pack. Zack had rushed all the way from the North Georgia branch of the pack to give his blood, after Casey, the battle commander, had given all he could.
“I know. I’ll be careful, I promise. ”
Jeremy smiled at him and took his arm to lead him down the hall. Jeremy was fairly young to be the Chief of Staff, but even young as he was, he was well-known as a brilliant cardiac surgeon and the hospital had jumped at the chance to have him when he indicated an interest in the job. Jeremy had grown up in Brevard and loved the mountains, so had decided he was needed there more than in one of the major medical centers.
Tall, dark and handsome, he was the doctor every unattached nurse on staff was crazy about, but Jeremy didn’t seem to be interested in any of them. Instead, he spent a great deal of his off time at Mountainwood, the wolf’s lodge. Once Nicky had been surprised to see a strange look of longing on his face as he stared at Nicky and Marco from across the dining room. At the time, Nicky thought he might be attracted to Marco, but he’d never noticed the look again, so thought he must have imagined it.