Chapter 358 Surgery Date

Emilia’s POV

The doors swung open, and the doctor stepped out, peeling off his gloves.

We swarmed him.

“How is she?” Titus demanded. “How is my daughter?”

“She’s stable. For now.” The doctor exhaled. “I’ll be frank with you. If you’d arrived a few minutes later, we’d have lost her. She’s showing signs of a cerebral hemorrhage. There’s a tumor pressing on her brain, and it has to come out. We need to operate as soon as possible.”

“When?” Sebastian’s voice was flat and hard.

“Three days from now.”

Mila didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Three days. Do it.”

I let out a breath. This surgery had been coming all along, hanging over us. Once it was done, once that tumor was gone, we wouldn’t have to live braced for the next collapse.

It was almost a mercy.

Sebastian and I stayed behind to go over the surgery with the doctor. He kept repeating the same thing: Tiffany couldn’t be exposed to any more emotional stress. She needed to stay calm and keep her spirits up.

When we finally left the doctor’s office, the thunder of hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor, and Fynn came around the corner, still in rumpled clothes, visibly worried.

Sebastian saw him, and whatever fragile calm he’d scraped together shattered on the spot.

“You,” he growled, stalking toward him. “What exactly did you say to her in Paris? She came home and by the end of the night, she was on a gurney in the ER. I told you to treat her right! What did you say?”

I caught his arm before he could get any closer. “Sebastian…”

Then I turned to Fynn, who looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. “I’m sorry, Fynn. He’s terrified for Tiffany, that’s all. And I’m sorry we dragged you off your holiday.”

“Is she okay?” Fynn’s voice shook. “Emilia, please, just tell me she’s okay.”

Sebastian’s lip curled, cold. “Why do you care so much? She’s not dead.”

I drove an elbow into his ribs, hard. He grunted and shot me a wounded look. Anyone with eyes could see Fynn was already drowning in guilt, and still Sebastian couldn’t hold his venom.

“She’s out of immediate danger,” I told Fynn, ignoring the Alpha sulking beside me. “But the doctor says they have to operate as soon as possible to remove a brain tumor.”

Fynn closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand to his brow. “Thank the Moon Goddess.”

Sebastian glared at him with open loathing. “Yes. You’d better thank the Goddess. Because if anything had happened to my sister, I’d have put you in the ground myself. Buried you right beside her, so she could finally have what she wanted. The two of you, together at last.”

Oh, Goddess above.

Sebastian had gone clean off the deep end. The grief and terror had burned straight through whatever reason he had left.

Honestly, if I were in Fynn’s shoes, I wouldn’t dare go near Tiffany with a ten-foot pole, not with a brother like this. And of course Sebastian, the world’s most oblivious stumbling block to his own sister’s happiness, couldn’t see that he was the problem.

I’d told him before.

I stepped in to smooth it over before it turned into a bloodbath.

“Fynn, you’ve been on a long-haul flight. Go home and rest. If anything changes, we’ll let you know right away.”

“No,” Fynn said at once, shaking his head. “I’ll stay. I want to be here.”

Sebastian’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Then at the very least, go wash up and change your clothes. You don’t look like a man back from holiday. You look like something that got dragged out of a dive bar at closing time.”

Fynn’s face flushed with shame. Without another word, he turned and walked off down the hall.

The second he was gone, I seized Sebastian by the wrist and hauled him into an empty patient room, kicking the door shut behind us.

“Seriously? Sebastian?” I rounded on him, planting both hands on my hips. “Talking to Fynn like that? Is there a single functioning brain cell left in that thick skull of yours?”

“What did I do?” he shot back, bristling. “He earned every word. Tiffany nearly died. You heard the doctor. A few more minutes and she’d have been gone.”

I understood his fury. I did. But Fynn wasn’t the real target of it, and Sebastian knew that. He’d served Sebastian loyally for years, and I wasn’t going to let Sebastian take it out on him just because he was terrified.

I softened my voice.

“Sebastian. Right now, the single most important thing isn’t finding someone to blame. It’s getting Tiffany through that surgery in one piece. And for that, she needs calm. She needs to go into this with a steady heart and a quiet mind.”

He glowered at the floor for a long moment, then muttered, “Fine. I hear you. I won’t bite his head off again. You have my word.”

That was more like it.

“And another thing.” I lifted a finger. “You need to keep your nose out of whatever’s going on between Fynn and Tiffany. That’s their business. Their feelings. Not yours to meddle in.”

“I’m not meddling,” he protested, scowling. “If memory serves, you were the one playing matchmaker all this time, forever scheming to shove Fynn and Tiffany together.”

I sighed. “That was before. That was when things were simple. Right now, I don’t care who she ends up with. I only care that she’s healthy and breathing.”

Something in his face shifted at that. He reached out and caught my hand, folding it in his.

“Her health,” he said quietly. “That’s all I want too.”

Then a glint sparked in his green eyes, and the corner of his mouth tilted up. “And as it happens, I think I know exactly how to put a smile back on her face while we wait out these three days.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, deeply unconvinced.