Chapter 594
She threw her fragile, wolfless body beneath mine, using every ounce of her strength to break my fall and guide me against the wall. Her hands, slick with my blood, pressed desperately against my torn back. “Doctor! Somebody get a doctor!” she shrieked, her tears mixing with the water on my chest.
I tried to project comfort through our mate-bond, but the darkness was already dragging me under.
The blinding, sterile lights of the emergency trauma suite pierced my eyelids. The hydrotherapy wing was gone, replaced by the frantic beeping of monitors and the sharp stench of ozone and scorched blood.
Dr. Alistair Vance stood over me, his face grim as he cut away what remained of my shorts. Cold air struck my back, exposing the bone-deep, completely ruptured wounds.
“The sutures are entirely blown,” Dr. Vance announced to the trauma team, his voice tight with barely suppressed panic. “But that’s not the worst of it. The extreme physical trauma has awakened the dormant silver. The toxins are accelerating — attacking his nervous system at an unprecedented rate. The current treatment protocol is useless. We are in completely unknown territory.”
He shined a penlight into my dilated eyes. A cold, terrifying numbness was already creeping up my legs.
I was dying.
Adella pressed herself against the observation window, her hands flat on the cold glass, watching the trauma team work through the one-way panel. Dr. Vance’s voice came through the intercom.
“Luna, you need to stay behind the line. For the pup.”
“No.” Adella’s voice was a fierce, unwavering blade cutting through the chaos. “I am his Mate. I am not leaving him.”
“Luna, please — medical protocol—”
I forced my heavy, leaden hand to move across the sterile sheets. My trembling fingers found the edge of the bed, but I couldn’t reach her through the glass. Instead, I locked my eyes on the observation window and pushed the words through our bond.
Let… her… stay…
Dr. Vance hesitated, then gave a stiff nod. “She can watch through the glass. But she cannot enter the sterile field.”
As the anesthesia mask was pressed over my face, the last thing I saw was Adella’s silhouette against the observation window — her hands pressed to the glass, anchoring my soul as I slipped into the abyss.
Adella POV
The VVIP recovery suite within The Sanctuary was suffocatingly dark, illuminated only by the sickly amber glow of a single floor lamp in the corner. The rhythmic, mechanical hiss of the medical equipment and the steady beep of the heart monitor were the only sounds keeping me tethered to sanity.
Dallas lay motionless on the high-tech medical bed.
I sat in the armchair beside him, my hands still faintly stained with his dried blood. As the heavy anesthesia began to wear off, his thick eyelashes fluttered open. His storm-gray eyes were clouded with pain and exhaustion.
Instinctively, he tried to shift his weight. A sharp, ragged gasp tore from his throat as his body refused to obey. The silver toxins and the brutal spinal surgery had left him completely immobilized. Through our muted mate-bond, I felt the exact moment the realization struck him — and the deafening silence of his Inner Wolf, Ragnar, told me everything.
“Adella,” Dallas rasped, his voice a dry, gravelly whisper.