I miss him so much it kills me, even if I can't get past what heâs done to our bond, and I'm still
broken by him. It adds to my urgency in looking around for some kind of pointer in what to do. I
shake myself and I remind myself that the girl I was, sheâs dead. Little Alora of the Whyte pack and
Elren farm, peacefully living a carefree life. The war seen to my parent's unplanned leaving, and Juan
saw they never came back. She died a long time ago, when her life was turned upside down, and it
altered everything she knew. Her path disintegrated, and all those dreams and hopes, they fluttered
away on the breeze.
That unwanted, rejected, feeble little no one, who imprinted on a boy ten years later, who stood in
her place .... also, dead! She who couldn't be allowed to love her fated mate, because of what she
was. She never really existed anyway. She was a lie that was fed to me and made me live under a
mask of my own making, because I never knew the truth and this girl, this one right here. She's the
Alora who's been holding her breath and waiting for me to find her.
She's the daughter of a warrior. A daughter of a prophetic Queen, who was slain for her power.
She's the heroine of a prophecy, and sheâs a god damn white wolf with red eyes, that makes her
some kind of hybrid with gifts, a witch thought so powerful that she bound them until a time when
she needed to get them back. A witch who sacrificed her life, and the sanity of her son to protect
her. She's someone to be reckoned with, she needs to find the way to bloom.
That doesn't sound like any kind of weak no one to me, not a reject, or unworthy of an alpha mate,
and I need to own that shit. Everything I've done in my life for the past ten years has been
overshadowed by a black cloud of shame and failure and believing I was never good enough,
because they told me so. It's gone. Almost like someone lifted that lid and finally uncaged my soul.
There's nothing over my head weighing me down now, and that little voice that second guessed it
all. It's dead too. That was never my voice, it was theirs, out there in the world around the mountain.
I am deaf to their sounds now.
This girl, she has a right to stand up and be counted as someone worthy, and the fates for whatever
reason, led me here and I need to see it through. They knew me before I existed, and I was part of
the plan. They know what I'm capable of and they set on my way to be sure I showed everyone else.
If they got me this far then maybe they have a plan, and I should stop fighting and listen. Close my
eyes and let the fates send me some kind of message through the cosmos and the air... because this
is not how it ends.
Th noise of the elevator interrupts my train of thought, a noise so perfectly on cue I blink and open
my eyes and my head spins towards the source. Half expecting to Deacon strolling on in and
making my day worse, if that was even possible, but it's the doctor, and heâs pushing a cabinet on
wheels with all manner of things sliding off the top as he dashes to Sierras room. Drawn to the wall
to watch him, suspicious of his behavior. Forgetting my pep talk and all my internal boosting of
confidence.
He seems different somehow. Wired maybe, a little erratic in his abrupt walking around and hurried
movements. He drops a scattering of implements on the floor, the noise of cascading metal, and
hard objects clattering and echoing in this large space as he abandons the cart outside Sierras door
and swipes the panel to open it. He stops before entering, picks them up, and throws them back on
top, scooping anymore he disturbs with his ungraceful and somewhat rushed movements, and then
rushes into her room and starts frantically pressing buttons on machines by her head.
I canât do much else but watch, and as he starts picking up small mobile devices and sitting them on
her bed, his face ashen and serious and fully focused on what he is doing, I realize heâs not just
checking on her and something's up. His expression says it all, and there's no hint of gentle jovial
eccentric doctor in this moment. He looks frayed and afraid.
Even from here I can see he's sweating, his forehead blushed and shiny and the underarms of his
white jacket are beginning to darken with excessive body heat. He's in a state of panic, and I look
around expecting his staff or the guards to come flooding down, suddenly worried about why. My
own nerves hitching as my stomach ties itself in knots, and I end up flat to the window, palms
pressed by the sides of me against the glass, heavily breathing as I watch, anchored to my spot.
Maybe Sierra is crashing... maybe all I was to do was witness her die. God no, please, Colton needs
to see her one last time. She can't die.... he needs her!! I can't stand the thought of him losing her
without saying goodbye. I need to know what I'm supposed to do now.
The doctor unhooks her from the machine, keeping her heartbeat monitored loudly, and I hold my
breath, inhaling sharply as the beep, beep, is stalled so suddenly the air becomes unbearably silent. I
don't get why he would take that off, but when he yanks another box from under the bed and plugs
her onto that instead I exhale, slightly confused. That familiar beep, beep, starts up again, in a
subtler tone from a different machine and he moves to the next, and next, replacing everything he
can with smaller mobile devices as my brain pulls together amid my own frantic fear and gives me a
shake.
He's not trying to save her, or trying to take her off the machines, heâs making her mobile so he can
move her.
He stops, rushes off out of sight as he heads into the elevator once more, abandoning everything
he's left in chaos and a moment later, comes crashing back ungracefully, pushing another bed. This
time it's on wheels, back to her room. I press my cheek to the cool smooth wall in front of me, eyes
locked on and heart rate hitching as it filters through. He catches me watching him, notices me with
a second snap of his head as though he didn't glance me the first time and makes a weird wave
gesture with his hands that translates to nothing. I donât understand.
"What?" 1 yell back, unsure what the hell heâs doing, and he does it again, waving two fingers in the
air which I can only assume means two minutes. I move back, confusion overtaking but intrigue
definitely the dominant feeling. Everything else that had been coursing through me is replaced with
a thousand questions, about why heâs moving her. I watch as I've nothing else to do, and over here
it's all I am capable of anyway, as he struggles to get her from one bed to the other and shakes his
head in defeat, getting redder faced, and sweatier as he does. He pulls out a handkerchief from his
top pocket, pats his face and puts it back, while he seems to be taking a moment to size up his plan.
He clicks his fingers in mid-air like he just had a eureka moment, and then abandons her, turning
and heading out towards me at speed. A complete look of determination on that furrow browed,
overly serious expression, as he dashes at me.
He crosses the bay so quickly and without hesitation, opens my door and gestures me with flicking
hands that I should come with him. His face is almost beetroot, and soaked, and he looks like he's
just run a marathon
âWhat's going on?" I eye him warily, unsure how to feel about his current behavior and trying to
figure out if the doc is drunk and realize heâs breathless as hell and can barely talk.
He gestures again after blowing out an incoherent sound that I assume was meant to be words, to
follow. I shrug and do it. I don't see any reason not to, heâs proven himself to be a half decent
human who isnât out to hurt me, and a voice at the back of my mind is telling me this is how I get
close to her. As soon as he knows I'm with him he turns on his heel and we head back to sierra.
âHelp me... here to hereâ he motions wheezily when we get in her room beside her, from her bed to
the new one he wheeled over here. His voice is low and labored and he's struggling to get sound
out. Definitely been running about like a maniac before coming down here, and I can feel his heart
rate pulsing rapidly in the air around me. He's composing himself as he works, but it's obvious he's
not in the best physical shape.
I turn my eyes to our sleeping beauty, surprised at this distance how unwell she looks, and a whole
lot less ethereal. Sierra up close, looks like a porcelain doll, so silently still and unresponsive, with
flushed, rosy cheeks, on a milky pallor, dark lashes fanning her face under smooth dark brows, and I
can see Colton in her features immediately. I don't argue but take her upper arms under her armpits
as firmly as I can without hurting her and lift her over while he gets her legs.
She's light in weight, surprisingly so, nothing to her, and painfully thin as the blankets pull away and
I see her body under her own thin medical gown. Her skin is almost translucent from lack of
sunlight, yet she seems so very warm and alive, and I'm convinced sheâs going to open her eyes at
any moment. It's unnerving, and I can't stop staring at her face as we place her on the new bed,
brushing her dark hair from her face as he tends to her limbs, and tubes, and settles her neatly.
âWhat are we doing?â I whisper it back, keeping my voice hushed as it's pretty obvious with the lack
of helpers heâs not meant to be doing this. As soon as he fully arranges her on the gurney, he takes
a moment to inhale, calm his breathing by pressing a hand to his chest and points at the door.
âWe're taking her and leaving... I drugged....... Fixed.... phew..." he struggles, wiping his brow with
the back of his hand and takes another exaggerated breath, annoying me to the point of getting
frustrated with his lack of vocabulary, and he tries again. I raise my brows at him and throw a âand?â
look his way. âI drugged dinner; we don't have much time.... few hours at the most.â He wheezes
and goes back to picking up tubes and arranging them around her in a hurried fashion.
âYou did what?â I gawp at him, this unassuming little feeble doctor that wouldn't stand up to
Deacon earlier, and now it registers how quiet this place is when heâs making so much noise with
carts and beds and no oneâs appeared. My face pales as my blood drains away and my brain catches
up with exactly what's happening.
He nods at the bay outside her room and motions to start pulling her bed. Making it clear I'm not
dreaming, and we are in fact staging a bust out, and a heist, in that Sierra is the gold, and we're
taking it. I swallow hard, pull myself together, and throw a glance up at the roof and a silentâ Thank
youâ to the fates. They answered my prayers.
I do as he motions, tugging it backwards out the door with all my might to get it rolling, as he
throws machines and such almost on top with her as we begin to move. He picks up, and dumps
more items on the bed as we pass a couple of free-standing trolleys, pulling the saline drip, and bag
feeding her fluids with him, and its trolley at the end while stretching all her tubes almost taut.
âI doped the soup and pretended to eat in the canteen to watch that they all did, we always eat
together. Had to wait on them all passing out.... to the truck over there.â He nods at my shooting
point and I pull the bed and aim for it, gaining speed as we go, and he grabs the medical trolley in
passing to tug behind him too, making it awkward for him to keep hold of the bed at all, and I end
up pulling it alone as he deals with that and the other wheeled necessities heâs hauling, dropping
things as he does so.
If this is an escape, it's a haphazard one, and heâs the worst kind of saving hero ever. He's making
enough noise to wake the dead, and I'm not convinced he's not going to keel over and have a heart
attack with how unfit he is. He's puffing, and heaving, and losing more than half his weight in body
sweat, and I think he might need to lie down. Humans really are a weak race.00000000000