Chapter Twenty-One
Elle's POV

I had lived a relatively bland existence. In all my years of life, I had only been to the hospital twice. The day I was born, and once in the third grade when Nanna had thought I had broken my wrist – we had waited in triage for four hours to be told it was only a bad sprain.

Now, in only a week, I had more than doubled my trips to the hospital. To be fair, the first two visits hadn't been about me. I was there for Arlo, but I had grown accustomed to Aucteraden's industrial-sized hospital.

My third trip should have been about him, Kaden. He needed help. The blood from his wounds had already seeped into the fabric of his sweatpants. They'd barely stayed their ashy grey as he had pulled them on, a reddish stain coating them within seconds.

He shouldn't have even been given the sweatpants. Dishevelled and blood-stained, Kaden had limped into the waiting room, unable to support his own weight. He had been draped over my shoulder, and blood dripped upon the ground leaving a red-smeared trail behind us. The nurse had taken one look at us and tried to usher Kaden into the emergency room, but he'd stubbornly resisted her help, refusing to be looked at until the doctor had agreed to see me first. So as I had been guided into the left room with the nurse, the doctor had followed Kaden closely, his beady eyes watching Kaden's every movement.

Sitting in the hospital room, all alone, I noticed two things. One, the Vermiculo Hospital was smaller than Aucteraden's, claustrophobically so. It had two examination rooms, one of which carried the façade of an emergency room, based solely on the fact that most of the equipment remained in that room. The second thing I noticed was even then, when all of the equipment was stored in one room, there was barely enough equipment to save a life.

In Aucteraden Hospital, there was the constant whirl of breathing machines and the drone of heart monitors, a cacophony of sounds that created a sense of urgency and care. There was none here – no beating hearts, no humming machines, and no stampeding nurses as they walked the halls in search of angelic feats.

The silence was so intense that I could hear the receptionist through the walls. She called incoming patients, rescheduled their appointments, or directed them to the Aucteraden Hospital. No new patients would come in while we were there, and as the night wore on, it was clear she was freeing up the next day.

Most of the night had passed, and I had been waiting so long that I could draw the room from memory. Details such as the furniture configuration down to the number of paddle-pop sticks in the glass on the desk were permanently etched into my mind. The pain was subdued, more of a nuisance now that the drugs had kicked in, and with my ankle elevated, it provided a welcome excuse to avoid testing my pain levels.

When the nurse had first helped me settle into the room, I'd requested to go home, to go curl up in bed with my ankle propped up against a pillow, as I'd always done when I'd sprained it during P.E. Her eyes had shifted between me and the door. She had shaken her head timidly without words and backed out of the room with a glass to fill.

In the first couple of hours, I only had one visitor. Jacobi had more connections than I was aware of because he was by my side within five minutes of being admitted. He made sure I was safe and comfortable before leaving just as abruptly as he had come in, a guilty smile playing on his lips. He was gone before the nurse had time to bring back my glass of water.

As time passed, I managed to convince Lisa to open the window. She'd been hesitant initially, but when I asked a second time, she scurried over to the bay windows and welcomed the fresh air. After the burn of sterilisation had singed my nose and scorched my throat, the wintery air was a welcome relief, and she left with a warning to stay warm.

All I could think, though, was at least one thing had stayed the same. Both hospitals smelt exactly alike, undoubtedly just like every other hospital worldwide.

I would beg Lisa to let me go whenever she came in, but when my pleading had fallen short with her, I turned my persuasive skills towards the doctor, and I was just as successful with him as I had been with her. Dr Wrish was immune, or so he joked. Apparently, he had been exposed too often because he poked, prodded, and squeezed, and not once did he flinch as I cursed or dug holes into the palm of my hand. Then, when I had asked about Kaden, he had shrugged, laughed, and tapped his nose twice with a wink as he said, 'Doctor-patient confidentiality.'

I wondered if the same applied the other way.

What proceeded next was a lonely couple of hours, which I squandered away, imagining what Kaden would say once he decided to come to see me or what I would do if I were let out first.

But even as I had those thoughts, I knew without being told that they had administered a drug to knock him out because it didn't take a doctor to see the kind of pain he had been in or to see that his stubbornness was making things worse.

CRASH!

Think of the devil, and he shall awaken. It shouldn't have been funny, but I chuckled at the thought, making sure my expression was blank as I watched the door, waiting. I couldn't stop myself from clenching the plastic sheets between my fingers, and I twisted it incessantly as I waited, all the while the pain in my ankle flared.

I scanned the room. The door was an apparent dead end. I could hear them on the other side, arguing. Kaden might have automatically won if he had been the Alpha, but the doctor still had a leg to stand on, and he fought with Kaden every step of the way. The window would be easy, I had already clocked the objects in the room that had enough weight to bust through the glass, but then it came down to the odds. An injured human against a building of werewolves. It didn't seem fair or plausible, and then the desire to flee was overcome with the need to know the truth.

The door flew open.

Bang!

Kaden appeared with an animalistic sheen in his eyes. They were amber, the whites murky, his pupils shifting uneasily as he scanned every inch of the room. His breathing slowed, the jerky, quick-paced rise and fall of his chest slowing down until it didn't move, and his face seized up as though he were made of stone.

He stared, unmoving, holding his breath as though it would shatter the illusion he had created.

It wasn't an illusion, though.

The door swung shut behind him, and like the strings cut from a marionette, the tension ebbed away, his breath a rasp on his lips.

I wanted to draw my knees to my chest but squeezed them against the mattress. I didn't want to reveal my hand. I didn't want him to know how much he affected me. 'You're not in my class.'

He shook his head mutely, staring with wide eyes as though we were in a parallel universe where the unthinkable had come true.

'You're Kaden Delossa.'

His Adam's apple bobbled as deep lines etched into his brow. In all my years of catching glimpses through windows or passing him in the shops, he had only lost his confident composure once. He was the next alpha of the Vermiculo pack. He was the heir to his father's business. He had to be sure and at ease around others. And he usually was. His eyes darted around the room, and he cleared his throat, his words still coming as a soft plea, 'please don't say it like that.'

I pressed my hands beneath the mattress and my thighs, capturing the burning energy before it spilled out. 'You are the alpha of the Vermiculo Pack.'

His head bounced up and down, and his fingers rapped against his leg. When that didn't satiate the need to do something, he jumped forward, pacing along the wall, tugging at strands of his hair. 'Yes.'

I hadn't needed him to admit it to know the truth. It was the first thing I remember knowing. You learn some things without knowing where they came from, but I will never forget the day I was told who he was. Mum and Dad hadn't started their missionary journey yet, I was four, and it was one of the weekends I had stayed at Nanna and Pop's house. In the middle of the street, Nanna had crouched down to my level and pointed across the road towards a father-son duo visiting local businesses.

'Do you see that boy?' she had asked, but I had been more interested in the bubblegum ice cream than listening to her, so she had repeated herself, holding my wrists, so I had to look up at her. 'That boy is important. I hope that we raise you properly and that you treat all werewolves with the same respect you would give a human. That boy is the most important werewolf for our future. He will take over the Vermiculo pack one day and control most of this land. Respect him, if no one else.'

I wasn't the only child who had been taught of his importance. Every child old enough to talk, all across the nation, knew who he was, knew who he was meant to be. And before long, in the years to come, when he took over the pack, it would not be just our nation who knew his name.

The boy before me wasn't the man the nation knew him as. He was broken, emotions pooling at his feet as he laid them down for me to witness. Nothing was kept hidden from me. But I knew there was something more, and it soured the raw emotions which manifested across his face, and through every emotion, the drops of blood coursing through his veins, it was all doused with secrets, and it was the consequences that betrayed him.

'Why?'

His feet stilled, dropping to the ground like lead, and he turned, his eyes downcast as he buried his hands into his pockets. 'When you first asked, when you started to wonder who I was, I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know if I wanted to.' He shook his head, dragging a hand across his face. 'You asked if we went to school together, and we did, at the time, but then I graduated, and I didn't know how to tell you.'

I lowered my head, sighing heavily. 'That's not what I meant.'

He swallowed hard and teased the edge of his pocket with his thumb, his cheek twisting between his teeth as he chewed on the corner of his mouth. I wasn't happy to sit in silence, not when so much needed to be said, so I grasped the edge of the bed beneath me and lifted myself to my feet.

'Wait!' he rasped, hands outstretched as he lunged across the room, falling flat a metre away. His hands trembled slightly, and his breath was quick and shallow. 'Please, just stay a little longer.'

Nodding stiffly, I inched back onto the bed until I was pressed against the wall. He hesitated awkwardly in the middle of the room, gesturing towards my ankle, 'Do you mind if I have a look?' As he shuffled closer, the air seemed trapped in his lungs, 'I just- I need to look.'

Having him so close would be dangerous. My heart quickened pace at the thought, and I remembered the touch of his hands at the supermarket. I nodded despite myself and leaned forward, curiosity getting the better of me, as he placed feathering fingers on the tender side of my ankle.

It was like someone had lit a match against my skin, his fingers scorching my ankle, but I wouldn't wish it away. His fingers were warm, and his touch was soft, gently caressing my bruised skin. My heart took off like a hummingbird, and all sensical thoughts flew from my mind. I wanted to beg him to hold me properly, but nothing good would come from that.