My throat feels like I’ve been gargling sandpaper dicks. Every swallow is a conscious effort. There's something in my nose that pinches a little and both arms are tangled in IV lines.
I'm in the fucking hospital.
Great. My favorite place. Yay. Lucky me.
I try again with the eyes.
The ceiling resolves into acoustic tiles. Water stains everywhere, one shaped like a dick, which is… fitting, somehow. A sprinkler head that's slightly off-center in a way that would bother me if I had the energy to care.
Okay, yeah, it's bothering me.
The last thing I remember is the moon.
Full and white and impossibly bright above a burning opera house while my three alphas held me on a rooftop and the whole world caught fire.
I turn my head. Slowly, because everything hurts.
Phoenix is asleep in the chair beside my bed, folded in half with his enormous body crammed into a space designed for someone two-thirds his size. His blond mane is loose around his face, one arm dangling off the armrest, his mouth slightly open. He looks like a golden retriever that fell asleep in a laundry basket.
Raf is on the floor, his back against the wall with his legs stretched across the tile and his head tipped back against Phoenix's thigh. There's a bruise on his jaw that wasn't there yesterday.
Was it yesterday?
How long have I been out?
I push myself up on my elbows and the room tilts violently. My stomach lurches. I grip the bed rail until the spinning stops, breathing through my nose even though there's a fucking tube in it and it keeps pinching me.
The world steadies.
I look down at myself.
Hospital gown. Thin. Paper-like. My chest is unbound for the first time in public since… since I don't even know. My breasts are right there under the fabric, visible and unmistakable.
My hand flies to my throat.
The leather collar is gone, too.
My fingers find the scar. The crescent moon that Bryan—Stephen—bit into my neck years ago in a dressing room. It's raised and hot under my fingertips.
Tender, but...
Different.
The constant low-grade agony that's lived under that scar since the night he bit me, the biological tether connecting me to a man I never chose, issilent. For the first time in years, the tissue under my fingers is just tissue.
Inflamed, yes. Sore, absolutely. But the bond is dead.
Stephen is dead.
I killed him.
I drove my grandfather's knife into his throat and watched him fall.
A laugh and a sob try to claw out of my chest at the same time and I shove it all down because I amnotdoing this right now.
I scan the room. No phone in sight, which makes me feel weirdly naked. The tray table has a plastic cup of water, a small stack ofpapers, and a business card with Carmine's name on it and his surprisingly messy handwriting.
Confiscated your phone for your own good.