by Cheree Alsop
A man in a white hospital coat watched him quietly, his dark gaze impassive behind blue-rimmed glasses.
“Who are you?” Alex asked, embarrassed by his weakness. He gritted his teeth and forced his legs to hold.
“Dr. Benjamin,” the man replied. “And you’re Alex. It’s not a far stretch of the imagination to guess that your heart’s still giving you trouble.”
Alex shook his head, but the wry expression on the doctor’s face let him know it wouldn’t do any good to deny it.
The doctor gave a small smile. “I’ve definitely been around my fair share of stubborn werewolves. I assume you’re here checking on our patient.” He glanced at Siale’s monitors. “Her vitals are improving.”
The doctor’s scent let Alex know that he was a human. Alex felt wary and on edge. The few humans at the Academy and his brief interaction with the students playing soccer in the city hadn’t given him enough basis to trust every human he came into contact with. A shudder ran through his skin. He pushed down the urge to phase.
The doctor’s expression changed slightly. Instead of critical and cold, there was a hint of something else, something almost sad.
“You remind me of someone,” Dr. Benjamin said.
Alex didn’t reply.
The doctor seemed to understand how to treat werewolves. He took a seat on the chair near the door, but was careful not to block the exit. He crossed one knee over the other and leaned back with his arms crossed as well, taking away any hostility or threat in his bearing.
The action calmed Alex’s nerves somewhat. He stayed close to Siale’s bed, feeling protective over the girl he had rescued.
The doctor reached up slowly and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “We take an oath in medical school, do you know that?” At Alex’s lack of response, Dr. Benjamin kept speaking, “Do no harm. We promise to remember our oath in every interaction and treatment of those who come to us for help.” The doctor let out a breath in a sigh. “I forgot my oath.”
Alex didn’t know what Dr. Benjamin was talking about. The man seemed content to speak whether Alex followed or not. Alex figured as long as the doctor was talking, he would get an idea as to the doctor’s character, so he chose to keep silent.
“I judged him based on the psychological trauma from his past and told him that he should leave so that he wouldn’t get Jaze, Chet, and Mouse mixed up in the darkness I felt from him.”
The names caught Alex’s attention. He stood up straighter, his gaze on the doctor’s face.
“But I was wrong.” The doctor’s eyebrows pulled together and he looked like a lost child for a moment. “When he left, I realized the error of my ways. Somehow, Jaze found him again and righted the wrong I had done. I saw him a few more times after that when he brought in other werewolves who needed my assistance, but whenever I looked into his eyes, I remembered that I had judged him and sent him away from those he needed, and, as it turned out, needed him.”
Alex broke the silence with the question that burned in his chest. “What was his name?”
The doctor let out a slow breath and said, “Jet.”
The answer hung in the air between them as palpable as the statue at the Academy.
The doctor hung his head. “He saved so many of them.”
“He was my brother.” Alex’s words were soft but firm.
Dr. Benjamin’s head jerked up. He stared at Alex like he was looking at a ghost.
“Honestly?” the doctor asked. At Alex’s nod, the man let out a breathy laugh. “What are the odds?”
“Trent could tell you.” Alex realized he had spoken the thought aloud.
True interest showed in Dr. Benjamin’s eyes. “Who’s Trent?”
“One of my pack mates,” Alex replied. “He likes statistics. I’ve learned never to say ‘what are the odds’ because he answers me and I realize the odds are never as good as I hope they’ll be.”
Dr. Benjamin nodded. “The odds of you being Jet’s brother are pretty unbelievable.”
Alex fought back a grimace at the pang of regret that filled him.
The doctor continued unaware of his dark thoughts. “Well, Alex. Let’s see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with your heart. Perhaps I can pay Jet back even if just a little bit.”
The doctor left through the door without explaining. Alex looked at Siale one last time before hurrying out the door after the doctor.
The next half hour was one of silence broken by the staccato and mostly synchronized beeping of the machines as Dr. Benjamin fastened devices to Alex’s chest and checked the recording equipment to ensure nothing would be missed.
“You said you needed to pay Jet back,” Alex finally said when the beeping had become too much. “What for?”
The doctor glanced at him, then turned his attention back to the machine he had been watching in silence for the past several minutes. When he spoke, regret was heavy in his voice. “I sent Jet out of this very hospital saying that he should start a life far away from Jaze’s pack and any other werewolves out there.” His voice dropped. “I was so wrong.”
The doctor’s hands were clasped behind his back and his head and shoulders were bowed in sorrow. Alex had never seen anyone so filled with regret. He thought the doctor was done speaking, and had decided not to press the matter when Dr. Benjamin continued in a softer voice.
“I’ve worked with werewolves for over a decade here and always kept a professional distance until the day Jaze brought a werewolf named Judith in.” He kept his gaze on the machine. “She had been beaten and tortured. She was so scared of humans I had to hire some of Jaze’s pack to help me with her. Then one day that changed.” He glanced at Alex. “I don’t know why she chose to trust me, but I was walking past the room at night and I heard her say, ‘Doctor?’ so timidly I barely caught it. So I went in her room.”
He took a seat on the chair near the door and smiled at Alex. “I was a bit worried at first,” the doctor admitted. “I’ve seen what cornered werewolves can do, and I didn’t relish meeting one late at night without help. But I was surprised at what I found.” His eyes creased at the corners as he thought back. “She asked me if it was raining outside. I guess she’d smelled it. There was such yearning in her gaze that when I confirmed her guess that I had to offer to take her out to see it.” He gave a small laugh. “I don’t think either of us expected to be out in the rain that night, me pushing her wheelchair and her laughing up at the raindrops because it had been so long since she had felt them. I fell in love with her that night.”
Alex stared at the doctor. The admission made him seem younger. His smile was embarrassed as though he had been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. Alex decided he definitely liked this honest, open side of the man over his professionally reserved persona.
“You’re probably wondering what this has to do with Jet,” Dr. Benjamin noted. “That takes us to the darker part of the story.” He took a steeling breath. “Judith didn’t come home one night. It was during the beginning of the genocide. Jaze’s team had been captured, some were saying he was dead, and werewolves were missing right and left. Needless to say, I was in a state of panic.”
Tears showed in the doctor’s dark eyes. He wiped them away, but more took their place. “I knew I had lost her forever.” His voice shook. He leaned forward and held his eyes with one hand. “My wife, my Judith was gone, dead. I had no doubt. The things the General did to werewolves were unspeakable. I was beside myself thinking of her going through that.”
He fell silent. It held in the small room, broken only by the quiet beeps next to Alex’s bed. The thought of the General sent a rush of anger through Alex so strong his heart skipped a beat and the machine beeped louder.
“What happened?” Alex asked to keep the doctor from noticing the stutter.
“She had been in the basement of the building where Jet died. He fought hundreds of Extremists to save the werewolves who hid below, and she ended up being one of them.” The doctor let
out a shuddering breath. “Imagine my Judith being saved by the young man I sent out of here telling him that he had nothing to offer to other werewolves. I wronged him, and yet he gave me back the most precious thing in my life.”
Alex knew werewolves at the Academy whose family members had been rescued by Jet; he and his sister owed Jet their lives. To know that before him sat a human who felt the very same thing made Alex’s heart stutter again. He rose quietly and walked to Dr. Benjamin’s side. The doctor froze, as if entirely unsure what Alex planned to do. Alex wondered if the man thought he would retaliate for his brother’s poor treatment. Instead, Alex set a hand on Dr. Benjamin’s shoulder. The man flinched slightly under his touch, then stilled.
“I know Jet never held any grudges,” Alex said quietly. “You saved his life, and because of that, he was able to save your wife and so many others. It came full circle.”
The doctor stood. They looked at each other for a few moments in silence, bound by a sudden camaraderie and warmth neither had thought to find that night.
Dr. Benjamin finally nodded with a small smile. “Get some rest, Alex. You could use it, even if these machines drive you crazy.” He leaned over and pushed a button that turned down the volume of the beeping a bit. “Hopefully that’ll help. I’ll be by in the morning to check on the results.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Alex told him. He sat on the bed and smiled when the doctor waved farewell before heading back down the hall.
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you planning to sleep all day?”
Jaze’s voice broke through Alex’s dreams, jolting him awake in a rush of thoughts and emotions. It took him a moment to remember why he was in the hospital and why machines were hooked up to his chest. When the flood of memories tumbled over him, he sat up quickly.
“Easy, now,” Dr. Benjamin said as he pulled the sticky pads from Alex’s chest. “You’re a bit jumpy today.”
“Ready to get out of here,” Alex replied. At the doctor’s raised eyebrows, he hurriedly said, “Not that it’s a bad place, it’s just, a, a...”
“Hospital?” the doctor supplied helpfully.
“Alex has a way with words,” Jaze said, winking at the boy.
Alex chuckled. “Just ready to be cleared, doc.”
“Well, given these readings,” Dr. Benjamin said, scanning pages that had been placed in Alex’s file. “You definitely have atrial fibrillation.” At Alex’s blank look, the doctor explained, “Electrical impulses control your heart’s natural rhythm. When these lose coordination, giving you an irregular beat, it can increase the risk of irreversible damage to your heart.”
“What options do we have?” Jaze asked.
Dr. Benjamin gave Alex a searching look. “This condition can be serious. Our treatment goal would be to prevent circulatory instability and chance of a stroke. For a human, I would prescribe medication, but as far as I know, they’ve never been tested on a werewolf. We can also induce an electrical shock to restore a normal heart rhythm.”
“That sounds pleasant,” Alex said quietly.
Dr. Benjamin continued, “Another option is to use ablation to block the trigger points and create a barrier so the arrhythmia stops.”
Alex’s stomach knotted. “Is that with surgery?” At Dr. Benjamin’s nod, he shook his head and stood up. “I’m done here. I need to get back to Cassie and the others.” He reached for the clothes Cassie had left for him that would be a definite step up from the hospital gown.
Jaze caught his arm. “Hold on, Alex. I think we need to take care of this.”
Alex shook his head. He felt like shouting and running away at the same time. He held still, forcing his muscles to stop twitching.
“Alex, look at me.”
The fatherly concern in Jaze’s voice left Alex no choice. He turned his head slowly and met the dean’s brown eyes.
“I’ve gone through too many things that have almost taken me away from Cassie. I promised her I would be back. I need to be there for her,” Alex said quietly.
Whatever Jaze saw in his expression made the dean give an understanding nod. He let Alex go and looked at the doctor. “We’ll consider our options another time. Is there any danger to waiting?”
Dr. Benjamin hesitated. It was obvious by Alex’s rush to pull on his clothes that there was no choice in the matter. “If it gets worse, let me know,” the doctor conceded.
“I will,” Alex said. He wondered if the dean and doctor believed him; he wasn’t sure he believed himself.
He rushed out the door and hurried down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Jaze called in surprise.
“Just checking on Siale,” Alex said, pausing near the end of the corridor.
Jaze shook his head. “She woke up a few hours ago. Chet and Dray took her to a safe house. Her father is heading there to pick her up.”
Alex’s mouth went dry. He glanced around the corner where Siale’s room had been. He wanted to go there and verify for himself, but the scent that touched his nostrils confirmed the dean’s words. Siale’s sage and lavender scent lingered faintly from when they had walked by. He wondered how he had missed her. He missed her.
Alex clenched and unclenched his hands. The thought was ridiculous. How could he miss a person he had only known for a few hours buried in a hole, and her clinging to the very edge of her life at that? Yet her gray eyes stayed in his mind, filled with pain and pleading for him to help her find relief. He wished he could have seen her awake. Perhaps that would have helped to fill the hole in his heart when he thought of her gone. Maybe he just needed to know for himself that she was okay.
“Are you alright?”
Jaze’s soft words brought him back to the present. Both the dean and Dr. Benjamin still waited outside Alex’s room. The exit was past them in the opposite direction Alex had gone. He finally breathed a sigh of regret and nodded.
“I’m fine.”
He followed the dean out the front doors into the bright light of day.
***
To Alex’s surprise, Jaze drove the SUV and he was the only other occupant. He couldn’t recall ever seeing the dean drive. Alex had assumed they were on their way to the airport, but Jaze passed it and drove through the city studying the buildings as though he knew them.
“Have you been here before?” Alex asked.
Jaze nodded. He was quiet for a few minutes before saying, “I used to live here back before the genocide.”
Alex saw the city in a new light. The buildings that brushed the sky had once decorated the dean’s horizon. Jaze was taking him to the place he used to call home.
“I was about your age when we moved here,” Jaze said, reaching the edge of the city and continuing south. “My dad was murdered and my whole life turned upside down. My mom hoped that by moving to a new city, we could hide from the past and start a different life.” He gave a humorless smile. “But as always seems to happen, the past caught up to us and I found myself at war with my uncle Mason, the General’s brother.”
Alex knew exactly how it felt to realize the one who had destroyed your family and everything around you was, in fact, family. He kept his gaze focused on the rolling hills that lined the horizon, forcing his thoughts away from the dark path they wished to take.
“Enough of that,” Jaze said, giving Alex a smile. “There were a lot of good times here, too.”
He pulled the car up next to a small house on a quiet street. The dean’s gaze tightened slightly at the sight of police tape around the perimeter of the yard and the one next door. The tape was tattered and old. It had broken in several places and fluttered in the faint morning breeze.
Jaze let out a slow breath and turned off the car. He got out and walked along the driveway. Alex followed quietly, unwilling to break the thick silence that fell around the dean’s shoulders like a cloak. Jaze stepped over the police tape that decorated the porch in yellow and black, and reached for the doorknob. It opened under his touch.
Be
neath the musty, unlived-in scent that drifted out was a tangle of other scents, more pleasant ones. Alex smelled whispers of pasta, fresh bread, and laundry detergent. When he stepped inside after Jaze, he had to stop. Beneath the other scents were those ingrained into the house as if a part of it. Jaze was there, along with Nikki. There was a feminine, flowery scent Alex assumed once belonged to Mrs. Carso, Jaze’s mom. And there, amid the others, was Jet.
Alex closed his eyes. He could almost picture them at the house, friends whose lives were intertwined by the werewolves who were just starting to look to Jaze’s pack for safety. He swore he could hear the memories of laughter from the kitchen, and the joking of friends piled on the couch to watch movies. They had been a family as much as Alex, Cassie, and Meredith, and as much as the three of them with Jaze, Nikki, and baby William. Alex swallowed the lump in his throat at the thought of his first family, of Mom and Dad and playing games at the table with crackers and the cheese ball Mom always made.
Jaze’s footsteps made Alex open his eyes. He knew the dean saw more than just imagined memories as he walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Alex followed him, seeing the home beneath the dust that coated the couch, the shelves, the paperback book left open upside-down as though the reader had planned to return minutes later. Nothing was touched or tampered with. The house was frozen in time, plates were still in the strainer by the sink, the clock near the refrigerator had stopped at seven fifty-three, and only a few tracks of mice through the dust disturbed the scene.
Jaze paused by the backdoor. Alex glanced around him to see a lone black punching bag hanging from a tree in the backyard. The door slid open with a squeak of protest. Jaze stepped onto the brown lawn that crunched beneath his shoes. He crossed to the bag as if in a trance. Alex watched quietly as Jaze put his forehead against the bag. A stillness fell over the dean as though he was lost in his memories.
