About Face (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “Yes, I believe in you. I belong to you.” I had to choke out the words past the awful constriction in my throat. Incredibly, he smiled. I braced myself for him to die and for the light to pass out of his eyes, but his fingers remained strong around my wrist. “Goddamnit, Paddy, why didn’t you stay at An Puca like we agreed?”

  “Not—terribly good at—taking orders,” he said. “Stanzie, please, don’t leave me. I’m scared. I wanted—-so much to see—-my baby.”

  Tears strangled me, but I wouldn’t cry. “I’m right here, Paddy. I’m scared, too, but I won’t leave you.”

  “Pruh—promise me something?” Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. The bitter hot smell of it burned into my sinuses.

  “Anything,” I vowed and moved his hand to my face. I kissed his bloody fingers and tried so hard not to cry.

  “If it’s a buh—boy—your wolf—I want your wolf to ini—initiate his? Promise?”

  Pain and grief punched a hole in my gut. I wanted to scream, to howl in outrage.

  “Paddy, it would be an honor,” I whispered, and Jason pressed his forehead to my shoulder even as he worked furiously to staunch Paddy’s out-of-control bleeding. With every beat of his heart more blood gushed and bubbled from the horrendous wound in his stomach. I couldn’t look too closely at it because if I did I could see the pink rope of Paddy’s coiled intestines. Or at least my shocked gaze told me I could. “You hang on, okay? Help’s coming and we’re going to get you the fuck out of here, you understand?”

  “Tuh—tell Fee I’m sorry. I love her.”

  “Shh, Paddy, don’t talk. Just breathe for me.” I squeezed his hand. It was cold and clammy, and awful shudders spasmed through his body.

  “He’s going into shock.” Jason had taken off his blood-drenched jacket and used it to press against Paddy’s wound. The cuffs of his designer shirt dripped with gore, and I’d never seen his eyes so full of icy rage—yet they still radiated compassion. “Keep talking to him, Stanzie. He’s responding to you. Keep him with us. Where the hell is Etain with that ambulance?”

  “Paddy, I’m right here.” I leaned down to whisper into his ear. I smelled his shampoo and cologne and something uniquely him. I remember waking in his arms, my ear pressed to his heart so I could hear the reassuring thump of it. He’d been there for me when no one else had, and I was damned if I’d let him go anywhere alone.

  Gravel crunched behind us, and then Murphy knelt beside Paddy’s head. There was blood on his hands and his t-shirt. He held a dripping knife, and his eyes were so grim and black with hatred my breath was stolen.

  “I killed him,” he said in a perfectly dreadful voice that sent shivers down my spine. At first I thought he meant Paddy, but Paddy was still alive.

  Then Jason said, “No. He came at me with the knife again after Paddy went down. You wrestled with him for it and in the process he was stabbed. I’m swearing to that. There will be no tribunal, Liam. Not for you. Do you understand?”

  Jason would cover for him. Gratitude washed over me.

  “There was no struggle. I plucked it from his bastard fingers and plunged it into his black heart.” Murphy’s chest heaved as if he couldn’t drag enough air into his lungs.

  “You’re mistaken. I saw what happened. I saw the whole thing,” said Jason calmly. “Put the knife down, Liam, and go get Fiona. Meet us at the hospital. Do it now.”

  Murphy’s face seemed to collapse in on itself, and tears glittered on the ends of his lashes.

  “Fee?” Paddy’s lips formed the word, but he had barely the breath to enunciate it.

  Murphy’s expression morphed into determination.

  “I’m getting her, Paddy.” He leaned down and whispered something in Irish that made Paddy smile and then he took off down the path.

  Just beyond the fountain lay a crumpled, bloody figure that did not move.

  Chapter 14

  The paramedics didn’t want me in the ambulance at first, but Jason barked something at them that made them go pale, and after that I was allowed on.

  The ride was hellish. We lurched around corners and went at speeds so fast my stomach flipped, but I wasn’t scared of an accident. I was scared Paddy would die before we got to the hospital.

  Jason rode in the ambulance, too, ejecting one of the paramedics. He pulled rank because he was a doctor. Before he’d become a Councilor, he’d been his pack’s doctor and he still kept up his medical knowledge, which was a damn good thing. He hooked up an IV and did medical things to Paddy I couldn’t follow. I knelt by my Alpha’s side and held his hand. I whispered things into his ear and at first I knew he listened because sometimes he smiled and sometimes he would squeeze my fingers back, but his grip grew more lax, and his smiles faltered and then stopped.

  He was unconscious by the time we arrived at the hospital, and while they allowed Jason, as a doctor, to go into surgery with him, they wouldn’t let me.

  “I promised. I promised him I wouldn’t leave him.” I ran down the stark green-tiled hallway and kept pace with the stretcher even though a nurse and two orderlies tried their best to dissuade me.

  “He doesn’t even know you’re there anymore,” one of the orderlies told me. Brutal bastard. “You can’t help him, you’ve got to let the doctors do it.”

  “But I promised!”

  Eventually, one of the orderlies grabbed my arm, and when I started to scream and struggle, he wrapped his arms around my waist and manhandled me into the waiting room.

  “Stop screaming, damn you, or we’ll throw you out of here. Do you want me to call security, you silly cow?” he snarled in my ear.

  “You fucking smell,” I howled at him. He did. He reeked of Other stench. I thought about shifting and ripping his fucking throat out. That’s when I went limp in his arms. I couldn’t be like that. I had to get control.

  “You’re not exactly Miss Daisy Fresh yourself,” the orderly hissed as he deposited my sagging form into a garish orange chair.

  I uttered a short, shocked bark of laughter. No, I probably wasn’t. The smell of Paddy’s blood and my fear was so rank it clogged my sinuses, it was no wonder even an Other could be disgusted, too.

  “Frank,” remonstrated the other orderly. “Jesus, have some compassion, you gobshite. Look, miss, I’m sorry about him. You want coffee? Water?” He knelt by my side and tried to touch my arm, but when I yanked it away, he didn’t get angry or flustered. He simply dropped it slowly to his side.

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, then. Look, I’m gonna sit over here for a minute. It’s my break, and I have a few minutes. My name’s Chris. You change your mind about the coffee or water, I’ll be right over there.” He pointed to a chair far enough away from mine that he wouldn’t crowd me, but close enough to get to me if I needed him.

  I hung my head and didn’t acknowledge him, but he still went to the chair he’d indicated and sat. He pretended to be interested in an outdated magazine, but his gaze was sympathetic when he glanced up every few seconds.

  I wanted Murphy in the worst way. Caged and confined, the awful hospital smells made me want to puke. Industrial cleanser, sick people, faint putrid whiffs of anesthesia, the overwhelming smell of Others, burned coffee and rubber-soled shoes combined in a nauseating whirl. The emotions were horrible, too. Fear, despair, fury, the soul-sucking glut of sheer hopelessness. How the hell did anyone work here? How could a person face this miasma of shit every single day? Especially someone Pack? How could Pack doctors deal with this?

  Chris pressed a cold bottle of water into my hands, and I realized I’d been rocking back and forth keening to myself. Poor guy. He probably wanted to be so fucking far away from me.

  “I’m okay.” Such a fucking lie. I struggled with the cap, and he took it from me and twisted it off. He watched me swallow some water, which I only did to make him feel better.

  “Is there someone I can call for you?” He knelt in front of me again, and I felt absurdly like burying my face in his shoulder
so I could cry. But I didn’t. He was an Other. I wanted Murphy. I wanted my pack.

  “They’re on their way,” I whispered, my voice raw. I took another sip of water. “Thank you.”

  His face creased into an appealing, empathetic smile, and he rose to his feet.

  “If you need anything, ask the nurse down the hall to get me. You cool?”

  “Yeah. Thank you, Chris.”

  “It’s no problem. Sorry again for my colleague. He can be an arsehole at times as I’m sure you noticed.”

  He gave me another subdued smile and walked out.

  * * * *

  I fucking detested hospital waiting rooms.

  My bottle of water was half empty when Fee and Murphy staggered in. Glenn and Siobhan trailed after them, faces pale and grief-stricken.

  Fee was in shock, and she clung to Murphy in a grip so strong I knew it must hurt, but he didn’t even wince. He took her to a chair near mine and made her sit down, but she wouldn’t let go of him, so he ended up with her on his lap. Glenn and Siobhan took the chairs on either side, and the family bent close together. Siobhan was in tears, and her hiccoughing sobs were the only sound.

  Two accusingly empty seats separated me from them so I got up and moved next to Siobhan.

  I put a hand on her shoulder and because the orderly, Chris, had been so wonderful to me, I wanted to be nice to her. I wanted to help.

  “Can I get you some water or coffee maybe?” She moved away from me as if my touch burned.

  “Please leave us alone. This is private,” she told me. I knew she didn’t like me, but I was a pack mate, and we were all in this nightmare together, weren’t we?

  She angled her body as far away from mine as she could, and I moved back to my original seat. It stung.

  I waited for Murphy, at least, to say something, but he was so wrapped up in Fee he didn’t notice.

  Other members of Mac Tire began to trickle in. One of them, a woman with riotous black curls, took the chair beside Siobhan, and when she touched her, Siobhan burst into a wailing sob and clutched her in a tight embrace.

  “Oh, Maureen, oh Jaysus, what are we gonna do?”

  “It’ll be all right, Siobhan,” said Maureen. Her face was streaked with tears. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected she was Paddy’s mother.

  Muffled sobs filled the air, and my face twisted with grief and incomprehension. I couldn’t just sit in my corner alone. I got up and moved around the room. I asked several people if I could get them water or coffee, and a few took me up on it, but nobody reached out to me. They all petted and touched each other but made damn sure not to brush fingers with me when I handed them their cups.

  It was irrational of me to take it personally, I told myself over and over, but it hurt just the same.

  Once I tried to approach Fee and Murphy, but Siobhan shot me such a venomous look that I backed away.

  Declan Byrne and Alannah Doyle blew into the waiting room bickering with each other. Alannah’s face was tearstained and tense, and while Declan wasn’t crying, he looked ready to fly apart at the seams.

  I had just handed a grandmother a cup of horrid hospital coffee when they tried to get around me and I didn’t move fast enough.

  “Who are you trying to impress now? Giving grandmothers coffee! Jesus.” Declan sneered at me. “The least you could fucking do is wipe the frigging blood off your face, woman!”

  Of course. I had Paddy’s blood on my face. I gulped and put instinctive fingers to my cheek.

  “You’re upsetting people. Don’t you know enough to wash off his blood?”

  “Where were you when my brother was getting stabbed trying to save that Councilor from assassination?” Alannah turned her frustration on me. “You should have been putting yourself between him and the knife, not Paddy! He’s Alpha, he’s not expendable like you.”

  Angry murmurs filled the stagnant air of the waiting room. People began to glare at me.

  I liked to think I would have put myself between Jason and a blade, but I didn’t know if I would have, even if I had been close enough. I’d frozen and watched until Murphy leaped into action, and even then I’d been behind him by a good margin.

  Trapped, my gaze traveled around the accusing room. Murphy and Fee were still huddled together, her face buried in his shoulder, his in her hair. They were oblivious. It seemed as though Declan and Alannah had shouted, but maybe they’d only whispered. Not everyone in the room glared at me, only those in closest proximity.

  “Get off with you, woman. Go wash your frigging face.” Declan pointed toward the door, and with one last, longing glance in Murphy’s direction, I fled.

  Chapter 15

  Jason found me in the hospital cafeteria. I sat with my hands wrapped around a swiftly cooling cup of coffee at a table tucked away into a back corner. Paddy’s blood was on my hands, on my shirt and probably my jeans, although most of that blood was mine from my shredded knees. Confronted by the sight of his bloody finger marks on my cheek when I’d stopped in a restroom and found a mirror, I’d fled rather than wash them off. However tenuous, they were a connection to him—one I wasn’t ready to part with.

  My knees throbbed, a constant, dirty pain I tried to ignore.

  “Here you are.” Jason slid into the chair beside mine. His face was drawn and tired, and his blue eyes were haunted. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his designer shirt, but the bloodstains still showed. His hands were scrubbed clean. They rested on a manila folder he’d placed on the sticky tabletop. “You ought to be with your pack at a time like this, Stanzie.”

  I winced. I only wished.

  “I wanted some coffee,” I lied. He moved one of his clean hands so it covered one of my bloody ones.

  “I’m sorry. Paddy died fifteen minutes ago.”

  What little shreds of hope I’d held disintegrated into ash. I was too tired to cry, so I just sat there and stared at nothing.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he urged with such compassion I wanted to throw my coffee in his face only I was too weary.

  The mind-numbing lethargy began to drain away as a flush of resentful anger flowed through me. “Right now I’m thinking he wouldn’t be dead if you’d just gotten on the plane and gone home. Or better yet, never come here in the first place. You were the target, not him. He just”— my voice broke a little but I controlled it— “got in the way.”

  “I wish you’d come to me. I could have helped. Paddy got far enough in his explanation of what’s been going on that I can fill in the blanks of what you and Liam have tried to keep from me.”

  “I don’t want to hear this!” I did pull my hand away and this time he let me.

  “If you’d just trusted me.”

  “Trusted you? I don’t even know you, Councilor Allerton. I don’t know what side you’re on anymore. Up until a few days ago I didn’t even know how many sides there were, and maybe I still don’t. All I know is I thought I was doing good things for the Great Pack, and now I don’t know what to think. If you could have helped him, what does that mean? That you were on his side? That you were a fucking dupe the same as he was? I can’t believe that Councilor Jason Allerton could ever be anybody’s dupe, so nice try. You bastard. You lying, manipulative bastard!”

  I refused to be affected by his awful, remorseful expression. Too little, too late, Allerton.

  “You have done good things. You’ll continue to do them. You knew from the start things were going to get ugly, and you said you were prepared to deal with them.”

  “Ugly?” I curled my lips back from my teeth in a snarl. “I never thought they’d get this ugly. They weren’t supposed to get this bad. I always thought you, at least, were telling me the truth.”

  “I never lied to you,” he said.

  “Lying by omission is still lying. Do you think for one second I would have done anything for you if I’d known you were part of the Guardians, the group responsible for Grey’s and Elena’s deaths? Even if you opposed it? Do you think I would h
ave agreed to be the Hand of the Council if you’d told me you were Pack First and hell-bent on eradicating the Guardians? Because if you do believe that, you’re delusional!”

  “All I have ever done is tried to stop the senseless deaths. On both sides. That’s all I’ve asked you to do, and if you’d just believed in me and not let Liam and Paddy scare you, I might have been in a position to help. I understand your bitterness, Stanzie, truly, but now is not the time to give up. Now is the time the fight really begins, and don’t you think you owe it to Grey and Elena, and now Paddy, to be there for it? Or have I completely underestimated you?”

  “Don’t try to manipulate me anymore. I’m not some naive fucking idiot. You can’t just wave a patriotic Pack flag in my face and expect me to leap into battle. The past nine months have taught me to be cynical and secretive and not to trust anyone. Not anyone. You still haven’t confirmed whether you’re a Guardian or Pack First and, more importantly, no matter which side, what the hell’s going on. You’re still trying to confuse me. Screw you, Jason Allerton. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful Councilor in North America. I don’t care if you’re my mother’s bond mate, although I wish to hell you weren’t. All I care about is getting as far away from you as I can. I wish I never had to see your lying face again!”

  He regarded me silently for a moment, then said, “I understand you’re upset, and I’ll leave you be now. Your pack is at An Puca, and you shouldn’t be alone. Before you go, though, please look at what’s inside this folder. Know that whatever you decide to do with it, I will support you one hundred percent. I cannot emphasize this enough. Also know you will come out of this without any repercussions. I will swear that you kept me apprised of everything you knew as you knew it and kept nothing out. Liam as well. Believe it or not, Stanzie, I’ve got your back. I always have, and I always will.”

  “Go to hell,” I said and turned my head. When I looked back, he was gone.

  I picked up the manila folder and my coffee cup and took them both to the trash, but in the end I couldn’t throw the folder away without just one look inside.