Or at least it seemed that way.
On what must have been his fifth trip down toward the lockers, John pivoted around and found himself in front of the office's glass door. The desk and the filing cabinets and the computer seemed relentlessly normal and he took a strange comfort from the inanimate objects.
But the deep breath was lost when he stepped forward once again.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the cracks in the concrete wall across the way, the fissures spidering out from a single impact source.
He remembered the night it had happened. That horrible night.
He and Tohr had been sitting together in the office, him doing schoolwork, the Brother trying to keep calm as he called home over and over again. Every time Wellsie didn't answer, every time he got voice mail, the tension was cranked up more--until Wrath had appeared with the Brotherhood behind him.
The news that Wellsie was gone was tragic... but then Tohr had learned the "how": Not because she was pregnant with their first child, but because a lesser had killed her in cold blood. Murdered her. Taken her out and the baby with her.
That was what had caused these marks.
John walked over and ran his fingertips across the fine lines in the concrete. The rage had been so great, Tohr had literally imploded into a supernova, the emotional overload dematerializing him to some other place.
John never had learned where he'd gone.
A sense of being observed had him lifting his head and looking over his shoulder. Tohr was on the far side of the glass door, standing in the office, staring out.
The two met each other's stare and it was male to male, not elder to younger.
John was a different age now. And like so many things in this situation, there was no going back.
"John?" Doc Jane's voice came from far down the hall and he wheeled around,then ran to her.
How is she? What happened? Is she--
"She's going to be okay. She's just coming out of the anesthesia. I'm going to keep her in bed for the next six hours or so. I understand she fed from you?" He flashed his wrist and the doc nodded. "Good. I'd appreciate it if you'd stay with her in case she needs to again?"
Like he would be anywhere else.
As John stepped inside the exam room, he moved on his tiptoes, not wanting to disturb anything; but she wasn't there.
"She's been moved into the other room," V said from over by the autoclave.
Before he went through to the far door, he stared at the aftermath of whatever had been done to Xhex. There was an alarming pile of bloody gauze on the floor and more blood on the table she'd been on. The sheet and towels she'd been wrapped in were off to the side.
So much blood. All of it fresh.
John whistled loudly so that V would look over. Can someone tell me what the f**k went on in here?
"You can talk to her about it." As the Brother got out an orange biohazard bag and started to gather up the used gauze, V paused, but did not meet John's eyes. "She's going to be okay."
And that was when John knew for sure.
However bad he'd thought she'd been treated, she'd gotten it worse. Much worse.
Generally speaking, when there were injuries sustained in combat or on the field, the information was traded back and forth without a thought-- femur broken, ribs crushed, stab wound. But a female came in, was examined without males present, and no one would speak a word of what had been operated on?
Just because lessers were impotent didn't mean they couldn't do other things with...
The cold breeze that shot through the OR brought V's head up again. "Word of advice, John. I'd keep your suppositions to yourself. Assuming you want to be the one who kills Lash, true? No sense Rehv or the Shadows, much as I respect them, doing what is your right."
My God, the Brother was cool, John thought.
Nodding once, he went over to Xhex's room, thinking those males weren't the only reason he was going to keep a lid on things. Xhex didn't need to know the lengths he was going to go to, either.
Xhex felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen bus in her uterus.
The pressure was so great, she actually lifted her head and looked down her body to see if she was swollen to garage dimensions.
Nope. Flat as always.
She let her head fall back.
On some level, she couldn't believe where she was now: on the other side of the operation, lying in a bed with her arms and legs and head still attached... and the tear in her uterine wall repaired.
When she was in the grips of her iatrophobia, she couldn't see past what her brain had marked as deadly. To her, in that flipped-out state, she was not in a safe environment, surrounded by people she knew and could trust.
Now, having gone through the fire, the fact that she was unscathed and well gave her a weird buzz of endorphins.
There was a soft knock, and she knew who it was by the scent beneath the door.
Touching her hair, she wondered what the hell she looked like and decided it was better not to know. "Come in."
John Matthew's head ducked inside and his eyebrows lifted in a how're-you-feeling arch.
"I'm okay. I'm better. Groggy from the meds."
He slipped through and leaned back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets and crossing one shitkicker over the other. His T-shirt was nothing but a white Hanes, which was probably a good call, given that it was stained with lesser blood.
He smelled like a male should. Soap and clean sweat.
And he looked like a male should. Tall and broad and deadly.
God, had she really lost it that badly in front of him?
"Your hair's shorter," she said for no particular reason.
He unplugged one of his hands and awkwardly brushed at the skull trim. With his head tilted down, the powerful muscles that ran from his shoulders up into his neck flexed under his golden skin.
Abruptly, she wondered if she would ever have sex again.
It was an alien thought, to be sure. Considering how she'd spent the last--
She frowned. "How many weeks have I been gone?"
He held up four fingers and then made a pinching motion.
"Almost four?" When he nodded, she took elaborate care straightening the fold on the sheet that ran across her chest. "Almost... four."
Well, the humans had had her for a matter of months before she'd been able to get away from them. Just under four weeks should be a cakewalk to get over.
Ah, but she wasn't sticking around, was she. There was no "getting over." There was just "getting done."
"Do you want to sit down?" she said, indicating a chair by the side of the bed. The thing was standard- issue institutional, which meant it looked about as comfortable as a stake up the ass, but she didn't want him to leave.
John's brows lifted again and he nodded as he came over. Arranging his huge body on the little seat, he tried first to cross his legs at the knees, then the ankles. He ended up jacked halfway around, his shitkickers under the bed and his arm over the back of the chair.
She fiddled with her goddamn sheet. "Can I ask you something?"
In her peripheral vision, she saw him nod, then shift around and take a pad and pen out of his back pocket.
Clearing her throat, she wondered exactly how to phrase her question.
In the end, she copped out and went with something impersonal. "Where was Lash last seen."
He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words took form on the white page, she got to watch him... and realized she never wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.
Safe. She was truly safe with him around.
He straightened and flashed the pad. Then seemed to freeze.
For some reason, she couldn't focus on what he'd written and she strained--
John slowly lowered his arm.
"Wait, I haven't read it. Could you... What. What's wrong?" Damn it, now her eyes were refusing to see him clearly.
John leaned to the side and she heard a quiet pfft sound. Then a Kleenex was presented to her.
"Oh, for f**k's sake." She took what he offered and pressed it against both eyes. "I hate being a girl. I really f**king despise being a girl."
As she went on a rant about estrogen, and skirts, and pink nail polish, and frickin' stilettos, he fed her Kleenex after Kleenex, gathering up the red- stained ones she'd used.
"I never cry, you know that." She glared over at him. "Ever."
He nodded. And handed her another cocksucking tissue.
"Jesus Christ. First I get a case of the screams, now the dripping nonsense. I could kill Lash for this bullshit alone."
A frigid blast shot through the room and she looked over at John--only to recoil. He'd gone from sympathetic to sociopath in a split second. To the point where she was almost positive he had no conscious clue that he'd bared his fangs.