Chapter 157

NOLAN

He returned to consciousness, or as close to it as he could get, a little at a time.

Sounds came first. Voices. Cindy, and others. A machine was beeping. An engine was droning. A siren was wailing.

When Nolan finally got his eyes open, he confirmed he was in an ambulance. He still couldn’t see anything clearly. But he could see the white lights and the hurried movements of blue-uniformed medical personnel as they hovered over him, doing whatever they were doing, trying to save his life.

“He’s awake!” Cindy cried.

“Nolan,” one of the medics said, coming close to the prince’s face. “Can you hear me?”

Nolan’s mouth didn’t work. His voice didn’t work.

“Blink once if you can hear me, Nolan.”

His eyelids fell down like lead curtains. He forced them open once more.

“That’s good, Nolan. My name is Camron and I’m an emergency medical responder. You’re in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. We need you to try to stay awake, okay? Can you do that for me?”

Nolan blinked again, struggling again with getting the eyes back open.

“That’s very good, Nolan. You keep talking to me like that, okay? You gotta stay with us.”

He wanted so badly to ask what was wrong with him. What had happened.

The medic’s blur of a face hovered over Nolan’s. As if she had picked up on his thought, she said, “You were shot in the chest. The bullet is still in there, okay? We’re trying to stop the bleeding, but we think there was something on the bullet that’s making you sick and keeping your blood from clotting. You’re gonna see a doctor soon, okay? We’re gonna get that bullet out of you as soon as we can.”

“Nolan.” This was Cindy’s voice. She was close, but Nolan couldn’t see her. “Don’t leave us. We need you here. Oh, no. No, no no—”

Nolan’s vision tunneled quickly into blackness again.

Before he slipped all the way into sleep, he thought of Yena.

And it couldn’t have been long that he was out. Maybe just a couple seconds. Because Cindy was still saying, “No, no, no, wake up, wake up, you have to wake up, Nolan, come on…”

He wished he could offer his friend some comfort. I am awake, he wanted to reassure Cindy. I am trying. I am still here.

The beeping sound was getting slower and slower. Then it became one long continuous BEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Camron said loudly, “Nolan, can you hear me? Nolan, open your eyes if you can hear me.”

Then, more quietly, probably facing away from her patient: “He’s unresponsive. I’ve got no pulse. Continuing chest compressions.”

“Ma’am,” a male voice was saying. “Ma’am, try to take a breath. Little breaths in through the nose. There we go.”

“Is he dead?” Cindy asked. She was crying.

“He’s still breathing and we’re doing everything we can to save him. And we’re gonna keep doing everything we can. Another breath, remember, through the nose. There you go. I need you to let go of his hand now, ma’am. Come and take a seat over here please. I need you to trade places with me now.”

Camron’s voice came again, loud but tired and winded. “We’re running out of blood,” she said. “He’s gonna bleed out if we don’t get there soon.”

ADAN

They were in Adan’s car and speeding up a mountain road within minutes of the failed assassination attempt. Adan hadn’t let his temper boil over yet. There was no time.

He and Kerr had watched as their hitman aimed and fired at Nolan, hitting the prince square in the center of the chest, exactly as planned. Adan cried out, howling with excitement when it happened.

Nolan fell backward with the force of the bullet. Blood started surging from the wound, blooming from the center of his chest outward, turning his clean white shirt arterial red.

The shooter had been told an extraction team was in place to remove him from the premises before the Gamma warriors could respond.

There was no extraction team. Having Nolan’s men put down the assassin was always part of Adan’s plan. Dead, he didn’t need to be paid.

When the Gamma warriors took him out, the hitman fell to the floor in a convenient position. The camera went sideways, but it was still facing the right direction. Kerr and Adan kept watching, the video on an angle but centered on the prince, capturing all the action that followed the shooting.

A woman, the orphanage director, had rushed to Nolan as soon as he hit the ground. She didn’t seem to care about running for safety, even before the soldiers took down the shooter. She checked Nolan’s pulse and his throat, then started performing CPR.

Adan laughed. The bullet was a hollow-point, and it was filled with wolfsbane. The lady could keep Nolan’s heart beating for a few more seconds, but the poison was going to kill him within less than a minute.

Or so Adan thought.

But after a full minute of profuse bleeding, Nolan was still conscious. He even lifted his hand to his chest. Adan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He kept watching in silence, daring not to blink.

The woman continued performing CPR for several minutes, intermittently slapping Nolan in the face. He kept passing out then waking back up. Every time he opened his eyes again, Adan’s confidence eroded more and more.

It started to feel like things were not going exactly as planned, after all.

Nolan should have died quickly.

It didn’t make sense. A Lycan can’t survive wolfsbane poisoning. No werewolf can.

It was four minutes after the shooting when the ambulance arrived at the orphanage. Six minutes when the medics got Nolan up onto a gurney. Adan saw Nolan’s chest moving up and down as they carried him out. He was still breathing.

It was time, then, to go into hiding.

Adan thought he’d only need his backup plan if the hitman was captured before he could get his shot off. It never crossed his mind that Nolan could be shot with the poisoned bullet and survive. But that’s what was happening so far.

He will die soon, Adan reassured himself. They can try to fix the gunshot wound, but it won’t heal while the poison is still in Nolan’s blood. There’s no antidote. There’s no way he can survive this.

But while his brother was still alive, Adan could not yet rest.

He could not yet take his place on the throne for granted.

Plan B was a safehouse of sorts. It was a place where they couldn’t be found, a place that didn’t even exist until recently. A place where Adan could wait until Nolan was confirmed dead.

While Nolan lived, he was still the Heir and future Alpha King. Still the one in power. Still the one in control of the law.

And as the prince’s would-be murderer, Adan was not just a wanted man now. He was public enemy number one.

The location of the safehouse was selected for the road that would lead them there. The mountain road, accessible directly from Kerr’s property, wound its way up and down the mountainside around tight corners, and led to a place just about as remote as you could find. If you were being followed on this road, you would know it.

Their go bags were already in the car. After Kerr grabbed several bottles of liquor from his office bar, loosening the cap on one and taking a swig while they walked out of the house, they were on the road.

Kerr tuned the radio to a news station. It didn’t matter which one. All of them were reporting on the shooting.

But the news teams didn’t know anything more than Adan and Kerr did. Adan flipped the radio off and they drove on in silence, checking their mirrors constantly but never spotting a trail behind them.