LUCIEN

 

I'M DRIFTING IN a foggy abyss with no end in sight…

"Lucien, can you hear me?  Luc?"

Someone is calling my name, but I can't seem to open my eyes.

"You would think he would want to wake up after sleeping for so long," the voice says, and I know that it's Jax.

"Maybe he's not ready to wake up," whispers a feminine voice.

My heart beats a little faster, thinking that Adeline is here with me in this dark world.  I struggle to open my eyes.  I need to see her.  I need to make sure she's okay.

"He'll wake up when he's ready," she says again, but this time I can tell it's not my girl.  This woman has a Russian accent, and not the melodic voice I have grown accustomed to.

I shake my head, wanting to know where Adeline is.  "Ad…" I try to talk, but my tongue feels swollen, and my jaw feels like it's made of cement.

"Wait.  He's trying to say something," Jax says.  I feel his strong grip on my weightless hand.  "Luc, you need to wake up.  Do you hear me?  Adeline needs you."

Adeline needs me.  Adeline needs me.  Adeline needs me.

My mind is nothing but a dark fog, and I can't remember anything of what happened before I fell asleep.  I don't understand why I can't wake up.  Did I drink too much last night?

"Do you think he can hear you?" says a deep voice I recognize as Wraith's.

"I'm going to find out," Jax says determinedly.  "Luc…Adeline is gone.  She was kidnapped, and I lost track of her.  I need you to wake up and help me find her."

Adeline is gone?

She was kidnapped…

Struggling to move, I manage to pry one eyelid open enough to allow a searing light inside, causing me to grunt and close it again.

"Turn off the lights," Jax tells someone.  Then he squeezes my hand and says, "Luc, please wake the fuck up."  After a deep sigh, he confesses, "I need you.  I can't do this without you."  And then he adds, "Adeline needs you."

Adeline needs me.

A guttural moan escapes my chapped lips and raw throat as I force my body to obey my brain.  Wake the fuck up! I scream internally at myself.

It starts off slow with my fingers twitching and then my toes.  And then I'm able to squeeze Jax's hand.

"He's waking up," Jax whispers breathlessly.

Every twitch of muscle, every single movement hurts like a son of a bitch, but I keep trying, keep moving.  For her.

The fog that had overtaken my brain slowly starts to clear away, and forgotten memories come rushing back as if I'm watching a movie on the big screen.

Giovanni and his men overtaking the manor…

A man bringing her into the gym…

Adeline breaking free and me holding her so damn tightly in my arms…

And then Giovanni has her…

He's waving a gun towards me…

BANG!

My entire body convulses on the bed as I relive the gunshot to my thigh.

The fear in Adeline's eyes…

I try to tell her I love her…but…

BANG!

I scream in agony as I remember the bullet ripping right through my fucking chest.

I tried to tell Adeline I loved her, but I couldn't.  It was too late.  It was too fucking late.

And then I'm falling.

I'm falling…into…darkness…with the water surrounding me and my lungs screaming for oxygen…

"Easy, Luc!  Easy!" Jax says from beside me, his powerful hands holding me down against the soft mattress.

Gasping for air, my eyes snap open, and I struggle to breathe.

"It's all right.  You're safe now," Jax says hurriedly, gripping my arms tight.

"Adeline!" I croak, my voice sounding gruff and hoarse.

"We're going to find her," he tells me assuredly.  "I promise you we'll find her."

I take in the room, realizing that I'm still in the mansion in one of the spare bedrooms that has been stripped and made into a makeshift hospital room.

The place looks sterile, but I still feel as though my skin is crawling.  And when I stare down at the various tubes and other contraptions, which are pumping medicine and other fluids in and out of me, I begin to panic.

My fingers fumble with the IV in my arm, but Jax grasps my hands, stilling me.  "Easy, tiger," he chuckles.  "You still need this stuff to get back to a hundred percent.  And if you pull your IV out, I'll just have to poke you again with a new needle."

I grimace at his words. I was poked and prodded and god only knows what else while I was unconscious.

Horrific images bombard me as I think about falling into the pool after I was shot…the dirty water…the germs seeping into my skin and infecting me…and then people touching me…undressing me…all while I lay unconscious…

My breathing picks up, my heart thumping hard against my ribcage as I accelerate into a full-blown panic attack.  The monitors behind me start beeping erratically to convey my elevated blood pressure and erratic heartbeat.

"Luc, calm down!" Jax says quickly.  "You're safe now.  You're going to be okay."

I snap my eyes shut and think about Adeline.  I have to be strong for her.  My fucked-up mind won't do us any good if I'm stuck here in this little bubble and not able to find her out in the real world.

It takes me several minutes of Jax calming me down until my breathing eventually returns to normal and I can finally relax back onto the hospital-style bed.

"How…long?" I bite out, my throat feeling like sandpaper.

Jax stares at me evenly before he answers.  "You've been out of it for a little over two weeks."

Two weeks?!

His answer floors me.  I sit up quickly, and the motion makes my head spin with a bout of dizziness.  "Fuck," I grate out, slumping back against the bed.

"It wasn't easy bringing you back.  Trust me," Jax says, and I can hear the tremor in his voice he's trying so hard to conceal.  "We're just lucky Wraith got to you in time."

My eyes meet the tall, burly Russian in the corner of the room.  He stands perfectly still with military precision and regards me with stone-cold blue eyes.  "I was on my way back to the island when I received your distress call.  I made it just in time to save you.  I pulled you out of the pool and gave you CPR until Jax arrived."  He grits his teeth as he bites out, "But I couldn't stop them from taking Adeline."

I glare at him.  "You should have gone after her!  You should have fucking saved her, not me!" I yell.

"He saved your life, Luc!" Jax voices sternly.  "He couldn't fucking save you and her.  Don't you get that?  If he wouldn't have pulled you from the water and stopped you from bleeding out until I could get here, you'd be dead.  And you're the only chance we have of finding Adeline.  So, I would have lost you both," he says, his voice breaking on the last word.

My eyes meet his, and I can see the pain behind those gray orbs.

"Wraith was only doing his job," a small voice says, but it's full of anger.

My gaze falls upon a tall, young, blonde standing near Wraith with her arms folded across her chest, a cocked brow and looking like she's ready to take on the whole world.  She gives me an unforgiving and hard glare, and I stare at her, trying to place her.  But I can't seem to remember her.

"This is Katerina," Jackson says, answering the question that must be written all over my face.

"Katya," she corrects him, giving him the side eye.

"Katya is my…my girlfriend," he says hesitantly.

"In your dreams," Katya snaps, and Jax grimaces.

"She's clearly not ready to put a label on us yet," he says with a sly grin.  "She's just avoiding the inevitable, though."  Then he adds, "Besides, I think our couple nickname, Katson, has a certain ring to it."

Katya dramatically rolls her blue eyes to the ceiling, and it makes me smile.  Perhaps Jax finally found his match — someone who won't put up with his shit and keep his ass in line.

I like her already.

"He kidnapped me, you know," she reveals with a cocked hip and a snarky attitude.

I raise a brow at Jax, and he simply shrugs his shoulders.  "It looks like I have a lot to catch up on," I tell him.

"You have no idea," he says with a shake of his head.