“What the fuck happened to him?” Nicolae bellowed as he and my professional stalkers stood aside in a mostly white room while a woman in a white coat held an oxygen mask over my face. They weren’t the first words Nicolae had spoken since our hectic return to the condos, which evidently included an entire floor made up of medical facilities, but they were the first he’d spoken in English. “I told you to watch him, not get him killed!”

“He was fine,” Vasil protested. “He just had too much to drink.”

I wanted to interject on their behalf, but I was still coughing too hard to speak. “Just breathe,” the doctor ordered. She was American, which explained the change in language.

“You sure he’s not a fish?” Lon asked dryly.

“Fuck you, assh—” That was all I could make out before I started coughing again, but he got the message.

The doctor shot me a scathing look. “Breathe, Jack.”

I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs burned in protest. To my humiliation, once I’d finally gotten enough air to bother looking up, Nicolae was watching me. He always seemed to find me at my lowest moments. In this case, I’d been brought to his doorstep in the middle of one. I was expecting irritation in those stormy blue eyes, not the concern I found.

Somehow, that was worse. At least when he was mocking me, I could defend myself. I didn’t know what to do with his pity, and I didn’t want it. I’d been vehemently opposed to the idea of the hunt, but the idea that he might think twice about it because he saw me as fragile or weak made me want to have a go with the three of them right there.

I tried to tell myself I only cared about appearing strong around Nicolae because he was my romantic rival, but the oxygen deprivation was making it hard to keep lying to myself.

“Here,” the doctor said, pulling the mask off my face to offer me an inhaler. “Try this now, I think you’re breathing enough.”

I took the small red canister and wheezed out as much air as I could without starting up another fit. Always a thin tightrope to walk. I pressed down on the aerosol pump and breathed in deep, letting the acrid vapor fill my lungs. It burned, but in a good way. I held my breath for as long as I could, which ended up being half of the recommended ten seconds. I coughed a few times and did it again. This time, the medication actually stayed in my lungs long enough that I felt the spasms subside.

I’d had my share of bad ones, but they’d never lasted quite that long or been that severe. Then again, I usually wasn’t stupid enough to forget my inhaler. As soon as I could breathe again, I stopped wanting to. Nicolae, Vasil and Lon were all looking at me in varying degrees of pity and concern. “I’m fine,” I coughed. “It happens.”

“How long have you had asthma?” the doctor asked, frowning.

“Dunno. Five, six years?”

“Is that how long it’s been since you were diagnosed, or since the symptoms started?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. Both, I guess.”

“Leave,” Nicolae growled to his men. Vasil and Lon tripped over each other fleeing the room. I was going to owe them more than a few beers to make up for this. So much for finally getting a couple of the pack members to like me.

Not that I planned on staying. I had to keep reminding myself of that. As soon as the chance came, Ellie and I were out, assuming I didn’t get myself hospitalized before she even got home.

“What’s wrong with him, Kel?” Nicolae asked.

“Hard to say without running some tests,” said the doctor. She watched me closely, continuing to frown behind the thick yellow glasses that almost matched the color of her hair. “You’ve worked in the mines for how many years?”

I knew exactly what she was getting at, and she was probably right, but I’d been living in denial for a long time and another day wasn’t going to kill me. It wasn’t going to keep me from dying, either. That’s what I’d always told myself so I’d have an excuse to not seek a diagnosis and hear for certain that I had an expiration date.

“My doc back home said it was just asthma.”

“Your doctor whom I’m assuming is paid handsomely by the mining company you work for,” she shot back.

I probably would have liked her under any other circumstances, but today, she was just another prick standing between me and my reunion with my kid. She pulled the stethoscope off her neck and popped the buds in her ears. “Take a deep breath,” she said, lifting my shirt up in the back to press the cold metal against my skin.

“Do as she says,” Nicolae demanded, as if he could read my mind and see the obstinacy forming.

I complied, willing my lungs not to betray me. I’d put up with enough of their shit, they owed me this.

“Again,” said Kel.

I took another breath and started coughing. She pulled the stethoscope back around her neck and frowned at me again. She was going to need an ice pack if she didn’t loosen her expression.

“What is it?” Nicolae asked. I could tell he wanted to make her tell him from the way his arms were folded and his foot kept tapping out his nervous energy, but he could be civil when he wanted to. Just not with me.

“I need to run an X-ray. There’s a lot of rattling. It could be fluid, or it could be congestion. I won’t know until I see the pictures.”

“Nope,” I said, standing up from the cot. “Whatever it is, it can wait until after Ellie’s back.”

Kel sighed and looked at Nicolae. He nodded and she left, a reminder that the answers I gave didn’t matter anymore. Not when his always overrode them. That blood-laced ink on my back made sure of it.

I couldn’t wait for the day I burned that sucker off and just hoped I’d live long enough to get the chance.

“You’re not going anywhere until the doctor gives the go ahead and finds out what’s wrong with you,” he said firmly. “Mason isn’t picking Ellie up from the airport until tomorrow night.”

“No,” I growled, my voice still raspy from the coughing. He seemed stunned into silence by my insistence, or possibly just the fact that he’d never heard the word no before, so I continued. “I don’t want Mason around her. I don’t trust him.”

He arched an eyebrow. “That’s not your call to make.”

“Yes, it is. This is your pack, and she’s my daughter. I’ve played by every rule you’ve thrown at me, but I’m not compromising when it comes to her.”

“Mason is my son, and he’s one of our best soldiers.” The offense behind his words came as a relief. At least he wasn’t entirely impartial toward his own flesh and blood.

“I don’t care if he shits rainbows and volunteers at church on the weekend. I. Don’t. Trust. Him. Not around her.”

Nicolae’s brow furrowed, and I could feel him deciding whether he was going to let my insolence slide. To my surprise, he relaxed and said, “Fine.”

“Fine? Just like that?”

“I’ll send Vasil. What more do you want?”

He wasn’t my first choice, but compared to Mason, he was a boy scout and I wasn’t going to press my luck. “Thank you.”

Something told me he was only humoring me because I was sick, but I could live with that if it meant he took me seriously.

Nicolae said nothing, but I could feel the weight of the words he wanted to say pressing down on my chest, making it even harder to breathe.

“What were you doing on the other side of town?” I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to ask, but I was relieved it was something I could answer honestly.

“I wanted to know who you had following me, so I tried to give them the slip at the train station and we ended up having drinks.”

Nicolae snorted in amusement and shook his head. “From what Vasil told me on the phone, you gave them quite a time.”

“I tried. They’re better.”

“They should be. They’ve been training since they were children.”

I had to wonder what form they took then. Toddlers? Puppies? “At least now I’ll be able to think, ‘hey, that’s my buddy Vasil’ if he takes down my out-of-shape ass on the full moon.”

Nicolae frowned. “We’ll see.”

“We’ll see? Vasil said he was doing it.”

“We’ll see about you participating at all,” he clarified.

“What? I have to. You said it yourself, the Court won’t recognize us as mates unless we follow the tradition.”

“If you’re sick —“

“Bullshit, I’m not sick, I’m just an asthmatic who stopped working out when he got a promotion,” I muttered. “I’m doing this.”

Nicolae narrowed his eyes. “First, you bitch about our ‘savage traditions,’ and now that you’re actually at risk, you’re giving me a hard time about sitting out?”

“I have to bitch. I’m southern, it’s what we do,” I shot back. “Doesn’t mean we don’t follow through on shit.”

“Healthy people don’t just collapse and have coughs that never go away, Jack,” he said in that same tone he always used when he wanted to make me feel like a child. “I thought you were just not feeling well, but it’s obvious there’s something more going on if you’ve been sick for this long.”

“You don’t think I fucking know that?”

He seemed surprised at my anger yet again, like he saw me as some one-dimensional idiot and occasional fucktoy who never had a thought more complex than deciding what I wanted for dinner.

“I know I’m sick,” I said once I’d caught my breath.

“Then why haven’t you gotten tested?”

“So, what, they could tell me I’m dying and I can’t provide for my family?” I challenged. “So we could live off disability payments while Franny waited tables to make ends meet? You live in a different world. Well, so did I. In the world I was born into, nothing is free. Nothing. I grew up in a shack and never knew whether there’d be a meal on the table the next night, or whether my mother would’ve smoked our grocery money. When Francesca told me she was pregnant, I swore to a God I had only ever cursed up to that point that if He gave me a way to provide for them, I’d give our child the kind of life I’d only ever dreamed of. That she would never know what it was like to be cold or hungry or wonder every time her dad left for work if this would be the day he didn’t come back.”

I started coughing again and he was at my side the next second, grabbing my shoulders. I cursed my body and him when he held a cup of water to my lips, giving me that pitying look that made me want to kill him the way I should have wanted to the moment I’d realized who he was. I pushed him away and collected myself.

“I knew the day I set foot in those mines that I was trading my health for a better life for Francesca and Ellie,” I said hoarsely. “It was a price I was willing to pay, and just because the piper’s come calling don’t mean I’m gonna back out now. Maybe you’re right and you can give Ellie a better life than I ever could, but that’s up to her. She still needs me, and I’m not gonna let my fucking lungs keep me from protecting her.”

He watched me, frustration turning his blank expression to a scowl. “And letting your pride get in the way of treatment is supposed to help her? All you’re doing is making sure you won’t be there for her.”

“I already know what those X-rays are gonna say,” I gritted out. “You don’t breathe coal in a goddamn tunnel for more than a decade and get good news, Nicolae.”

He set his jaw and his nostrils flared as he watched me. I could see him calculating his next mode of attack, his next attempt at reasoning with the uneducated simpleton in front of him. “There are things that can be done. Money isn’t an obstacle, and I can have the best doctors in the world here in a matter of hours. Maybe your pride kept you from taking care of this before, but the choice isn’t yours anymore.”

I wasn’t sure if he was being willfully ignorant, or just arguing for the sake of arguing. He was too smart not to know that the only diagnosis that doctor was handing down was a death sentence. That left only one explanation that made any sense at all.

“You said yourself the bond between us is minimal,” I said. “It shouldn’t affect you when I die, as long as we’re mated first and Ellie is in your custody.”

He stared at me with an unreadable expression that gradually became anger. “That’s what you think this is about?”

“What else?”

His growl made me jolt. The doctor came in before I could make sense of him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “We’re ready for him,” said Kel.

The habit all the wolves had of addressing Nicolae rather than me directly had always pissed me off, but I was out of energy and too tired to bother with more social interaction. “If I do this, I want you to promise me that no one looks at the results. Not until Ellie’s home. I don’t want this shit on my brain.”

Nicolae didn’t respond at first. He finally looked over at Kel and muttered, “Run the test, but hold the results until next Sunday.”

Sunday. He was giving me a week to be with my daughter, untainted by the inevitability of the shadow that had been growing over my shoulder for years.

“Alright,” she said, clearly bewildered by his change of heart.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, at a loss for anything else to say. Usually, I’d make a snide remark and wait for his verbal devastation in response. Now all I could do was thank him.

Nicolae wouldn’t meet my gaze and he didn’t respond, so I left the room and followed the doctor down the hall before he could change his mind.