Chapter 8: Open

I got there before the King did, because I was already running.

Edgar's rooms were on the first floor, a big square chamber with a four-poster bed and a hearth that nobody had lit.

He lay across the quilt with blood on his chin.

Two pack healers stood over him with their hands doing nothing, and Sabra was kneeling at the bedside, crying beautifully.

The tall woman stood at the foot of the bed with her keys gripped in one fist.

"Out," she said when she saw me. "You're a guest. This is pack business."

"He keeps calling for her," a young healer said, miserable. "Every time he opens his eyes. He won't take anything from us."

"Let me look," I said.

"You'll do no such thing..."

"Madam," said Osian from the doorway.

He had put his shirt back on, but the top three buttons were missing, and he filled the frame.

"My healer has asked to look at your Alpha. I would regard a refusal as an act of war."

The tall woman's mouth went white.

She stepped back.

I sat on the edge of the bed and put two fingers on Edgar's wrist.

His pulse was a runaway thing, galloping and stumbling.

His eyes opened.

They were blue and bloodshot and fixed on my face with a terrible hunger.

I felt the oddest tug in my chest.

"Don't," I said to myself, out loud.

"Pardon?" said the young healer.

"Nothing. I need his shirt open."

The pale quarter-zip had been torn, and under it, across his sternum, ran a bruise the colour of ink.

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