The Independence My Alpha Regretted novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Silver

Duncan asks to sit in the room for the surgery and Hazel lets him sit but not decide; he leaves her table to answer Chelsea's call, and Hazel wakes with her wolf stirring and asks the council to open the book on the border stones.

"Is she all right?" I asked, because it was easier than the other question.

"She's resting," Duncan said. "The healer has her."

He set Chelsea's scarf on the doctor's desk.

Then he looked at the doctor, and the doctor found a reason to go and check the hallway.

The door clicked shut.

Duncan stood in front of me with snow dripping off his coat.

"I left you in the middle of a sentence," he said.

"You left me in the middle of the Winter Ball."

"I know."

"Four hundred people watched you do it."

"I know that too." He rubbed his face with both hands. "I'm not going to ask you to forgive tonight."

"Good."

"I'm going to ask how long you've known about the silver."

"Eleven days. The scans came back on a Wednesday."

"And you booked a surgery and told the doctor and not your husband."

"I told the one who answered the phone."

He flinched.

It was a small flinch, but I saw it, and for a second I wanted to take it back.

I didn't.

"Hazel, what did I do?"

"That's the thing," I said. "I don't think there was one thing."

He stared at me.

He used to know what I was going to say before I said it.

Now his expression was distant, strained and uncertain.

"Give me the scans," he said, more softly. "Let me sit in the room Monday. Please."

"You can sit in the room."

"Thank you."

"You can't decide anything in it."

His jaw moved. He nodded once.

"Chelsea's sick," he said. "It isn't what you think."

"What do I think?"

"I don't know." He laughed, and there was no humor in it. "I don't know what you think anymore."

"That's because I stopped telling you," I said.

He had nothing to say to that, so he took off his coat and put it over my bare shoulders.

It smelled like pine and cold air and, very faintly, like her.

I let him leave it there.

On Monday at 6:50 in the morning I lay on a table in a paper gown while the surgeon looked at my scans.

Eleven pieces, he said, none larger than a grain of rice.

Eleven small bright things, sitting under my left shoulder blade since the ambush eighteen months ago.

They had dulled my wolf to a whisper.

I had thought that was just what being a Luna felt like.

Duncan sat in the plastic chair beside the table.

He had not slept.

He took my hand without asking, and I let him, because the needle was coming.

His fingers were cold as stone.

"How long?" he asked the surgeon.

"Ninety minutes, if the fragments cooperate. The Luna has asked for the lowest dose that works, so she may feel pressure."

Duncan's eyes cut to me. "Why the lowest?"

"Because I want my head clear," I said, which was true.

I did not say that the doctor had taped a small lead shield over my stomach.

Duncan didn't notice it under the blanket.

His phone buzzed in his jacket.

He let it ring out.

It buzzed again.

"Take it," I said.

"It can wait."

"It's the second time."

He looked at the screen.

I saw the name before he could turn it away.

"Chelsea," he said. "She had a bad night. She just wants to know where I am."

"Tell her."

"Hazel."

"Tell her you're at my surgery."

He answered, and he said it in a low, tired voice.

"I'm with Hazel. She's going under. I can't."

Chelsea's voice came through the speaker, thin and shaking.

I couldn't hear the words, only the rise and fall of them.

Duncan shut his eyes.

"I'll call you right back," he said, and he hung up.

He opened his mouth to tell me he was sorry.

I took my hand out of his.

"Go," I said.

"I'll be back before you wake up."

"Go, Duncan."

He went.

The door swung shut behind him, and the anesthetist put the mask over my face and told me to count backwards.

I got to seven.

I woke in a dim room with a dry mouth and a dull ache under my shoulder blade.

For the first time in eighteen months it was only an ache.

Under it, very faint, something warm and furred turned over in my chest and stretched.

My wolf.

She was awake.

Clint sat in the chair beside the bed, with his flannel jacket on his knee.

He looked as if he'd been there all night.

"He left the minute they put you under," Clint said quietly. "Chelsea called a third time. He asked me to sit here."

I looked at the empty hand beside the bed, where mine had been.

"Where is he now?"

"With her."

"Clint," I said. "I want the council to open the book on the border stones."

He didn't ask me why.

He just closed his eyes, braced for the blow.

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