The Alpha King and His Virgin Bride novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Code at Greywater
Linnea restarts a dying stranger's heart with her bare hands against his family's orders, he opens gold eyes and calls her his, and his mother tells her the curse: if he takes her she dies, and if he doesn't he's dead by the Blood Moon.
The man on the floor had been dead for four minutes, and his family wanted me to leave him that way.
There were thirty of them in the great hall.
Nobody was doing compressions.
Nobody was even kneeling.
They stood in a ring around him.
"Who called this in?" I said.
"I did." A girl with cropped black hair pushed through them. "Please. He stopped breathing."
Arne came in behind me with the monitor bag, puffing from the stone steps.
An older man in a gray wool coat stepped into my path.
He was heavy, clean-shaven, iron-gray hair cut close to the skull.
"There's been a mistake," he said. "My nephew has passed. You can go."
"Has a doctor pronounced him?"
"I'm telling you he's gone."
"Then you won't mind me checking."
I walked around him.
The man on the floor was enormous, six-four at least, black hair spilled across the flagstones.
He was barefoot, in jeans and a flannel shirt.
I dropped to my knees and put two fingers to his neck.
His skin was so cold it burned.
Not cold like a body.
Cold like lake ice in February.
Gray lines ran up from his wrists under the skin, branching.
No pulse.
No breath.
"Starting compressions," I said, and locked my hands on his sternum.
Arne knelt on his other side and ripped open the airway kit.
"Lord," he muttered. "He's like a side of beef out of the freezer."
I counted out loud and pushed.
Thirty.
Arne bagged him twice.
Thirty more.
Nothing.
My arms were shaking by the third round.
The ring of people didn't move.
The girl who'd called was crying with her fist against her mouth.
"That's enough," the man in the gray coat said. "Let him go."
"Get me the pads," I said to Arne.
He slapped the monitor open.
I grabbed the man's flannel shirt at the collar and tore it down the middle.
Buttons skittered across the stone.
My bare palms landed flat on his chest.
His heart kicked under my hand.
Once.
Then again, hard.
I felt warmth spread out from under my fingers.
The gray lines on his wrists faded as I watched.
The monitor screamed and then settled into a rhythm.
Sinus. Fast. Strong.
"Arne," I whispered. "Are you seeing this?"
"I'm seeing it," he said. "I don't believe it, but I'm seeing it."
The man's chest rose under my hands.
He dragged in a breath so deep it lifted me.
Then his eyes opened.
They were gold.
Not hazel.
Not amber.
Gold, like a coin held up to a candle.
He looked straight at me.
His big hand came up and closed around my wrist, pinning my palm against his heart.
"Mine," he said.
His voice was rough and low and so sure it went through me.
The whole room went silent.
Then somebody behind me drew a breath.
The gold drained out of his eyes.
They turned pale gray.
He looked at my hand on his chest, then at my face, and something shut behind his eyes.
He let go of me.
"Get her out of my house," he said.
I sat back on my heels.
"You're welcome," I said.
"Tove." He didn't look at me again. "Get her out."
"She just brought you back," the girl said. "Vidar, she..."
"Now."
The man in the gray coat closed his hand on my wrist.
His grip was hard enough to grind the bones.
"You heard the King," he said.
The King.
I filed that away for later.
I twisted my wrist toward his thumb, the way they teach you with combative drunks, and broke his hold.
He looked at his own empty hand.
"Touch me again and I call the sheriff," I said. "My patient just came out of cardiac arrest. Nobody is moving him and nobody is moving me."
"Linnea," Arne said quietly.
"I've got it."
I put the stethoscope in my ears and pressed it to the patient's chest.
He went very still.
His heart was hammering.
"Pressure," I said.
Arne wrapped the cuff around his arm.
The patient stared at the beams of the ceiling while we worked.
His jaw was so tight I could see the muscle jump.
"One-forty over ninety," Arne said. "Sir, you need a hospital."
"No."
"You were dead," I said. "For four minutes. That's not a no situation."
"Give me the paper."
"What paper?"
"The one that says I refused."
I held it out.
He signed it without reading it.
Vidar Rask, in heavy black letters that tore the page.
I signed under him.
Then I packed the bag myself, slowly, because I was not going to be rushed out by a ring of people who'd stood there and watched a man die.
When I stood up, the room parted for me.
Nobody spoke.
A woman was waiting by the great oak doors.
She was in her late fifties, tall and straight, black hair streaked with silver.
Her eyes were the same pale gray as his.
She stepped in front of me.
"What's your name?"
"Linnea Odegaard. Gull Harbor Ambulance."
She looked at my hands.
Then she leaned close, and I smelled cold air and woodsmoke on her.
"You've woken it, girl," she said.
"Woken what?"
"The curse on my son."
I almost laughed.
She didn't let me.
"If he takes you, you die," she said. "If he doesn't, he's dead by the Blood Moon."
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