“First, she faked the flu to avoid a family dinner, and now this.” Mom clucked her tongue and gestured for the two packmates in the doorway to enter. “Am I such bad company that she would prefer blowing herself up to eating one meal with me?”
“I don’t think she blew herself up,” he rasped, his voice deeper than ever.
The nurses had wheeled a rolling tray over his bed and Hadley’s, which had been pushed together, giving them a broad dining surface. His mother had a third tray placed near the guest chair. Her helpers for the day unloaded fried chicken from Ben’s, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, corn on the cob, and potato wedges. There were individual chocolate lava cakes too.
“I wasn’t sure if you two were up to drinking more than water.” Mom did her best not to hover in front of the others, but her nervous tension vibrated through the room and cowed them all the same. Noticing this, she set a hand on each of their shoulders to disperse the oppressive sensation. “Thank you for your help. I’ll be home in an hour or two.”
Knowing better than to argue with their alpha about shucking her guards, they left.
“Water is fine.” He stroked Hadley’s hair, the ends as blackened as the curls she still gripped in her fist. “The more ice, the better.”
Mom ducked out to request three glasses of water from the nurses, and he used that time to wake Hadley.
“Open your eyes,” he coaxed, “and I’ll give you chocolate.”
“Mmm.” She snuggled closer. “Chocolate.”
“And fried chicken. From Ben’s.”
The faint rumble of her stomach where it pressed against him must have tipped the scales, and she yawned deeply.
“Breakfast in bed.” She went to rub her eye and got a face full of scorched hair. “What is…?”
“Hadley.” He clamped his hands on her wrists as her eyes rounded. “It’s okay.”
“I’m holding half your scalp in my hand.” She flexed her fingers. “That is not okay.”
“It’s only hair,” he soothed. “It will grow back.”
“Your skin,” she cried. “Goddess, why didn’t you shove me off you?”
“I didn’t mind.”
“You’re covered in blisters.” Her eyes glimmered as they traveled to his face, over his head. “And you’re bald.”
“They shaved my head.” He twitched a shoulder. “It was easier that way.”
Tears falling, she reached over him and dumped the handful of blackened hair onto his head. “There.”
Midas chuckled, and then he laughed, and then he coughed until he tasted blood in his throat.
“Told you I was funny,” she said softly, her eyes full of worry. “What were you thinking?”
“That I had to get to you.”
“You could have been killed.”
“The bomb went off in your apartment. You could have been killed.”
“I, for one, am grateful you’re both still alive.” Mom carried in the water then began to serve them, as she would have at her own table. “The pack is still talking about how Hadley carried you to safety.”
Stunned, Midas stared at Hadley. “I thought I was hallucinating.”
“I did apologize to your ego before I lifted you.” She slid off him to her side of the bed. “That’s not going to cost you points, is it?”
“On the contrary,” Mom assured her. “You’re courting.” She cut him a sharp look that warned he better come clean with her sooner rather than later about the mating. “The pack views your heroics as a positive sign that Midas has chosen a worthy partner.” She bent and kissed Hadley’s forehead. “I am inclined to agree.”
“He pulled me out of the fire,” she stammered. “I would have been trapped there.”
“The pack saw him rush from the meeting straight to your door.” A smile curved her lips. “He won’t lose points on any front.” She patted Hadley on the cheek then removed the clot of hair from Midas’s head and tossed it in the trash. “You behaved as any mated couple should in a time of crisis.”
A frown knit Hadley’s brow, but she let it go. She must have taken Mom’s statement as a future possibility and not a present situation. He was just thankful she didn’t run screaming from the room.
“I didn’t get blown up to avoid family dinner,” she mumbled in the face of her heaping plate.
“No one that dedicated to my son would commit suicide to avoid his mother,” she said lightly as she took her seat. “Now, Hadley.” She bit into a biscuit. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Hadley swallowed audibly and shared a worried glance with him.
He took her hand under the table, and he didn’t let go.
Twelve
When Abbott arrived to brief us on our injuries, I tried my best to look innocent. Since he kept staring down his nose at me like I really had decided to blow myself up for funsies, I assumed it didn’t work. Somewhere along the way, he had become my de facto personal physician, and he wasn’t amused when he was forced to glue me back together.
“Midas has third-degree burns covering one quarter of his skin. He will heal the worst of it within the next thirty-six hours. He’ll be sore, but he will fully recover. Scarring will be minimal.” Abbott used his pen to knock a stubborn black curl off Midas’s head onto the floor. “Hadley is healing much faster than anticipated from smoke inhalation and is otherwise unharmed.”
The room had a watery quality, as if it wasn’t quite real. “Why am I so loopy if I didn’t get hurt?”
“You drew your sword and attempted to skewer one too many nurses. We sedated you to treat Midas.”
“Oh,” I said in a quiet voice. “Sorry about that.”
Midas chuckled under his breath, devolving into a coughing fit that required water to sooth his parched throat.
“It’s fine.” Abbott spread his hands. “It happens more often than you might think.”
That made me feel
