I glance at Mateo right when his eyes glaze over. I snap my gaze back to Kat. The black veins are moving, appearing, and disappearing. The color drains and recolors her cheeks. Her body switches between the temperatures. One moment it’s freezing cold, and the next, it’s hot to the touch.
It is like Kat is stuck between dying and living. My mark burns like someone is holding a blowtorch to it.
“Mathias is on his way. We need to get her downstairs,” Mateo orders, shoving me aside to scoop Kat up in his arms. I almost lose my balance, but manage to go after him as Mateo runs down the stairs with our mate.
My heart thunders against my rib cage as Mateo places her on the floor and drops to his knees next to Kat. He presses his ear to her chest, checking if he can hear a heartbeat.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, or how I can help. I try to think of the warrior’s mandatory medical lessons, but those never covered occasions such as this. Bandaging someone up? Yes, sure. But watching your mate die? For fuck’s sake!
Mathias’ voice flits through my head. “Five minutes out,” he assures me, as I hear him scrambling to the packhouse. His arrival is supposed to put me at ease, but all I can think about is how he’s not fast enough.
Mateo is a picture of calm as he starts administering CPR. Maddox is pacing restlessly and growling in my head.
And while I am freaking out, eager to do whatever I can to save her, I can’t seem to tear my eyes from her pale skin’s dark veins. It makes no sense. Why does she feel like she is stuck in between? Why are our marks burning, and why are Mateo and I not affected by her? Usually, when she is injured, we are. For her to heal, she takes it from us.
“Maybe it is internally, maybe it’s them,” Maddox suggests.
“Who?”
“The babies, they are Gemini babies, aren’t they? The Moon Goddess blessed them.”
“I don’t get it,” I huff.
“I don’t know either, but what if they are distressed and them being like Kat, it’s hurting her?” Maddox suggests just as I hear running on the gravel outside.
I hurry to open the door to see Mathias’ wolf carrying a black bag in his mouth. I take it from him and rush back inside as he follows me in and shifts behind me.
Quickly, I open the bag, having no idea what I am doing, while Mateo is still doing chest compressions.
“Lift her shirt,” Mathias’s voice instructs beside me while he pours what smells like alcohol over his hands from a clear bottle he retrieves from the bag.
I lift her shirt, revealing her stomach. Veins run across it and move beneath her skin.
“I think you may be right, Mateo,” Mathias observes, grabbing a scalpel. I look at Mateo, who is solely focused on manually pumping her heart.
“Towels, Ezra, and lots of them, and then I need you to shift,” Mathias orders.
I get to my feet and race up the stairs to the linen cupboard, grabbing handfuls of towels, and I run back downstairs to lay some out beside Mathias. He takes one of the towels, wraps it around his waist and kneels.
“We need Maddox to heal her. She won’t heal on her own once I get these babies out. Shift, Ezra,” Mathias orders, and I obey.
Maddox is severely on edge, and I am nervous about how he will react to someone cutting open his mate. Thankfully, he trusts Mathias. Maddox stays still, displaying inane patience as he stays back, watching.
“Derrick is on his way. I mind-linked him,” Mateo adds, and Maddox nods his furry head.
The scalpel runs over her stomach, and Mateo makes a pained noise. Maddox howls as it feels like we are being cut open, and Mateo’s shirt stains red. I don’t even have to look down to feel my own blood trickling to the floor.
“Shit, we can’t do this here,” Mathias curses under his breath. “You two may bleed out before either of you can heal her.” His eyes glaze over, and Kat’s wounds heal. So do ours slightly. Mathias grabs a syringe and stabs the long needle in Kat’s thigh as he injects her with something.
“Adrenaline,” he tells Maddox.
Maddox whines loudly and sniffs her leg as Mathias’s hands take over the chest compressions, while Mateo falls backward on his ass. I can feel nothing through his bond, like he is purely existing on autopilot and appears to be in shock.
Sirens blare loudly outside, and I don’t know how much time passes before Kat is carted away with Mateo.
We race to the hospital, through the forest, and head into town. We manage to take a few shortcuts and arrive simultaneously as the ambulance pulls into the Loading Zone. People rush out to meet them and open the ambulance doors.
Maddox follows behind Mateo, and Kat is rushed into surgery. Mateo and I force ourselves into the room, moving off to the side while people frantically run around, trying to save their Luna and our babies.
“Get lines in them. They will need blood once we cut her open and get a line into Kat, too,” Mathias orders while still doing chest compressions.
I can hear the steady beating of our little babies’ hearts. Kat’s skin is still covered in wriggling dark veins.
A nurse sticks a needle in Mateo’s arm, staring straight ahead before trying to do it to me, but Maddox refuses to shift.
“Leave him,” Mathias orders the nurse.
He knows Maddox isn’t going to. His eyes won’t leave Kat as they work on her. My heart beats, so frantically, I may have a heart attack.
I can’t believe this is happening. She’s dying before our eyes. What happened? What went wrong? Where the fuck did we go wrong? She was fine just hours ago, soundly asleep on my chest, and now… Now all I can do is stand aside and watch.