One too Many

Chapter 48

Ian

The sight of Samara curled up in Dominic's lap, her face pale as moonlight and twisted with pain, was doing something dangerous to my chest. Something that felt like my own heart was being squeezed in a vice, each of her whimpers sending sharp jolts through my nervous system.

I'd seen her hurt before. Hell, I'd been there the night we almost lost her completely. But this was different. This was her body turning against itself in ways that terrified me because I couldn't fight it, couldn't intimidate it, couldn't make it stop with violence or threats.

All I could do was watch the woman I loved bleed and hurt and grow weaker by the hour.

"Her next dose should be in two hours and forty minutes," Asher said quietly, checking his phone for what had to be the tenth time in as many minutes. "But if the intervals keep shortening..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. We all knew what it meant when her medication schedule became erratic, her body was failing faster than we could compensate for.

Across the room, the quads were a study in barely controlled panic since they barged in minutes ago. Zaid was pacing like a caged animal, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Zain sat rigid in one of the armchairs, staring at his sister with an intensity that suggested he was trying to will her better through sheer force of concentration. Zayin was crouched beside Johan, who had finally stopped crying but was still clinging to Samara like she might disappear if he let go. And Zeiden...

Zeiden looked like he was about to be sick.

"She was once delirious with fever," he said suddenly, his voice hollow. "I was twelve, and she'd been taking care of me through the flu. I woke up and found her collapsed on the bathroom floor, burning up with fever she'd caught from me."

"Zeiden," Oscar warned gently.

"No, let me finish." His eyes never left Samara's face. "She was barely conscious, but when I tried to help her up, she looked at me and said, 'I'm sorry, baby. Mommy's just tired.' And I realized... she'd been playing mother to us for so long, she'd forgotten she was allowed to be sick too."

The silence that followed was heavy with shared memory and current fear.

"She's always been our mom," Zain said quietly. "Even when we were too young to understand what that meant. Even when she was barely older than us herself."

"And now Johan..." Oliver's voice cracked slightly. "He finally said what we've all known since the day she brought him home."

I looked down at the little boy in question, his small face pressed against Samara's shoulder, his fingers twisted in her shirt even as she dozed fitfully. He'd been inconsolable until she'd promised him she wasn't going anywhere, and even now he seemed afraid to let her out of his sight.

"It was inevitable," Paul said softly from his position by the window. "The way he looks at her, follows her around, runs to her when he's scared or hurt... She's been his mother in every way that matters since she saved him."

"The way we all ran to her," Adam added, his voice thick with emotion. "Still do."

Another whimper from Samara had all of our attention snapping back to her. She was shifting restlessly in Dominic's arms, her brow furrowed with pain even in sleep.

"How long has it been?" Cole asked tensely.

"Hour and fifty minutes," Asher replied immediately.

We were all keeping track now, all watching the clock with the kind of desperate attention usually reserved for bomb timers. Because in a way, that's what this was, a countdown to the next crisis, the next moment when her body would demand relief we weren't sure we could provide safely.