Wolf Heart

Chapter 68

JAMES

He sat in a chair in the corner of the room, wrapped in the blanket and as far away from Rayan's bedside he could manage. Meryn, on the other hand, sat beside Rayan with no struggle at all. Aelius bustled around the room, but the truth was clear on the doctor's face. Rayan breathed once more, but the vita-monitor betrayed his heart, where they removed the destroyed pieces of his arm, hooked up to a machine of wires and pulsing buttons while a brow shield covered his golden eyes.

He placed his hands between his legs and bit down on his lips. His world spun, and he put his hands on his temples instead to chase the nausea. Blood stained his uniform, and he tried to wipe some of it off his hands and successfully stifled a late scream.

"He's stabilized," Aelius said with his attention focused on Rayan Falae, strapped to the healing pod. "As long as we keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours, he'll make it through."

Will he, though? I was too late... to wake up.

Gravity choked him as the blanket weighed on him further while Rayan breathed with a sense of hollowness. No matter how many times Meryn told him it had to count for something, it left a bittersweet taste of ash in his mouth.

"James," Meryn said.

He edged further into his chair and swallowed the rest of his tears when they fell down his cheeks.

"Give him a minute, Meryn," Aelius mumbled with his attention back on him instead of Rayan. "I'll take care of him after." He sighed and returned to Rayan. "It's still a slippery slope we're going into."

The truth he couldn't face.

James leaped out of the chair and left the warm blanket behind to rush out the door and flee the vacuum of emotions which choked him with his actions and consequences — and everything he couldn't do. Heavy footsteps followed him out into the corridor of the bunker, where defectors hid in the shadows where disbelief and emptiness shook their core — their entire world ended with Rayan Falae.

James dove into a corner and smashed himself into it to fight for his breath in the ocean. Meryn headed to him with his hands outstretched.

"It's over," he rasped with his failing voice.

It was over, and everything was wrong.

James shook in spot and slid to the ground with his hands against his face to erase the images of Rayan, caked in blood, raising the gun to his own head. Ready to die when he hesitated.

"Ray's going to survive," Meryn whispered. "It's a small victory, right? Isn't that what matters?"

James whimpered and held onto the corner for dear life. "You call that a small victory?" He crawled deeper into it to escape the dusty cascade of war. "Maybe it would've been a mercy to end it... but I couldn't. I looked him in the face and I couldn't do it." He sucked in a breath and held it to avoid a sob then shielded himself with his arm against the wall. "Go back to him and your brother." He let a sob escape him. "Go back, Meryn."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

A steady hand rested on his back. "James, you're my friend too. You're not doing well."

James forced a smile on his face, but the pain cracked through his cheeks as he sank from Meryn's touch. Someone who had every reason to resent him. He would have. He did — abandoned and alone, left to choke on his smoke-filled lungs. He hugged himself again. "I'm great compared to Rayan. Peak physical health." He strangled a sobbing laugh against the wall and held his temples.