Rise Above ✓

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

 

When Brendon finally got to the hospital, he was literally running on nothing but energy drinks and he felt about ready to collapse. For the past eighteen hours, he’d been trying to make sure Spencer was as safe as possible, briefing the alpha’s from the precinct watching over him to be suspicious about any betas or omegas that weren’t him or showed up unannounced until the officers had to forcefully lead him out of the hotel because he was obviously freaking out and didn’t want to leave Spencer’s side.

There were three alphas with him. He’d be okay, Brendon thought as the elevator doors finally opened and he made his way to the required room, where Tania Hanson was waiting for him.

Brendon had only met Tania a handful of times in his life, being Spencer’s assistant meant he worked more from behind the scenes and he stayed in the lab most of the time. So he’d mostly only heard about the top two officers in the precinct, Tania Hanson and Dallas Crane. The day before – or was it the day before that? Gods, he’d lost his sense of time – was the first time he was meeting Bill Anderson and newly transferred Markus Rowan.

“McKelly!” a quaint voice called out and Brendon looked up, spotting a petite omega who he recognized as Tania.

He forced himself to stop thinking and panicking about Spencer as he approached her quickly, his work mode coming on. “What’s the emergency?”

She frowned a little at him in concern. “Are you okay? You look like shit.”

Brendon felt his heart throb at the attention. He wanted nothing more than to tell her everything, Gods, he just wanted to be comforted for once and be told that he did nothing wrong. But he knew that he did everything wrong – he screwed everything up.

“Thanks,” he replied dryly, evading her question and blinking rapidly to stop the build-up of tears. His eyes immediately darted to the observation windows of the room Tania was standing outside.

There was a patient sleeping on the bed and someone that vaguely looked a lot like Tania sitting beside the bed and staring at the patient unblinkingly.

“My brother,” Tania whispered, noticing Brendon’s curious stare, “that’s his mate Chris in the bed. He was brought in here a day ago. I called you because I think there might be a connection between his currently comatose state and the virus.”

Brendon could feel his head begin to pound. “I think I need another drink.”

“Make that two,” Tania added tiredly, glancing back into the room with obvious love and worry at her brother.

Brendon was so tired of this shit.

*

Brendon was hyperventilating.

He stared hard into the test tube and nope, that wasn’t a trick of the lights or his own exhaustion. While Chris’s blood held the same characteristics of the previously murdered alphas, there were subtle differences that told him that this wasn’t the same virus.

It was a whole new virus.

A fucking new virus.

Brendon buried his face in his palms. Just what the fuck he was he going to do? How was he going to go out there and tell Tania that he didn’t know what the hell was going on because whatever was given to her brother’s mate was a completely new ball game?