Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Page 11

  Had I not been grinding my teeth so loudly, I might have heard the subtle tick, tick, tick.

  I definitely heard the boom.

  Eleven

  The floor trembled beneath his feet, and Midas knew in his bones that his world was ending.

  “What was that?” Hand over her heart, Ares scanned the ceiling. “It sounded like…”

  An explosion.

  Alarms screamed through the room, deafening him, but he ignored the ringing in his ears.

  All Midas could see beyond the red haze of his beast rising was the stack of boxes Hadley had been carrying. He skipped the elevator and hit the stairs, running as fast as his preternatural strength allowed. Prayers he had forgotten how to shape fell from his lips, pleas for mercy, for Hadley.

  The knob on the door leading to her floor scalded his hand when he grasped it, and his heart lurched. He ignored the stink of skin cooking and yanked until it fell off its hinges. A gust of smoke blasted his face, and his eyes watered from the heat.

  “Hadley,” he screamed over the roaring flames licking up the walls. “Hadley.”

  Man and beast synced with a tectonic shift within him, and the two discordant halves aligned in a desperate bid to pool their resources to reach their mate.

  Rushing into the hall, he pivoted toward her apartment and almost fell to his knees.

  The door was gone, and shrapnel peppered the hall. Open sky nursed whirling smoke through the shattered windows, but the haze persisted as the fire burned hotter and spread faster than was natural.

  “Goddamn it, Hadley.” His voice broke on her name. “Answer me.”

  “Here.” A throaty cough pinpointed her location. “I’m here.”

  Midas sprinted down the hall, burst into her apartment, and found her seated on a perfect circle of uncharred flooring.

  “You set a circle,” he breathed, and instantly regretted it. “Thank God.”

  With her finger, she smudged the line and lunged for him. “You’re on fire.”

  “I’ll heal.” He would have carried her, but he couldn’t get his hands to work. “Don’t…worry…about me.”

  “Your hair.” She hit him in the head and on the neck. “Why are you so flammable?”

  Hair product, he wanted to quip, for one more of those smiles, but the edges of the hall warped and twisted as he ran out of oxygen.

  Too much smoke in his lungs. Too far to run. Too late to escape.

  Hands on his shoulders, she gazed into his eyes. “Tell your ego I’m sorry for this in advance.”

  The world tilted horizontally, and he couldn’t figure out why.

  “I’ve got you,” she panted. “Think light thoughts, okay?”

  Disoriented, he didn’t fight the delusion of her carrying him to safety. It beat the reality, he was sure.

  “Lighter,” she wheezed, her voice faint. “Light as a feather, a balloon, a…” She lapsed into a coughing fit. “I love barbeque too much to go out like this.”

  Might as well tell the delusion the truth since the real Hadley was beyond his reach. “I love…”

  Cool air kissed his face, sweet and clean, and he sucked in heaving gulps.

  “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” she chanted as she carried him down the stairs. “Just another minute.”

  Voices rang out in the stairwell, and more hands touched him until he wanted to scream from the agony.

  “I’m Captain Gray,” a man rumbled from the other end of a long tunnel, “from Fire Station Thirteen.”

  The man’s name was unfamiliar, but thirteen was the unlucky station that fielded the paranormal calls.

  “Aubrey,” Captain Gray bellowed over the chaos. “Get upstairs and contain the fire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring him to the infirmary,” Abbott barked over the others. “Her too.”

  Hadley protested as Midas was wrenched from her arms, but Captain Gray didn’t bend.

  “I’ve got him, sweetheart.” He called out two names, and more feet pounded the stairs. “Carry her.”

  The grunts and curses told Midas that didn’t go over well with Hadley, and he wanted to smile with pride at how fierce she was, even with embers in her hair.

  The bright scent of the blood she had drawn, fighting like a wildcat, stained the air with the smell of crimson…and feline.

  God, his senses were fried if all it took was thinking cat to smell one.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying in a hospital bed harder than some forest floors with Hadley next to him.

  “Your hair,” she whispered, eyes closed. “I protected it.”

  Midas glanced at her hand and the fistful of scorched curls she held in a death grip.

  “It will grow back,” he assured her, grateful to be able to touch her, to convince himself she was alive.

  “Promise?”

  Smiling hurt, but he couldn’t help himself. “I promise.”

  The squeal of rubber wheels over laminate flooring dragged Midas up from sleep, and he woke buried under Hadley, who had climbed over him in a protective cling while he rested. It made him ache, but not enough he would ever tell her so.

  “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 slightly less like a homicidal freak. Until he assured me the two firemen I had no memory whatsoever of assaulting when they took Midas from me had both been treated and sent home to recover from their injuries.

  Oops.

  “Bishop is here, if you’re up to seeing him.” Abbott paled before adding, “So is Remy.”

  A low growl rumbled through Midas’s chest, but he rubbed his throat, too sore to fuss about her.

  Poor Remy.

  She wasn’t all that bad once you got to know her, assuming you survived the process. On the other hand, she did have a reputation for attempted vehicular manslaughter where gwyllgi were concerned. I could see how that would make Abbott nervous given Midas had been the target, and he wasn’t at his best.

  “Send them in.” Might as well get this over with all at once. “And thanks.”

  “It would have been much worse without your help.” He smiled. “Thank you for saving him.”

  Uncomfortable with the praise, I squirmed beneath the weight of his gratitude. The tender kiss Midas pressed to my cheek was much easier to bear.

  “We missed the party last night.” I frowned at him. “I assume? I have no idea what day or time it is.”

  “Pretty safe bet,” he agreed. “That means the drug has been distributed to sellers.”

  “Great.” I drank more water to lubricate my dry mouth. “Now we’ll be chopping the heads off hydras.”

  “We need to take out the source,” Bishop said, entering the room on a cold breeze. “We’re going to kill those sons of bitches.” He crossed to me, yanked me into a hug that brought up the coughs I was trying to suppress, and pulled back to look me over. “I’m glad you’re okay, kid.”

  “Me too,” Remy chimed in. “I’m vague on the legalities of taking over a business after the owner dies.” No one said a word, and she swallowed. “What? I’m happy you’re not dead. You’re the only boss I’ve ever had who didn’t fire me within my first week.”

  “Your concern humbles me,” I said dryly. “Truly.”

  “Hey, I did you a solid.” She dug into the paper bag of leftovers for the container the mashed potatoes came in and scooped out the remnants with her finger. “I sent a few friends to the party, and let me tell you, the things they saw…”

  When she moved on to eating the wedges the gwyllgi had only picked at, I prompted her. “What did they see?”

  “The vampires, the wargs, and the fae all bought in. The necromancers and the gwyllgi passed.” She crunched through the cold potato. “Here’s where it gets interesting.” She wiped her hands on her shirt. “The gwyllgi and necromancer representatives were from out of state, right? No one local wanted to go up against Tisdale or Linus if they got caught peddling lethal—to their species—drugs.”

  “Okay.”

  “When they passed on the buy-in, Blithe made an example of them. She had them bound, carried up front, and force-fed them Faete.” Remy shivered. “The necromancer died within minutes. The gwyllgi took a lot longer.” She wet her lips. “I figure its body was regenerating damaged tissue as fast as the drug destroyed it, but the drug won out in the end.”

  A horrible death by any metric, and it made me regret the meal I had just eaten.

  Those poor teens. That must be what kept them hanging on. Their bodies refused to let them die.

  “We need to get word out to everyone vulnerable to Faete.” I shoved my tray aside and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. “The coven is pushing us to play defense, and that’s not getting us anywhere. It’s time to go on the offense.”

  “Are you sure you should be standing?” Bishop took my elbow before my full weight hit my feet. “You haven’t been discharged.”

  “Midas is the injured party.” I didn’t wobble, and I was happy about that. “I need to change and then…”

  I had no clothes. I had no apartment. I had…nothing.

  I was right back to square one, like when I first moved to Atlanta with only the clothes on my back.

  “About that.” He mashed a button on his phone and passed it over to me. “Here.”

  “How are you?” Linus’s cool voice filled the line. “How is Midas?”

  “We’re both alive.” I shivered at the chill in his tone. “I’m about to head to HQ.”

  Everyone in the room gave me death stares, so I elected to ignore their hostilities.

  “Bishop tells me your apartment is ruined.”

  “Yeah.” I shivered from the breeze of my hospital gown parting. “I’ll ask management if they’ve got another efficiency I can lease until mine is repaired.”

  Thankfully, Tisdale had passed along the news that no one else had been harmed in the blast. Their apartments on the other hand… That entire floor would require a facelift before all was said and done.

  “You’re moving into the potentate’s suite.” He made it an order. “Bishop has the keys.”

  The charred gwyll
gi across from me raised an eyebrow, and I chewed on my bottom lip. “Midas is…”

  “I’m aware.” Linus warmed his voice with intent. “The suite is yours. Your guests are your business.” He hesitated. “Do you need me?”

  Yes, I wanted to cry, a thousand times yes. But he was my boss, and I couldn’t afford to appear weak.

  I was bruised, my hair crispy, and I wanted my big brother to swoop in and hug me until I stopped falling to pieces. But Boaz wasn’t an option. Adelaide wasn’t either. The coven had moved against me. In my home. To prove they could get to me anywhere. I couldn’t invite family into the mix. It would put them in danger, and I would never forgive myself if I got them hurt.

  “I can handle it.”

  With Natisha’s bargain always at the forefront of my mind, I debated how much help Linus could offer. He had given her his word he wouldn’t help us secure the hearts, but the bomb was a separate matter. Or was it? The vicious nature of the attack screamed coven to me, but we had no concrete evidence of their involvement yet.

  We had collected one heart out of seven. They must know, or at least suspect, the game had changed to strike back this swiftly. At me, in particular. If I had kept the heart in my apartment, it would have been toast. I doubted that was a coincidence. The coven hoarded power. They wouldn’t give up an ounce of it without a fight.

  “I’ll inform the Society, and my mother, of what you’ve learned.”

  Briefing his mom was ten times worse than facing Tisdale. “Thanks.”

  “Reach out if you need me.”

  “I will.”

  He ended the call before I could change my mind and beg for his help climbing out of the hole I dug for myself the day I dragged him to the den to bargain on Midas’s behalf. The alternative, though, had been unthinkable. Midas would have given all he had to save Ford, and Natisha would have let him. Clearly, the man couldn’t be trusted to let others gauge his worth.

  Those nightmares of his were vicious, and they messed with his head. He woke from them haunted in a way I saw in the mirror a few times a week. Less now that he was a wall of warm muscle I sheltered behind when I woke from dreams, sweaty and trembling from the reminder of what I had done, what I was deep down in my soul.