Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
The falcon yellow blazed, the wildness of it the last thing she saw.
Adam.
Chapter 38
“Not many Js get a second chance.”
—Sophia Russo (circa March 2081)
Max didn’t bother to tell Sophie to take it easy even though she got tired far faster these days, needed more rest. While she cleared her schedule and delegated tasks, he arranged transport to the facility that was looking after Eleri.
It was part of a network of hospitals that contained J-specific units Sophie had helped put in place. This one was one of the smallest, but had all the high-tech equipment it could need, thanks to the funds Sophie had managed to get out of their boss.
Nikita Duncan liked money, but she’d chosen a J with a conscience—a J who’d had a habit of eliminating very bad people—as an aide for a reason. Nikita also had a daughter who was an E, and plenty of things for which she needed to atone, whether she’d ever consciously admit it or not.
She’d stumped up the cash to fund the J units.
Sophia, in true Sophia form, had said, “This is just the start, Nikita. You don’t get to forgive yourself so easily.”
“Who spoke about forgiveness?” Nikita had responded. “We all make choices. I live with mine—and for many of them, I will never ask forgiveness.”
Nikita Duncan was a complicated woman.
“How’s the peanut?” Max asked as he walked his powerhouse of a wife into the hospital, one hand on her lower back, the fabric of her full-length dress of dark green jersey soft under his palm.
The early evening air was balmy yet, but he’d made sure Sophia had a thick shawl to put around her if the hospital environs proved cold. It sat inside the satchel he wore cross-body to keep his hands free.
“The peanut is so relaxed that he’s clearly a clone of you,” she muttered with a scowl, her hand on the belly that was compact for a woman in the second half of her seventh month of pregnancy.
But per their doctor—and more importantly, per Ma Larkspur, who’d adopted them into her brood—both Sophie and the baby were “fit and well.” Sophie’s body just happened to carry that way.
“Seriously, our baby is the definition of mellow. I keep getting anxiety and checking up on him because he’s so undemanding even now that he’s at a point in development that his brain should be reaching out for mine on a constant basis by instinct.”
Chuckling, Max rubbed his knuckles over her cheeks. “He can’t be my clone, then. I’m very demanding of your attention.”
She made a face, but let him pet her. He knew she was in pain, hurting for her Js. He could’ve wished she’d never taken on this burden, but he also knew who his Sophie was—and she could no more walk away from her fractured brethren than she could stop checking up on their child.
Sophia Russo had a heart that didn’t quit.
“Let’s go see Eleri,” she said with a deep breath. “Dr. Czajka says the prognosis is grim, but with Adam bonding her into WindHaven…I want to hope, Max. I want a miracle even when I know that’s illogical and I’m setting myself up for heartbreak.”
A shuddering breath. “Eleri thinks I don’t know how close she was to Exposure prior to this. No J has ever survived that level of psychic damage—you can’t develop shields when the foundation on which shields are built has been wiped out of existence.”
He rubbed his hand on that spot on her back that always ached by the end of the day. “She’s alive, breathing on her own. One step at a time.”
They arrived outside Eleri’s ICU room to find Adam Garrett pacing in front of it, phone to his ear and his hair roughly tousled as if he’d been thrusting his hand through it. “What?” he said into the line just as he spotted them.
He gave them a short nod as he spoke again into the phone. “You’re sure? Fuck. Yeah, I’ll deal with it.” Ending the call, he said, “Sophia, Max.”
While Max had never met the other man, Sophie had given him the heads-up on her own fleeting meeting with the WindHaven alpha. “Adam,” he said in greeting.
The other man shook his proffered hand. “No change,” he said, his jaw tight.
“Can I go in?” Sophia asked.
Adam nodded, and Max’s wife slipped inside to see this wounded member of her J family. Max, meanwhile, stood with Adam, certain beyond any doubt that Adam wasn’t here because of the assistance Eleri had provided to his clan. He was here because Eleri mattered to him the same way Sophie mattered to Max.
Max’s own gut was tense, the scene reminding him too much of another J, another violent act, another monster.
No more. My Js deserve a better life than this!
Max agreed with everything his wife had said, everything she wanted for the J Corps. This kind of ending—violated at the hands of psychopaths, or dying because their shields just couldn’t cope any longer and gave out? It was a too-common scenario, and it needed to fucking stop.