Page 102 of Knot Playing Fair 2

“Would you like a moment alone with your visitor?” she asked. “You can say no.”

“Yes,” he repeated, even softer this time.

“All right, there’s a buzzer hanging right on the side of the bed. It’s on your right side,” she said. “You just press the button if you need anything at all, you hear?”

He nodded, a tiny movement.

The nurse gave me a sympathetic smile as she gathered everything up and bustled out. Silence echoed in her wake, and I wasn’t sure how to break it.

“I’m so sorry.” The words burst free when the heavy blanket of quiet grew too stifling. “Nat says they were after him, not you. You should never have been involved.”

It was such a stupid, useless thing to say. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I wanted to drag it back somehow.

Luca continued to stare down at the pristine blankets folded over his waist. His gracefully arched brows furrowed, as though he were puzzling over some mystery.

“They came to rescue me,” he said eventually, the words a scratchy rasp. “Your husband, and Byron. They came and saved me, even though they might’ve been killed. Blaze’s men were armed.”

The blood drained abruptly from my own face, until I was sure my pallor matched Luca’s. Stupidly, I’d pictured a fight with fists, not deadly weapons. Even odds.

“Byron shot one of them,” Luca went on, his voice eerily level and calm. “He’s terrified of guns, Mia.”

Shock ricocheted through me. But then, all at once, I understood. I’d been stuck on the new revelation about just how much danger they’d all been in, fighting against armed gang members. But Luca was hung up on something different, even though it was related.

Luca, who saw himself as damaged goods—a broken omega not good enough for a pack, for alphas. He had honestly assumed that no one would care enough to try to save him from his personal hell. Then Byron and Nat—a virtualstranger—had not only rescued him, but they’d done so at the risk of their own lives.

I couldn’t afford to think about what might have happened if that rescue attempt had gone wrong, or else I’d end up useless—curled up in a shaking, sobbing ball in the corner.

It didn’t go wrong, I reminded myself firmly.They saved Luca, and the police came, and they’re all going to be okay.

God, I needed an update on Byron. I clung to the fact that he was supposedly in stable condition.

“Luca,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “You areworthfighting for. Byron is your alpha, whether the two of you are willing to admit it or not. I don’t think there’s much he wouldn’t do to keep you safe. And Nat... well, Nat’s a good man. I’m not surprised he wasn’t willing to sit around twiddling his thumbs while someone else was in danger.”

Luca’s face wobbled. For a moment, he curled in on himself, his good arm coming up to cradle his injured one. But then, he lifted shiny green eyes, swimming with tears, to meet mine. His arm reached out toward me instead, and I was piling onto the narrow bed with him in an instant, wrapping my body around his and holding on tight.

He burrowed his face into the juncture of my neck and shoulder, shaking silently. Dampness soaked into the collar ofmy work shirt, matched by the tears slipping from my eyes into his dark mass of flyaway hair.

“You’re worth it,” I told him again—fiercely, and with the desperate hope that if I said it often enough, he might start to believe it. “Don’teverthink that you aren’t, Luca Doyle.”

FORTY-THREE

Zalen

IT HAD TAKEN WAY TOOlong to extricate myself from the police interview, and I still wasn’t sure there wouldn’t be legal consequences for my decision to throw the truth to the four winds by manufacturing a story to get the cops to the warehouse as fast as possible.

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