Page 88 of Rebellious Reign

CONNOR

I’m not sure how I saw everything going, but that sure as hell wasn’t it. I have my sister, my wife, and my ex, all in a car with me, and I’m spiraling.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK.

“Go to a hospital! Connor, are you listening to me? She’s alive. Get to a hospital!”

“I can’t fucking take her to a hospital!” I yell back after finally registering what Wryn was saying.

Ruby’s still alive. And now, I’m responsible for what happens to her.

But I do know we can’t take her to a medical institution. There will be questions, and law enforcement will be called. I can’t deal with that right now.

“Connor, I swear, if you don’t take us to a hospital immediately, I’ll never forgive you.”

Wryn’s frantic voice flays me open. The panic lacing every word has a grimace overtaking my face.

I’m torn between knowing that Ruby needs medical care immediately and not wanting to risk the rest of us. I finally have everything I want, and this threatens to change that.

Then, I remember one doctor. Markoff. It’s been years since I’ve seen him—a meeting I’d rather forget about. But I throw the car to the left, my mind working to remember exactly where he lives since I haven’t been there in ages. Not since I was a boy.

God, I forgot. Didn’t let myself remember. I don’t even know if he still lives there. Or if he’s even alive.

A hand lands on my forearm, and I glance to the side briefly before darting my eyes back to the road. Lilliana’s worried face is fastened on me, and she gently squeezes.

“I’m fine,” I tell her.

“You’re shaking,” she says.

I realize she’s right. Thinking of Markoff makes me think of that day. And I fucking hate thinking about that day.

“I’m fine,” I say again. Convincing myself as much as her.

No time passes before I’m pulling down the long gravel road and into the small circular driveway of a cabin, tucked back into the woods. It looks the same.

I’m out of the vehicle, running on instinct as I pound on the door. It opens, revealing the haggard face of the man haunting my sudden memories, and he squints at me.

“Connor?” he asks, and I don’t know how he knows it’s me, considering I look quite a bit different since the last time I was here.

“We need your help.”

He surveys the scene behind me, Lilliana opening the back of the vehicle while a frantic Wryn climbs out.

Then, he nods succinctly and opens the door. “Bring them in.”

* * *

Markoff’sweathered mouth is set in a grim line as he faces the three of us.

“It’s not good,” he says after he disappeared with Ruby for an hour.

“Are you a doctor?” Wryn asks, the first words she’s said since I brought Ruby in and laid her on the metal table set up in the knockoff exam room in Markoff’s house.

Medical equipment and machines littered the room, giving it ahospital in the days of the apocalypselook. I tried not to look around too much, flashbacks entering my mind. I saw her lying there, and even though I knew it was Ruby, I saw my mother’s mangled body. I saw Markoff hunched over her. I saw someone else I didn’t know hustling me out of the room, the door closing behind me. I saw too much, things that I had forgotten I’d seen.

“Once upon a time,” Markoff says cryptically, “in another life. Your friend has lost a lot of blood. That haphazard bandage might have saved her from imminent death, but she’s not out of the woods yet.”

I consider wrapping an arm around Wryn, pulling her into my side. But we both have walls up. She’s stiff, tension radiating from her, and I’m angry. I want to rage and tell her that this is her fault. If she had come to me, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. But I also know that we might never have found out where Ruby was. And she still hasn’t told me why Ruby was with Viktor.

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