Page 67 of Run Wild Omega

Miles nods, his eyes scanning the monitors above my bed with an automatic, practiced efficiency before settling on my face. “Your Glasgow Coma Scale has been improving steadily since yesterday. Good to see it translate into actual consciousness.”

I stare at the three of them. They’re standing in a half-circle near the foot of my bed, a wall of exhausted, stubborn energy that fills the small room. My parents are on either side of me. The space feels impossibly crowded, but none of them are leaving.

“You’ve been here,” I say. “All of you. For three days.”

“Yes,” Wyatt says.

“All of you,” I repeat, because I need to make sure I’m understanding this correctly. “Not just my family. You.”

“Yes.”

I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with the image of Wyatt Callahan standing guard over my hospital bed for seventy-two hours straight, wearing my blood on his uniform and looking like he’s been slowly falling apart.

“Where were you sleeping?” I ask, and the question comes out more accusatory than I intend.

“Chair in the waiting room,” Dylan says. “The ones in the ICU hallway are bolted to the floor. Bad for the back.”

“You should go home. All of you. You look like you’re about to collapse.”

“We’re fine,” Miles says, in a tone that suggests he very much is not fine but will die before admitting it.

“You’re not fine. None of you are fine. You look like⁠—”

“Tess.” Wyatt’s voice cuts through my rant, quiet but firm. “We’re not going anywhere.”

I open my mouth to argue, but the look on his face stops me. It’s not stubbornness, exactly. It’s something deeper, something raw and unguarded that I’ve never seen him direct at me before. He looks like a man who almost lost the only thing that matters and is terrified to take his eyes off it.

I look away.

There’s a commotion in the hallway—voices, footsteps—and then the door pushes open wider and Mara sweeps in, Daniel right behind her.

Mara looks radiant and terrible at the same time. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, her face is makeup-free, and she’s wearing one of Daniel’s flannels. Her eyes are fierce, bright with the particular intensity that comes from having too many emotions and no safe place to put them.

“Oh my god.” She rushes to the bed, nudging Mom aside with a gentleness that barely conceals her desperation. “Oh my god, Tess. You’re awake.”

“Hey, Mara.” I reach for her hand. Her fingers are ice-cold. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

She laughs, but it’s wet, shaky. “You almost died, and you’re worried about me?”

“I didn’t almost die.”

“You absolutely almost died.” Daniel moves to stand behind Mara, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder. He looks as polished as ever—clean shirt, combed hair—but there’s a tightness around his eyes that I recognize from court days, the look of a man who’s been fighting battles on multiple fronts and hasn’t had time to process any of them.

“The hemorrhage,” he says quietly. “They told us. If the bleeding hadn’t slowed on its own, or if the compartment pressure hadn’t stabilized…”

“But it did,” I say. “I’m here. I’m awake. I’m annoying everyone within a five-mile radius, as usual.”

No one laughs. That’s how I know it’s bad.

Gray and Leo appear in the doorway behind Daniel. Gray nods at me, his expression stoic but his eyes warm. Leo looks like he’s been crying—his face is blotchy, his usually bright demeanor dimmed to something subdued and fragile.

“Hey,” Leo says, his voice rough. “You gave us a hell of a scare.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be alive. That’s the only thing I’m asking.”

The room is so full now that I feel like I’m at the center of a small, anxious crowd. My parents, Daniel, Mara and their pack, and the three men who pulled me out of a hole in the mountain. All of them looking at me like I’m something precious and breakable.