Chapter 38 Duke

It had been almost an entire day since Annabelle had been brought to the hospital, and it had been only a few hours since both his children have been brought in. Ray was finally clean and in some grey sweats, but he was still in shock from everything that happened and whenever Duke tried to talk to him he just kept muttering about the blood. Thankfully Mary showed up when she heard Ray was in the hospital and she is slowly bringing him out of his shock. Duke also told her about Annabelle and Fenris, so she was in there crying with Ray.

Duke had called Lily, who was out with some of the other females of the pack, and told her she needed to get back. He had no clue how he was going to tell her two of the kids they care about are in the hospital, and he doesn't know how they're doing. He doesn't know how these children he sees as his own are doing. He, doesn't know anything.

The doctors were able to tell him that almost all the wounds to Annabelle's body would be easy to heal within a few weeks. The damage they were most concerned with is the rib that punctured her lung, it had not only punctured the lung it had ripped the bottom of it open. She had been rushed into surgery and was still in there now.

Fenris' doctor had not come out or even sent anyone to tell him anything and Duke was getting more worried and angry by the minute. He started pacing outside of the room Ray was in, his wolf needing to be around the two of his pups that he knew were safe.

A growl ripped through the halls of the hospital and Duke knew that Lily was finally here, and her wolf had sensed that her pups were injured. He stopped his pacing and walked towards were he knew the growl came from. Rounding the corner like a Hellraiser, wild eyes and her long hair wiping behind her, Lily rushed at Duke.

"What the hell is going on?! I can smell all of our children in here and my wolf is telling me that some of them are injured! What the hell happened?" Lily yelled.

Duke knew that even though she was yelling at him she wasn't mad at him, her motherly instincts were just freaking out. Gently grabbing her arms he brought her over to a chair next to Ray's door and sat her down, much to her protest, and bent down on his knees so he could look her in the eyes. "Annabelle was injured, very seriously, and is in surgery right now. Fenris called Ray and I to come get her and bring her here. I left Ray with her to calm her down because Annabelle is in bad shape, but hours later they showed up and Fenris was bleeding." Duke sighed and smoothed his hair back, "Lily, she was shot, the bullet was covered in the blood of a double-heartless wolf. I have no idea how she's doing."

Lily covered her mouth, holding back a sob as tears ran down her cheeks, "Wha-what about Ray?" Lily chocked out.

"He seems fine physically. I'm guessing that Fenris went after someone in another pack and Ray didn't follow her."

"What do you mean by 'physically'?"

Sighing Duke looked at the door next to them, "He was in shock when he brought Fenris in. She was bleeding really bad and he had never seen her like that before and it scared him. Mary is in there right now trying to calm him down."

Lily couldn't keep back the tears any longer and cried. She cried for her child who was mentally scarred, a child who was fighting for her life, and her child who had just the other day seemed invincible.

Duke watched his mate cry for all the pain these children are going through at such a young age, the situation finally hitting him full force and his own tears falling from his eyes. Gently picking Lily up he sat down in the chair himself and rocked his mate till her cries turned into mere whimpers.

After what felt like hours of them sitting there holding each other Lily finally spoke, "How did this happen?" she asked, looking at Duke with dried tears down her cheeks.

Opening his mouth he was about to tell her he didn't know when Mary cut him off. "It was Johnny."

Both alphas looked over at the young girl who seemed drained with tears running down her cheeks, and a large wet spot on her shoulder. "Johnny?" Lily questioned.

Mary nodded her head, "My parents tried basically selling Annabelle to him and he's believed she was his mate ever since. He would abuse her and threatened to kill anyone she told so she kept quiet. When Fenris came back and fought for her Annabelle let slip a little of what he was doing to her so Fenris fought him and took Annabelle back. She wasn't able to seriously hurt him because a teacher stopped her, but ever since she got Annabelle back and they got their marks he's been obsessed with her."

Lily slowly stood up and walked towards Mary, "Why?" Confused Mary furrowed her eyebrows. "Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't any of you tell us what was going on? We could have helped. All of this could have been prevented if one of you had just told us!" Lily snapped at her, tears rolling down her face again.

Mary bowed her head ashamed. "I'm sorry." she whispered.

"Sorry doesn't fix this!" Lily snapped at her again, "I don't know if you and Ray are ready to be the next alphas." Duke stood up and grabbed Lily bringing her back into him.

Stepping back a little Mary kept her head down. "Fenris and Annabelle thought that they had it handled. They kept Johnny away from Annabelle and made sure someone was always with her. None of us saw just how obsessed with her he actually was. We told Annabelle to tell you guys but she thought since she was with Fenris now that it would eventually stop, so we didn't say anything. That was stupid of us."

Before Lily could snap at Mary anymore for her idiotic behavior, the squeaky sound of shoes cut her off. A tall skinny wolf holding a clipboard dragged his feet to the group, "Al-alphas, I have news on the girl."

Duke growled at the doctor causing him to jump slightly, "Which girl?"

The doctor fumbled with his clipboard and scanned his eyes across the chart. "Uh, the girl named, Annabelle."

Mary turned fully towards the doctor giving him her full attention. "How is she?"

Scratching the back of his head the doctor paled and looked away, "W-well there's good news, and bad news." he stammered, "First of all we were able to successfully fix the tear in her lung, she lost a lot of blood but she should recover in about two weeks or so."

"What's the bad news?" Lily asked.

"Half way through the surgery she started seizing on the table, we stopped the seizures and searched for the cause. This is when we noticed the laceration on her head and realized how bad the wound actually is. Doing a CT and MRI we found that not only does she have a severe concussion but her brain is swelling at a rapid rate." He looked at Mary, "We had to put her in a medically induced coma and pump IV fluids through her to slow the swelling."

Mary's heart dropped. She hit the ground, numb to the pain of her body hitting the tile full force. Her baby sister who had been through so much is in a medically induced coma.

Lily put her hand on the top of Mary's head and looked up at the doctor, "What about Annabelle's mate, Fenris?"

Looking at his charts the doctor shook his head, "I don't know anyt-"

"I know how she is." A female voice said. A slightly tall woman with her dark brown hair up in a high ponytail walked with a purpose towards them. "Fenris right?"

Duke stepped forward, "Yes, how is she?"

The woman stopped in front of the alpha couple, "She's in a coma." she stated. Lily let more tears fall and she could feel her heart constrict in her chest. "Fenris was shot with a bullet coated in the blood of a double-heartless wolf, the fact that she's still alive is a miracle. As you know that type of blood, although can weaken other species, doesn't have as harmful an affect as it would to a wolf so she is still alive because she's a hybrid." Duke and Lily looked at each other with a hopeful look, but the woman quickly stopped their thoughts, "Here's the problem, the blood isn't exactly killing Fenris but it is killing her wolf. If her wolf half dies we have very little hope on her ever waking up."

Feeling a lump form in his throat Duke swallowed, "Is there a way to save her?"

"Well normally we would have taken the infected blood out and then do a blood transfusion with a matching blood relative. The next problem is that we can't do that with Fenris."

"Why not?" Lily questioned, helping a still crying Mary off the floor.

"Fenris is the perfect balance of both a wolf and a demon which is why she is so powerful. The issue with other known hybrids being so weak is because one side is stronger and both sides end up fighting each other making the person weak. Scientists have spent their entire careers trying to recreate that perfect balance in a test tube that Fenris naturally has. So even if we were able to find matches to her blood type we can't just inject her with it, if we put to much of one type the other half will start fighting back. This will lead to a rapid decrease in Fenris' health and may end up killing her."

"So what can we do?" Lily asked through the tears.

"Well first of all the bullet wound she received isn't fatal so we just need to worry about getting the infected blood out of her system. The plan to do that is to slowly drain her blood, wait for her body to replace the missing blood and repeat. It takes roughly two days for the body to replace the mass of blood, but almost two months to replace the blood cells. This process might take longer due to her being injured so after every blood draw she will be closely monitored for the next few days to make sure she is stable."

"How long will this process take?" Duke asked.

"It's not that common of a process so it's hard to know, but we expect after two or three blood draws she will wake up since there wasn't that much poison in her veins. So I would say maybe a month."

Lily looked up at Duke, he could see in her eyes how much all this information hurt her. Moving her to sit in the chair he put his hand on her back and gently rubbed circles trying to comfort her. "This is our best option?"

"To be completely honest alpha, it's the only option other then letting her die." The woman said softly.

"Do it." Ray said, leaning in the doorway leading to his room, "That's my sister so do it, save her." Mary rushed to her mate holding on to him incase he collapsed again, tears still running down her face.

"Ray, maybe we should take a little more time and see if the doctors can come up with a better solution." Duke suggested.

"If we wait she'll just get worse and by then it might not work." Ray countered, walking towards his father. Lily stepped in between the two alphas making sure to keep the peace, though all she wanted to do was hold her son after seeing he is okay. "She needs to wake up so we can go to war against the person who shot her."

Duke knew that war was going to happen, after what happened to Annabelle and Fenris that was inevitable, but it wasn't happening right away. "We will discuss the issue of war once Fenris and Annabelle are awake and able to move on their own."

Ray growled at his father unhappy with his statement but was interrupted by the female doctor, the male having rushed off when Ray showed up. "So what is the plan for Fenris?"

Looking at the determination and anger swirling in Ray's eyes Duke sighed, "Do the blood draining plan." The doctor nodded and rushed off to start the treatment. Ray looked blankly at his father and nodded before stepping back into his room, Mary following and closing the door. "This isn't going to end well." Duke said.

"Why do you think that?" Lily asked, looking at the closed door her son is behind.

"These are children fighting children, yes they are fae so they're not weak, but they are still children. They are clouded by their emotions and what is happening at the moment, they will make rash decisions that could lead to dreadful consequences. Packs are being pulled into this fight so others will be harmed, what if they're act causes the death of our pack?"

"Mary said it was a kid named Johnny, if I remember correctly the alpha one of the packs nearby has a son named Johnny. Lets reach out to him and try to see if we can talk everything out so even if the kids fight it isn't both packs going to war." Lily suggested, hugging Duke.

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*A final thought*

It's not a pretty thing to hear, but pain and suffering are a part of life. There is no one on this planet who hasn't suffered in some way. The pain could be self inflicted, inflicted by another, or a pure act from the Goddess, but it is still pain. The suffering could be small or big, but it's still suffering. These two things shape a person more than anything else. People have changed how they act and their entire lives because of what they suffered through. Pain and suffering can shatter a heart.