The Biker Alpha Who Became My Second Chance Mate Chapter 168

Tristan

The first thing I registered was her face.

Athena's face hovering above mine with tears streaming down her cheeks and those green eyes I'd memorized shining with relief and something else, something that made my chest tight.

The second thing I registered was that I felt good.

Too good.

My body hummed with energy, with strength, with a vitality that shouldn't have been there and I blinked trying to understand why everything felt so right when the last thing I remembered was pain and darkness and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

The bike race.

The memory hit me in fragments, flying down the mountain trail at speeds that would have made Athena yell at me, taking a corner too fast, the front wheel catching on something, the world spinning as I went over the handlebars.

Impact.

Pain exploding through my ribs and my head and my arm.

Darkness.

I'd known even as I was falling that I was hurt bad, known that even with my alpha healing this was going to take time, weeks probably to fully recover from the damage I could feel spreading through my body.

But now there was no pain.

No ache in my ribs where I knew at least three had been broken, no throbbing in my head where I'd felt my skull crack against rock, no burning in my arm where bone had snapped.

Nothing.

Just this warmth flowing through me like liquid sunlight and I looked up at Athena's tear-streaked face and understood.

The third thing I registered was rage.

It started as a small spark in my gut but it grew fast, spreading through every inch of me and burning away the warmth she'd left behind until all I could feel was fury.

"What were you doing?" I asked even though a part of me knew the answer, my voice coming out rougher than I intended as I tried to sit up.

A twinge in my ribs made me pause but it was nothing, barely a whisper of discomfort when it should have been agony, when I should have been laid up for weeks while my body knit itself back together.

I should have been unconscious for days with the injuries I'd sustained, should have been in a hospital bed hooked up to machines while my alpha healing worked slowly to repair the damage.

But I wasn't.

I was awake and aware and almost completely healed and there was only one explanation for that.

"You let her heal me," I asked Orion, but my eyes was staring at Athena's face again.

I watched her expression shift from relief to understanding to something that looked like defiance and I had to clench my jaw to keep from saying all the things building up inside me, all the angry terrified words that wanted to pour out.

She took a step back from the bed, her hand going automatically to her stomach in that protective gesture she'd developed since finding out about the twins.

Her stomach.

Our babies.

The babies she'd just risked by using powers we didn't understand yet, powers we had no idea how they worked or what they cost.

Powers she'd channeled through her pregnant body to save me when I was supposed to be the one protecting her.

She'd only used them to save once. And that was because it was necessary

My hands fisted in the hospital sheets.

"Tristan," she started but I shook my head once, sharp and final.

Not now, not when I was this angry, not when I could barely think past the terror of what could have happened, what still might happen because we had no idea what using her healing while pregnant meant for her or for our children.

Dr. Ben came back again and moved closer with his clipboard and monitoring equipment, his expression professionally neutral in that way doctors had when they were trying very hard not to get involved in family drama.

"Let me check your vitals," he said, reaching for the blood pressure cuff. "See how the healing took."

"Check her first," I said through gritted teeth

.

The words came out harder than I meant them to but I couldn't soften them, couldn't make myself sound reasonable when every instinct I had was screaming that Athena needed to be examined right now, needed to be checked and monitored and made sure she was okay.

"Mr. Hayes, I need to establish a baseline for your recovery so I can..."

"Check my pregnant wife and our children," I interrupted, and this time I didn't even try to keep the edge out of my voice. "Now."

The room went silent.

I could feel everyone staring at me, could sense Orion and Derek shifting uncomfortably and Sarah drawing in a sharp breath, but I didn't care.

Couldn't care about anything except making absolutely certain that Athena and the babies were okay, that her reckless stupidly brave decision to save me hadn't cost her everything.

Dr. Ben looked at Athena who nodded slightly, then he moved to her side and started his examination.

I watched every movement.

Cataloged every expression that crossed her face, every slight wince or hesitation, every time she drew breath or touched her stomach, looking for any sign that she'd hurt herself trying to save me.

My jaw ached from clenching it so hard.

The doctor pressed his stethoscope to her belly and I stopped breathing, waiting for him to say something was wrong, that the babies' heartbeats were irregular or weak or gone.

"Heartbeat one is strong and steady," Dr. Ben murmured. "Heartbeat two is also normal, no signs of fetal distress."

Some of the tension in my chest eased but not enough, not nearly enough because just because they were okay right now didn't mean they would stay that way, didn't mean there wouldn't be consequences we couldn't see yet.

"Blood pressure is slightly elevated," Dr. Ben continued, wrapping the cuff around Athena's arm. "But that's to be expected given the emotional stress and the energy expenditure from the healing."

Energy expenditure.

Like she'd just run a marathon instead of potentially sacrificing herself and our children to fix injuries that I would have healed from eventually anyway.

I was an alpha, healing was what we did, it just took time and patience and rest.

But this, what she'd done, this wasn't natural healing.

This was something else entirely and we had no idea what it meant, what it cost, what it might have done to the babies growing inside her.

This was the second time she was doing it while pregnant, second. How can she be that careless, how can they be that careless?

"Everything looks normal," Dr. Ben said after what felt like an eternity of checking and rechecking and monitoring. "All vitals are within acceptable ranges, the babies are responding well, no immediate signs of complications."

Immediate signs.

That meant there could be delayed signs, problems that wouldn't show up until later, issues we wouldn't know about until it was too late to fix them.

"I'll need to monitor you both over the next few days," he continued, looking between me and Athena with that serious expression doctors got when they were about to say something important.

"Regular checkups to make sure there are no delayed reactions to the healing, for either of you."

"Fine," I said shortly. "Whatever you need to do."

"Mr. Hayes, I really do need to examine you now," he said gently, moving back toward my bed. "The hospital will have questions if you leave without a proper discharge and we need to be able to provide them with documentation."

I wanted to argue, wanted to tell him that I didn't give a damn about hospital protocol or documentation, but I could see the logic in his words.

The last thing we needed was to draw attention to what had happened, to raise questions about how I'd recovered so completely from injuries that should have taken weeks to heal.