Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 200

Chapter 200

By the time he returned to the ER area, they had already given Amber a room. Someone led him to where she had been kept, and every step towards that room felt heavier than the last. He had walked into battle spaces before. He had faced angry wolves. He had stood before men who would gladly rip him apart if given the chance. None of that had ever felt like this.

Then he saw her.

His mother was lying on the hospital bed, hooked to a machine. The sight stopped him in a way no, enemy ever had. Amber McCloud did not belong under white sheets with tubes and machines keeping watch over her body. She did not belong stin and silent, her skin too pale, her mouth soft with unconsciousness. She did not belong there looking small. His mother had never looked small day in her life. Even when she sat, she filled a room. Even when she was quiet, people felt her. But now the machine beside her made steady sounds, and she did not open her eyes to complain about them.

Just then, Dr Rosenberg moved close to him.

“I am sorry, Alpha, but I could not stand and watch, so I attended to all three of them. Luna needs all the care she can get now,”

Rosenberg said.

Joseph nodded because words were too difficult for a moment. A part of him should have cared that Rosenberg had gone ahead despite what had happened earlier. A part of him should have questioned it, should have remained angry, should have remembered the accusation still hanging over the doctor’s head. But in those minutes, he honestly did not care about anything except his mother

breathing.

He looked at her lying on that hospital bed. She looked like the life in her was slipping away slowly, not with violence, not with the sudden cruelty of a blade, but like water leaking from a cracked vessel no one had noticed in time. It broke his heart. It did not just hurt. It broke him in places he had not known were still soft.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Joseph finally spoke.

His voice sounded rough, almost foreign to him. Dr Rosenberg looked at him, and Joseph knew the doctor understood his pain. Of course he did. He had known. He had been carrying this secret with Amber while her sons walked around blind.

“She wanted to live her days to the fullest without pity. She did not want anyone to sympathise with her or search for a solution. The solution was close to impossible due to certain factors,” Dr Rosenberg said.

Joseph turned to look at him properly then. Something inside him twisted. No solution? Close to impossible? Those words did not belong in his family. They did not belong beside his mother’s name. Amber McCloud was not someone impossible things happened to. She was the one who bullied impossible things until they moved aside.

“She has a wolf; why didn’t her wolf heal them both? Why didn’t Hazel heal their body?” Joseph asked.

Dr Rosenberg had no answer to that question, and that made the fear worse. Doctors always had answers, or at least they pretended to. But the look on Rosenberg’s face told Joseph this was not a simple wound. It was not something a wolf could just close overnight. It was not something strength alone had solved.

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Chapter 200

Dr Rosenberg had done everything within his capacity to enhance her werewolf genes to help the liver cells regenerate. He had tried. Joseph could see it in the tired lines around the doctor’s eyes. He had administered antioxidants to reduce the stress on the liver. He had watched her leave the hospital feeling better and return sicker than she left. That was the cruelty of it. There had been little improvements, enough to make hope breathe, and then she would relapse again, worse each time, until her liver had started failing properly.

Joseph looked back through the glass. Amber did not move. The machine did. The machine breathed rhythm into the silence, but

she lay there like someone far away from all of them.

While Joseph stood by the glass window looking at his mother, Brian approached with his phone. Joseph saw the phone first before

he understood what it meant, and his stomach tightened.

“Alpha, Alpha Ethan wants to speak to you,” Brian said, handing the phone over to Joseph.

Joseph composed himself before taking it. He wiped at his face quickly, as if Ethan could see through the phone. He straightened his

shoulders. He forced his voice to settle. He did not want Ethan to hurry back, thinking Joseph could not handle it. Ethan had done

enough suffering. Ethan had just come out of surgery. Ethan deserved at least a few hours of peace, but peace had become

something their family could no longer afford.

“Ethan,” Joseph managed.

On the other end, Ethan sighed. That sigh carried more than tiredness. It carried worry. It carried the kind of brotherly knowing

Joseph had been trying to avoid.

“How are you holding up?” Ethan asked.

Joseph wondered if Ethan had found out about their mother. His heart thudded hard once, then again. Did Keith tell him? Did

Meadow know? Had someone else called? Or was Ethan only asking because the pack had been attacked and Joseph had been forced

to carry what no one should carry alone?

“Fine, how was your operation?” Joseph asked, changing the topic.

Ethan sighed again, and Joseph could almost picture him on the bed, stubborn even while injured, not fooled by the deflection but

allowing it for now.

“It was successful. My wolf genes are working, and I can hear Echo a bit,” Ethan said, then paused.

Joseph closed his eyes for a second. Relief and grief collided inside him. Ethan could hear Echo. After seven years, his brother could

hear his wolf a bit. That should have been the happiest news of the day, It should have been shouted across Whitewood. Their

mother should have been awake to hear it. She should have cried and pretended she had not. She should have insulted Ethan for taking seven years to start healing. She should have told Joseph to stop looking emotional and go arrange something useful.

Instead, she was behind glass, unconscious.

“You did well, Joseph. I wouldn’t have done any better in your shoes. I am proud of you,” Ethan said.

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