The Wrong Hands

POV Thorne Ashford

Celeste stumbled into the room as Damien's grip on her wrist pulled her forward with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at driftwood.

Behind her, Ronan and Lydia hovered in the doorway, their expressions caught between concern and something far more calculating.

"Help him!" Damien's voice cracked as he shoved Celeste toward my grandfather's collapsed form, his panic so raw it overrode any pretense of dignity. "You're a medical student—you must know CPR, something, anything!"

I watched Celeste's face cycle through shock, fear, and then a brittle determination that looked more like stubbornness than competence. She dropped to her knees beside Grandpa, her hands already trembling before they even touched him.

Celeste's hands pressed against his chest, but everything about her movements screamed incompetence—the way she hesitated before each compression, the uncertain angle of her arms, the panicked darting of her eyes as if searching for some invisible instruction manual.

When she began whatever passed for compressions, they were so weak and erratic that even I could tell they were useless. Her counting was a stammered mess, her entire body shaking with the knowledge that she was in far over her head.

"Are you even doing it right?" Damien's voice wavered, his earlier desperation morphing into creeping doubt. "Shouldn't there be more—more force?"

Celeste shot him a venomous glare, her face flushed with effort and fear. "I know what I'm doing! Medical students train for this—just give me a moment—"

But her voice shook with transparent lies, and I could smell the acrid tang of fear-sweat cutting through her expensive perfume.

I took a step forward, my wolf demanding I intervene, shove this incompetent fraud aside and do something—anything—but in that moment, the door slammed open with enough force to rattle the jade panels.

Sage stood in the doorway, and the sight of her hit me like a physical blow. My wolf immediately settled from panicked rage into focused determination because she was here, our mate was here, and somehow that meant everything would be salvageable.

Her silver-white hair was slightly disheveled from what must have been a hurried journey. Her grey eyes took in the scene with the cold, clinical assessment of a battlefield medic surveying casualties. When her gaze met mine across the room, I saw no panic, no hysteria—only ruthless competence.

Her eyes shifted to Ronan and Lydia, who stepped aside with expressions combining guilt, resentment, and barely concealed fear.

The unspoken accusation hung in the air—they had deliberately excluded her from this family dinner, tried to present Celeste as the favored granddaughter while Sage remained ignorant, but my warning text had undermined their schemes.

"Move." Sage's voice cut through the room with the authority of someone who had long since stopped caring about social niceties when lives hung in the balance.

She strode toward Celeste with such purposeful menace that even Damien took an instinctive step back.

Celeste looked up from her useless compressions, her face twisted with defensive anger. "I'm handling this—I'm a medical student—"

"You're killing him." Sage's hand shot out and shoved Celeste aside with enough force to send the other woman sprawling onto the marble floor in a tangle of emerald silk.

"She pushed me!" Celeste's shriek was immediate, her performance shifting seamlessly from incompetent rescuer to victimized innocent. "You all saw it—she assaulted me! Someone stop her before she makes it worse!"

But I was already moving, positioning myself between Damien and Sage's kneeling form as she bent over my grandfather with movements so swift and precise they seemed almost violent in their efficiency. Sage's hands ripped open Grandpa's shirt with zero ceremony, buttons scattering across the marble like scattered pearls.

"What the hell is she—" Damien started forward, his voice rising with genuine alarm as Sage raised her hand high above Grandpa's exposed chest.

My arm shot out, catching Damien across the collarbone and stopping him mid-stride. "Don't." The word came out as a low growl, backed by enough Alpha command to freeze him in place. When he looked at me with wild, questioning eyes, I simply shook my head, my gaze never leaving Sage's focused expression.

Sage's palm came down on his chest like a hammer strike. The impact echoed through the room with a sickening thud that made Celeste gasp and Lydia whimper from the doorway.

The blow was brutal, precise, delivered with controlled force that spoke of years of training in techniques far beyond conventional medical schools.

For a heartbeat, the entire room held its breath.

Then Grandpa's body convulsed, his back arching off the floor as a guttural sound tore from his throat. He rolled onto his side, retching violently as dark bile spattered onto the pristine marble, his lungs heaving with desperate gasps. The bluish tinge began to fade from his lips as oxygen finally flooded back into his starved tissues.

The wheezing stopped. The labored breathing eased into something ragged but functional. My grandfather's eyes fluttered open, clouded with pain and confusion but unmistakably alive.

Sage stood immediately, her expression one of cold satisfaction mixed with obvious distaste as she looked down at her contaminated hands. Without a word, she turned and walked toward the bar area, pulling wet wipes from her clutch with fastidious precision, her movements radiating such profound disdain it was almost palpable.

Celeste, seeing her moment, scrambled back to Grandpa's side with theatrical urgency. She threw herself down beside him, clutching his trembling hand between both of hers. "Elder Marcus! Oh thank the Moon Goddess—I was so frightened—I thought we'd lost you—" Her voice broke convincingly, tears streaming down her carefully made-up face.

My grandfather's vision was still clearing, struggling to focus. He looked up at Celeste's tear-stained face hovering over him with apparent devotion, then his gaze shifted past her toward the bar, where Sage stood with her back to the room, methodically wiping down each finger with clinical detachment.

I saw the terrible misunderstanding take root in his expression—the assumption that the young woman clutching his hand had saved him, while the cold figure at the bar had done nothing but walk away.

"Celeste..." Grandpa's voice was hoarse, damaged, but unmistakably warm with gratitude. "You... stayed with me. Thank you, child."

Then his eyes hardened as they fixed on Sage's distant form, and I felt my wolf snarl in helpless fury. "But you—"

He coughed, struggled to raise himself on one elbow with Celeste's theatrical assistance. "That barbaric blow—you could have killed me with such reckless violence! What kind of healer strikes a dying man like a common brawler?"