Her White Wolf

Chapter Twelve

"Ha!" Shuri suddenly exclaimed, and on the figure before her the electrified area began to smooth out, running as if the block had never been there. "James, can you feel it?" she asked.

Slowly, James began to untense, gasping for air. He could feel his heart hammer in his chest as he opened his eyes and looked down at Cleo. "The feeling... it's gone."

Cleo could hear her heartbeat beating heavily in her ears and she kept her breaths as slow and steady as she could. She reached up to wipe away tears with her fingers as his eyes opened and a smile started. "It's gone?"

"It's gone!" Shuri exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "James, I know there are still more words to go, but this is going to work..."

James sighed and let his head rest against the back of the chair. "We'll see," he said softly. "We'll see."

Cleo pushed herself up from her position on her knees and very gently sat on James's lap. The relief from pain she saw on his face was a blessing. She moved her hands to either side of his face and smoothed her hands over his face. "You don't have to do anymore today, baby."

"Thank you," he whispered. James' eyes were beginning to feel heavy, weighted down from sudden exhaustion.

She rested her forehead against his supportively. "Let's go home, James," she suggested, voice just barely above a whisper.

Shuri looked at them with a soft smile before noting that James wasn't responding. "Cleo, my dear, could you back up a moment?"

She glanced over her shoulder to meet Shuri's eyes and she saw curiosity there. Her brows furrowed and she turned her attention back to James. "James?" she said, reluctantly pulling herself out of his lap to allow Shuri access. "What's happening?"

"I'm not sure." Shuri placed her hand on the side of his neck. "He has a great pulse, but he's unresponsive. I need to move him, but he's ungodly heavy."

"Did Steve go home?" she asked, stepping back as anxiety flooded her body. "I can get T'Challa, I'll be right back!"

Her feet made quick work of the stairs up to the main level and she made a b-line for the King, who it turned out was occupying Steve at the same moment "Something's wrong with James, we need your help to move him," she said to the two men, waving for them to follow her.

Steve furrowed his brow and instantly followed Cleo as she turned back towards Shiri's lab with T'Challa right behind him. "What do you mean?"

"Shuri unlocked the first trigger word, I saw it. He felt relief," the younger brunette tried to explain. "Then he got very tired and stopped responding. He's breathing, he has a pulse, but something is wrong."

As they reached the lab, Shuri had us trapped James, keeping tabs on his vitals with a disc on his wrist and chest. "It's like he's... in a coma. I can't wake him."

"Take his shoulders, Steve. I'll take his legs," T'Challa instructed, lifting the super-soldier from the chair and moving him over to the highly advanced medical table.

"A coma?" The words echoed over and over in the hollows of her mind. She shook her head. "No, he's okay. Shuri, you can fix it..."

"He is okay," Shuri agreed as she immediately began running a scan. "He's just not responding to any stimuli."

Cleo felt helpless as she stood there. There wasn't anything she could do, was there? She moved past T'Challa and Steve before she landed at James's side again, slipping her hand into his. "Where are you?" she whispered to him, her other hand reaching out to brush a little of his hair back.

Steve watched as Cleo doted on his best friend while Shuri ran scan after scan, trying to figure out what had happened to him. She loves him. The thought came to him suddenly. They'd only been together for a few months now, but he could see it plain as day.