The closer Finn got to the hospital, the further his bond awakened, and the clearer his mate's thoughts became. It had started with that singular flood of uneasy, discontent emotion- a sensation that had Finn’s fingers tightening around his steering wheel with frustration at the fact his mate was suffering alone- before shifting into the faintest flashes of thoughts. There was a single word here, a muted, silent opinion there, a prick of pain in his elbow that echoed down the bond they shared, and a burning flood that followed it-- anesthetic, Finn briefly thought as he turned into the entrance to the parking garage. 

As he flashed his badge to the garage attendant with a tense smile, the bond offered him the briefest glimpse of a bloodied elbow, of gloved hands steadily threading a needle through the shorn skin. The sight came with a flare of nausea, of unease, that Finn wasn’t quite sure if was his own, or if it echoed down the bond they shared, yet it had his fingers tightening about the steering wheel until the leather creaked nonetheless. 

Was his mate hurt?

Was his mate in this hospital, hurt and bleeding, mere yards away from him? 

"Dr. Byrne?" the attendant prompted, and Finn startled in response, accidently slapping a hand onto the horn, wincing at the sharp, blaring sound. 

"Apologies," he offered with a strained smile before driving through the open, lifted barrier, distractedly driving on autopilot to the fourth floor of the parking garage and his assigned spot there, as he always had. As he parked his car and began the process of gathering his belongings, the bond offered him another flood of dizzying, anxious emotion, shuddering his spine with discomfort. He grit his teeth, nails digging into the fabric of his lab coat, and fought to shove instinct aside, to ignore its panicked urging. 

Yet he struggled to bury that instinct, those emotions, where they bellowed the importance of his mate, of finding them and protecting them when they were so fucking close. He shook with the sensation once more, quaking against his seat hard enough to dizzy him, but decided, quite suddenly, he would not let it consume him. Not if he were to have any hope of finding his mate. 

So, instead, he climbed stiffly, disjointedly, from his car, slammed the door far harder than he should have, the window shaking with the force of an alpha’s frustrated instinct, and set the coffees on top of the roof while he carelessly plopped his backpack onto the filthy concrete, a decision he was sure to regret later. He locked the car with a press of the fob, the honking beep echoing against concrete over and over and over, loud and shrill enough to ache, gritting his teeth against the sharp sting. 

Shoving the throbbing aside, ignoring its insistence, Finn shrugged on his lab coat before the echoing had even ceased, moving his badge from the front pocket of his scrubs to the coat's, throwing on his backpack and barely registering the heavy thump of its collision with his spine. He then grabbed the two cups in hand, and took a long draw of Camilla's house Mexican Mocha, letting the hot, soothing liquid coat his throat and settle like a heated stone in his belly, easing a bit of his frantic unease. The spicy, rich caffeine pooled warmth in Finn's veins as he walked, making him yearn once more for a trip to the country the barista called home to seek as many versions of the luscious, peppery drink as he could get his hands on. 

Yet this time the sensation was stronger, laced with something else, something more-- a panging thought twined with instinctive urging strong enough to dizzy, yet unspoken, unparsable, all the same. 

But as he strode through the automated doors at precisely 6:45 as he always had, the hard blow of the AC fluttering through the loose strands of his hair, his drink, that instinctive thought, abruptly became the last thing on his mind. 

In fact, he froze with the cardboard cup at his lips, going as still as humanly possible, still as prey caught in the gaze of a creeping predator…for there was static echoing in his ears, the vast, precious bond within him crackling as if it were fighting through a faulty connection. 

Before, for the first time since Finn had woken up at seventeen with its weight in his chest and his mate at its other end, the bond yawned open fully, stretching long unused joints as it welcomed Finn at last.  

"Wow," an impressionless voice that was not Finn's own said, its tone laced with pain so clear that Finn's fingers tightened around his drink, threatening the safety of both its heated contents and the crisp, pristine front of his scrubs with every passing beat. "This actually really hurts." A mental laugh echoed down the bond, though it too remained damningly, frustratingly unidentifiable, and Finn found an ache building in his chest, a throb that twined about his ribs, whimpering with a need to hear his mate's voice so profound it nearly buckled the alpha's knees beneath him. "And god there's just…so many alphas in here. It's almost hard to breathe through all these pheromones. How do people in big cities do this?"

Finn spun, practically tossing the coffees into the waste bin beside the entrance, his shoulders shaking with the irrational flare of wrathful instinct at the thought of another alpha beside his mate, of someone other than him near his omega when they were in pain. He knew it was ridiculous, asinine and probably teetering the line of controlling, yet his instincts, his gender, didn’t care about propriety-- didn’t care if it was wrong or if it labeled them in shades of possession. 

They were his and they were in pain. 

And it was only the delayed realization that, if his bond were still active in order to hear his mate, that meant they had not chosen another, had not dissolved their destiny with the bite of another, that kept him there, that calmed those snarling instincts even a fraction.

Though the mere thought of another’s teeth near enough to his mate to bond nearly threatened that eclipsing, world-ending rage once more. 

To calm himself, Finn gently stroked a mental hand along his bond, prompting it to open further, to accept his whispered urging, as he sent a single word trailing down its expanse. 

"...Sweetheart?" 

At first, all that met Finn in return was a flood of his mate's confusion, of their inability to process what that simple word had meant, vibrating against his bones as if his body knew it were not his own. But then it was panic, it was fear, that diffused him, shuddering against his spine with an ache of instinct that bellowed for him to move, to just fucking move, and find his mate, his omega, that was not only in pain but scared, even if it took scouring this whole damn hospital room by room. 

But before he could cave to that urging instinct, an incessant, irritating buzz began in the pocket of his lab coat, vibrating against his hip hard enough to hurt, drawing a muffled curse from the alpha's lips as its shrill tone began an instant later.

With a sigh and another muttered curse, Finn dug the pager from his pocket, and reluctantly opened the summons it screamed with. 

CODE ORANGE. 

MCA IN PROGRESS. ALL ED PERSONNELLE REPORT TO THEIR STATIONS IMMEDIATELY. 

MASS CASUALTY ACCIDENT IN PROGRESS. 

"Fuck," Finn spat, distractedly, roughly shoving the pager back into his pocket as he took off at a run toward the ED, yanking his sleeve out of the way as he did, and cursing anew at the time that stared back at him. 

7:03 a.m.

For the first time in his life, Finley Byrne was late. 

The ED was flooded with the stench of dozens of pheromones blended together, thick enough with the acrid burn of agony and fear that it threatened to choke Finn with every labored breath. 

No one had expected the McMaley’s on Sycamore to collapse that morning, for its roof to come toppling down onto a store full of diners and employees, but the results were simply devastating nonetheless. 

Twenty-eight people were severely wounded, needing to be stabilized before they were transferred to different departments for more in-depth care.

Fourteen of those people were potentially fatally wounded, and at that moment, Finn couldn't decide if it was a blessing or a curse that he had not chosen surgery as his specialty. That he was forced to hand those patients off to the surgical team, left to merely hope they got the help they needed in his absence-- all he could do was intently watch the notes of surgical and floor staff, and useless pray to a god he didn’t quite believe in that they all made it. 

"Tornado on Gianu Street?" Séamus asked suddenly, severing Finn from his thoughts, and drawing from the notes he had been distractedly charting on a fourteen year-old girl who had the fucking misfortune of convincing her mother to stop for breakfast on the way to school, only to get a metal pipe through her leg before they could even order. Not to mention the injuries sustained by her mother…

Finn sighed and turned toward his cousin, finding the boisterous red-head leaning his hip against the nurse's station as he stood there, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger, a frustratingly dramatic expression of consideration on the face they practically shared. 

Though Finn would take any chance to remind his cousin that Finn, at least, didn’t boast the sickeningly pale skin of their Irish heritage. 

"Nah, nah, that's outlandish," Séamus continued before Finn could answer, shaking his head with a frown, before throwing his hands up in the air with a bright noise of discovery. "Aha, I know! Murderous clown in your backyard, obviously." 

"Séa…" Finn said warningly, fighting the smile that threatened his lips to curve at his cousin's ridiculous display. From the moment Finn had walked into work five minutes late, his cousin had been offering the most ridiculous explanations every moment he could, and Finn couldn't decide if he found it endearing or endlessly, exhaustingly infuriating. 

A consideration that was a near constant, predictable occurrence in his cousin’s company. 

"You're right, it wouldn't take you five minutes to deal with that," Séamus said with a dramatic sigh before resuming his contemplative posturing. 

"You're ridiculous," Finn declared as he turned back to his computer to finish his charting, and couldn't help but mentally pet a hand over the silent bond within him once more. 

He had tried as much as he could, over the past several hours, to speak to his mate despite the turmoil around, and within, him. He offered them every moment of free-thought he had amongst the chaos, but was only met with silence in response, or the rare short, hesitant answer, as if his mate were scared of him. 

And it was that thought, the idea of his mate fearing him, that was destroying him, tearing him to shreds with every pheromone-clogged breath, making it even harder to focus on the matter at hand, despite how devastatingly important his job was at that moment. 

For his mate came first, would always come first. 

"There's this cafe on Gianu Street," Finn offered to that silent bond, hoping it would prompt an answer out of his equally silent mate. "It's owned by an omega woman named Camilla, whose mother immigrated from Mexico when she was seven. They make the most amazing Mexican Mocha, and Camilla's mother makes traditional pastries for the cafe once a week on Thursdays. I would love to take you some day, if that's something you would be interested in or okay with?" 

And even as the minutes passed steadily with the tapping of Finn's fingers on his keyboard, no response came whispering down that bond, cinching his heart with a pang of anxiety he couldn't quite contain. 

"Got trapped in your shower by a pack of rabid gerbils," Séamus called over his shoulder as he passed by, his arms weighed down by a pile of splints and plaster gauze intended for Trauma Three. 

But Finn merely offered his middle finger, lifted high above his head, and ignored the bark of laughter that echoed in response.