the end of his world

I've decided to alternate excerpts from my current batch of WIPs - so here's a snippet from Ripples, the final book in the Shinobi Saga.

It was quiet. Too quiet. The bank of monitors watched dark and silent over the still form swathed in bandages. Yoshi hovered over the bed, hesitant to touch for fear of causing more pain.

“You can't hurt him.” The shadow wolf spun to face the nurse. It wasn't often someone snuck up on him. “He's heavily medicated. With luck he'll just slip away without regaining consciousness.”

“What would be lucky about that?”

“No pain,” she whispered, quickly jotting down some things in her chart. “Stay as long as you like. We ease the visiting rules in circumstances like these.”

The shadow wolf eased onto the bed, careful not to jostle any of the bandaged limbs, and rested his head on the broad chest. This was the beat that kept his world turning. The slow steady sound of his life dissolving around him.

He could have been there forever, or no time at all, lost in the steady rush of blood through the otherwise lifeless body. And then, a skipped beat, and another. Yoshi wondered if, perhaps, he could match the rhythm. Anything was preferable to watching while his world came to an end.