Cassandra.
Hair tied back, scrubs hanging loose, eyes sharp even when they’re rimmed red. Her hands are busy—steadying Torres, shouting for plasma, moving like she’s born for this chaos—but her gaze finds me and for one brutal second, it’s like the whole war stops.
Her lips part.
Her eyes widen.
Her voice—fuck, her voice—cuts through the ringing in my skull.
“Dax.”
My knees give.
The ground rushes up.
Darkness presses in but the last thing I feel isn’t dirt or pain or blood.
It’s her hands catching my face, hot and trembling, her voice breaking like it’s the only tether holding me here—“Dax, stay with me. Please—stay with me.”
And then nothing.
Just the dark.
Just her name burning in my chest.
Chapter Twenty Four
Cassandra
The moment his knees hit the dirt, my whole world collapses.
“Dax!”
His name tears out of me, high and raw and already breaking. I’m on him before thought can catch up—hands on his blood-soaked vest, on sweat-slick skin, on the armour that feels far too heavy now it’s cradling a body that might already be slipping away. His weight slams into me like a body bag, and for one horrible, endless heartbeat, I think he’s gone.
No breath.
No sound.
No him.
“Help me!” I scream, my voice jagged, my throat tearing open as I drag his dead weight towards the triage cot. “Now—fuck—now!”
Two medics converge—Torres half-delirious on the next stretcher, shouting something slurred and useless—but none of it breaks through the tunnel I’m in. All I see is blood blooming through Dax’s vest. All I hear is the faintest rattle in his chest.
Not gone.
Not yet.
I slam trauma scissors through the Kevlar, snapping and ripping until the torn vest peels back like skin. The smell hits instantly—iron and sweat and smoke, tangled with the sour heat of split flesh. My gloves are slick with him.
“Pressure—” I choke, slamming gauze against the wound under his ribs. “Clamp, I need a fucking clamp!”
One of the medics shoves it into my shaking hand. I almost drop it, fingers trembling so hard they barely listen to me, but I force my grip to tighten. Force training to rise above the terror clawing at my throat.
Airway.
Breathing.
