Losing it again.
Over and over for what seems like forever.
Then the sound of sirens pierces through my fog.
The car screeches to a stop, and my body screams in protest as the abrupt halt jolts me. Doors slam, and a gust of cool air brushes over my clammy skin. Something shifts beside me—like someone leaning over—then my door yanks open with a force that sends fresh agony rattling through me.
Kayla gasps. The panic threaded through her voice dragsmy eyes open, and I strain to turn my head. I have to see what scared her.
My heart stutters—then soars.
Roan.
His chest is heaving like he's been running straight through hell to get here. His hair is a disheveled mess, his eyes wild and dark with what looks like—fear.
No. This has to be a hallucination. He can’t be here. He’s supposed to be with Fabian, confronting the man who tried to destroy his family. There’s no possible way he can be in two places at once. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re dying. This must be what they mean.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Dhimitër murmurs somewhere nearby, his voice tired and grim.
Roan doesn’t answer. He just leans in and lifts me out of the car like I weigh nothing. Pain explodes through my side and I gasp, clutching his shirt. That alone snaps something loose in my head.
How can I be feeling pain if I’m hallucinating?
“Are—are you real?” I whisper.
“Shh, don’t talk. You’re going to be okay.” His voice cracks on the last word, and his chest heaves against mine as he lengthens his stride. On either side of him, Dhimitër and Kayla keep pace, both looking worried as hell.
Dhimitër rushes ahead to wrench open a door, and Roan’s voice tears through the sterile hallway. “I need a doctor! I need a fucking doctorright now!”
“Shh… don’t yell,” I whisper, smiling up at him. But then it turns into a wince, because even that small movement hurts. Everything hurts so much.
People in scrubs swarm us, pulling me from Roan’s arms and settling me onto a gurney, my back hitting the thin mattress.
Then I’m moving—being wheeled away—the harsh fluorescent lights above spinning so wildly I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the dizzying motion. Fingers slide into mine, gripping tight, and when I force my eyes back open, Roan is there, jogging alongside the gurney, watching me with the most strained, anguished expression I’ve ever seen on his face.
“Am I dying?” I ask quietly, not sure I even want to know the answer.
His grip tightens, almost punishing, like he would keep me tethered to life through sheer force of will alone.
“Not on my watch, you’re not,” he answers fiercely, and as if to emphasize his point, he turns to one of the doctors frantically working to stabilize me and threatens, “If she dies, so do you—and everybody you love.”
The doctor’s face goes white, and Kayla gasps somewhere behind him. Dhimitër mutters what sounds like a curse, but I can’t make out the exact words through the ringing in my ears.
“If… if I die,” I start, struggling to focus beyond the pain trying to drag me under. “Promise me you’ll take care of my sister. Please.”
Roan’s grip tightens even more, his eyes glinting through the tears that slowly spill down his normally stoic face. “You’re not going to die, goddamnit.”
I blink at him, surprised by the raw panic in his voice, and then I manage a faint smile. “Youdocare about me,” I say softly, the words more of a realization than a question.
“You’re my entire world,” he grits out, voice cracking. “If anything happens to you, my world will go dark. I can’t lose you, love. I can’t. Do you understand me? Ican’t.”
My lips part in shock as I watch the man I love unravel in front of me, my chest hurting for entirely different reasons now. But before I can find words—before I can tell him what I desperately need to say—we reach a set of double doors and several nurses step forward with upheld hands to stop him.
“You can’t come into the operating room with us, sir.”
Roan stumbles back a step, then another, his face collapsing into absolute helplessness as he watches me being taken away from him. His shirt is soaked red from when he carried me, and his hands are shaking. My fingers curl weakly, my eyes stinging as our gazes lock across the growing distance.
He didn’t even cry when his father died, but now the tears run silently down his cheeks.
