We take the elevator in silence. Back through the white halls, past the same nurses who don’t dare meet my eye anymore. Past the security guard I almost decked. Past the vending machine and the blood in my veins still buzzing.
We step back into Damian’s room, and the sound hits me first. That familiar, relentless beeping—steady, consistent, mechanical—still fills the air. My eyes go straight to the bed, to the shape of him beneath the thin blankets, and somethinginside me eases enough to breathe again. He’s still there. Still fighting. But he hasn’t moved.
Cole’s hand finds the small of my back, grounding and light. A gesture of quiet reassurance. He leans in close. “I’ll be outside.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I take a step forward, heart hammering, like I’m walking back into something sacred and shattered at the same time. My feet feel too loud on the tile. The room hasn’t changed, but I have. Just five minutes gone and I’m already different.
Damian doesn’t stir. There’s no twitch of his fingers. No shift in his chest beyond the rise and fall that the machines are doing most of the work for. No flicker of his lashes. He looks too still. Too quiet. Too pale. It’s wrong. All of it. And it guts me.
I take another step. There’s bandages up his arms and chest, a breathing tube still threaded between bruised lips, and his lashes don’t even flutter when I reach out and touch his wrist. But he’s warm and alive.
I climb back up into the bed slowly. Half on my side, curled against his good shoulder like I used to do on long bus rides when he was tired and I was feral.
My fingers find his, searching through the thin blanket and past the IV line until they wrap gently around his hand. He’s warm, but not in the way he usually is—not that sunburn heat he carries after games, not that electric buzz of adrenaline or touch or laughter. This warmth feels borrowed. Manufactured. Maintained by the machines that keep the rhythm of his heart playing quietly beside us.
His fingers twitch once. A breath of movement so small I almost miss it. It’s not enough. Not yet. But it’s something.
I press closer, eyes slipping shut as I lean in and tuck myself against him, into that familiar place where my mouth brushes the crook of his neck. The space where my voice has always known how to belong. And I whisper, soft and careful, like I’mafraid the words might break him, or maybe me. “You know I once got stuck inside a vending machine?” I smile. A twitch of my mouth that’s more memory than joy, more ache than humor. “I was seven. Tried to climb it because I wanted a Kinder bar. Got stuck halfway in. My mom laughed so hard she forgot to pull me out. I cried. She took pictures.”
Damian doesn’t move.
“But I kept the chocolate. Ate it in the bath while my brother yelled at me for being stupid.” I pause. “He was right.”
I take a short second and continue. “You’d have called me an idiot too.” My voice cracks. “But then you’d have made me promise to never do it again and told me I was still your center.”
I press my lips to his shoulder. “Please wake up, cap. I’ve got a million more stories and only one person I want to tell them to.”
White.
Blinding white.
Everything is too loud, too bright, like the universe is trying to fuck me with a migraine. My head throbs. My ribs burn. My mouth tastes of smoke and metal. My eyelids drag open, slow and reluctant, like someone glued them shut and cursed every nerve in my body.
What the hell—Hospital.
I blink again, slowly. There's beeping in the corner that's making my head throb harder. The slow pump of IV fluid, a tube in my arm. There's pain in my chest. Something thick and heavy pressing on my lungs. I try to breathe, but it feels like knives.
The room shifts in and out of focus. It reeks of antiseptic and bleach and blood that’s already been washed away. The walls feel distant, pulsing. The ceiling hums with electricity. My body aches. Not sharp pain—deep, dull, as if someone rearranged the pieces without asking permission.
But there’s something else. Something softer and warmer.
Warmth is tucked into my side and the moment I register it, my heart spikes hard enough to startle the machines. Panic surges, fast and unsteady, until I force myself to look down, to really see.
Curls. Blond, messy, sleep-rumpled curls splayed across my shoulder, right where they belong. My vision clears just enough to catch the curve of his cheek, the part of his mouth, the dried salt at the corners of his eyes. He’s curled against me so tightly it feels desperate, anchored to my chest like letting go would kill him.
My pup. Even asleep, his brow is furrowed, still fighting something in the dark, even with my heartbeat under his ear. He looks wrecked, but still so beautiful. Familiar in a way that slices through me and leaves something raw and holy behind.
He’s curled into me like he was built for it. Because he was.
I try to speak. It comes out a low, broken groan and his head snaps up instantly. Eyes blown wide, panic hitting first, then disbelief, relief, everything all at once. “Oh god. Baby. You’re awake. Fuck! Shit! Thank you. Thank you, thank you—fuck!” The words spill in a frenzy, voice cracking like it hasn’t been used in days, all the weight he’s been choking back tearing free at once.
He’s crying before I can even try to answer. Tears, falling hard, like his body’s finally done pretending. The second I opened my eyes, he broke. It’s not soft crying either, it’s the kind that makes your chest collapse. The kind that leaves your face aching, breath hitching, like grief’s been living in your skin.
I try again. My throat burns like hell. “Mmm… pup?” It doesn’t sound like me. Doesn’t sound human. It's something hoarse and wrecked.
Elias makes a sound like someone shot him in the chest, then launches forward and nearly smothers me in curls and heat andfrantic sobbing joy. “You remember me?” he gasps, hiccupping through the words. “You remember me?!”
I frown. It hurts. Everything fucking hurts. “Why… wouldn’t I?”
