“So long as you wish to stay and recover?—”
“Kalina!”
I jerked my head to the door as Misha burst in through the closed door. His sobs were so wretched and rabid. His face was streaked with tears. And as he dashed toward me, crying so openly, Gabriella intercepted him and stopped him.
“Misha. Wait. Just give her a moment to breathe and wake up.”
“Kalina!” He screamed for me, reaching out to get to me as Gabriella kept him back.
“No. Misha.” I extended my arms, holding them out to encourage him to run to me, to launch toward me for a cuddle like he had done before this awful night, I prayed that she’d release him.
Twisting out of her arms, he ran to me. I braced myself for the impact of his small body flinging against mine, and I hitched a breath at the hit. It jarred me. It reignited my headache. But I didn’t let him go. Not even an inch.
Sitting on the bed with him in my lap, I wrapped my arms around him as he circled his around me. Together like this, crying and sobbing, we hugged each other like we’d never be separated again. Every one of his cries broke my heart. All the sniffles he had tugged at my soul.
“I was so worried, Kalina,” he said between sobs.
“Me too.” I smoothed my hand over his hair. “Me too. I was so worried when…” I stopped, not bothering to go on. We both knew that the cabin nearly killed us with the fire surrounding us. We both saw that man come up and aim a gun at him, then hit me with it.
“I came to pull you to the room.”
I nodded, still stroking his hair. Closing my eyes, I held him close and breathed through the tears.
“Daddy came and helped me open the door. Then I pulled you in. And I tried and tried to wake you up. I was so scared, Kalina.”
Nodding and holding the back of his head, I wished I could infuse all my strength into him.
“We’re okay,” I whispered to him. “We’re here.” I wasn’t sure how to believe Gabriella that I’d be safe here when Alexsei had said a similar thing before. “We’re together,” I told the boy. That felt like a stronger vow. A more sacred one. That we’d fight and be stronger together. “We are alive.”
He nodded, burying his face against me as he held me tightly.
He wanted my comfort, and even though I was still learning how to have him in my life, this newness of a child’s companionship, I wanted to offer whatever comfort I could give him.
“I was so scared,” he admitted.
“Me too,” I said, making sure he wasn’t alone in this.
Hearing his cries and his broken words helped stave off the numbness that I almost receded to.
But we weren’t alone in the room.
“What would you like to do, Kalina?” Gabriella asked.
I opened my eyes. Zeroing in on her, because she asked me a direct question, which felt like a test. I was still unused to making choices, to believing I could decide anything for myself when I was taught not to.
Behind her, though, stood Alexsei.
Silhouetted in the doorway with the hall’s light streaming in behind him, he watched me hold his sobbing son.
I sought his eyes, those dark orbs that promised me so much. Too much. So much that he’d almost failed to give me.
Security.
Safety.
I’d almost died under his watch.
Instead of giving me a softer stare, like the ones when he was so patient with me and letting me learn how to heal after my captivity, he was walled off.
