Despite everything, a weak huff of a laugh escapes me. “You’re alive.”
“Unfortunately,” he says.
Jon exhales sharply, scrubbing a hand down his face like the interruption knocked something loose. Larkin mutters something under her breath and steps back, clearly shelving the interrogation for now.
The room settles, but the tension doesn’t leave. It just changes shape. It coils tighter, quieter, slipping into places words can’t reach.
Jon turns back to me, expression guarded now, the softness replaced with something carefully controlled. The walls are back. I watch them go up in real time, brick by brick, and it does something ugly to my chest.
“Delilah,” he says, lower, steadier. “We need to talk about next steps.”
My stomach sinks.
“I need to call your father,” he continues. “He deserves to know what’s happened.”
The words hit harder than anything else so far. Harder than the memory. Harder than the pain. I push myself up on my elbows despite the way my ribs scream in protest, anger flaring hot and sudden, burning through the lingering haze. “No.”
Jon stiffens. “Delilah—”
“No,” I repeat, louder now, temper snapping into place like a shield. “You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to bring him into this.”
His jaw tightens. “He’s your father.”
“And this is my life,” I shoot back, the edge in my voice sharper than it’s ever been with him. I can feel myself slipping, becoming someone colder, more defensive, but I don’t stop it. I can’t. If I soften now, I’ll break open. “You don’t even know what you’d be telling him. He doesn’t know I’m here. He can’t know.”
Jon looks at me like he doesn’t recognize me, like something in him is recalibrating in real time. Or maybe he does recognize me and just hates what he sees. “You almost died,” he says quietly.
“And you don’t get to save me,” I snap, the words tasting bitter the second they leave my mouth. They hit him and me at the same time. “Not like this. Not by turning me back into someone’s daughter instead of someone who chose this.”
Something closes off in his expression then. Not anger. Worse. Distance. That military calm he uses when feelings become a liability. The version of him that can cut his own heart out and still complete the mission.
“Fine,” he says after a moment, voice flat. “We’ll talk about it later.”
But I know that tone. I’ve heard it on missions, in debriefs, in rooms where emotions don’t survive. It’s the sound of Jon putting walls back up, of him retreating into the version of himself that doesn’t bleed. The version that makes me feel like I imagined every soft thing between us.
And as he steps away from my bed, I realize with a sick twist in my chest that I don’t just feel scared anymore.
I feel betrayed.
Chapter 9
Delilah Barrinheart
Time doesn’t move normally in the med bay. It stretches and blurs, measured less by hours and more by interruptions—vitals checks, clipped conversations, the dull ache of healing wounds that itch and burn in equal measure. Sleep comes in jagged pieces. So do memories. By the time they start using words like bedrest and discharge pending, I’ve stopped asking what day it is because the answer doesn’t change anything. The walls are still white. The sheets still smell like bleach. My ribs still feel like someone took a crowbar to them and then asked me politely not to complain.
Larkin is standing at the foot of my bed when I wake this time, tablet tucked under her arm, posture infuriatingly relaxed. She looks like someone who slept a full eight hours, like someone whose body wasn’t used as leverage, and the unfairness of it makes my jaw tighten before she even speaks.
“Let’s go over it again,” she says calmly. “From the moment you were separated from King.”
I stare past her, eyes unfocused, watching as King swings his legs off the bed across the bay. He moves stiffly, wincingas he stands, but he’s upright, breathing on his own, already shrugging into a jacket someone must’ve brought him. Cleared. Finished. Free. The sight of it hits somewhere sore. Not because I want him stuck here. Because I don’t. But watching him walk while I’m still pinned to this bed like a bug under glass makes something ugly coil in my chest.
“They took me,” I say, my voice flat, mechanical, like I’m reciting a grocery list. “They questioned me. I didn’t answer.”
Larkin doesn’t look satisfied. She never does. There’s always another angle, another detail, another way to peel the same skin back and call it protocol. “You’ve said Mikhail was present intermittently. Can you narrow down how often?”
I watch as King grins at one of the medics, muttering something that earns him a laugh. My fingers curl into the blanket. “Enough,” I say quietly.
Larkin glances up. “Delilah—”
