“She doesn’t ask permission!”
Ryker snorted. “Axel, last week, I watched you carry her up the stairs because she looked ‘too tired’ to walk.”
“She has short legs! It’s a lot of stairs! That’s not affection; that’s basic logistics.”
“Uh-huh.” Faith arched an eyebrow. “And the gourmet dog bakery?”
Axel’s expression flickered. Caught. “I was driving by.”
“You drove forty minutes out of your way.”
“They were having a sale.”
“You bought her a custom cake shaped like a rubber chicken because she ‘seemed sad’ about destroying her last toy.”
“She was moping! It was pathetic! What was I supposed to do, let her wallow?”
“You love her,” Faith said flatly.
“I tolerate her. There’s a difference.”
“She farted on Jace last week, and you laughed so hard, you cried.”
“That was objectively funny. Jace’s face was—” Axel caught Jace’s glare and coughed. “I mean, terrible. Very tragic. Poor Jace.”
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. Just barely. Just enough.
These people. This chaotic, fiercely loyal family I’d somehow stumbled into.
Months ago, I was counting down the days until Silas found me. Accepting my fate like it was inevitable. Telling myself I’d figure it out while, deep down, I wasn’t figuring out anything. I was just … dying. Slowly. One shift at a time, one sleepless night at a time, one flinch at every slammed door.
Then I met a convicted murderer who looked at my scar and growled,Who hurt you?
And everything changed.
A knock on the door made everyone tense.
I stopped breathing. My eyes locked on the handle as it turned, as the door swung inward, as a woman in a white coat stepped through.
She was tall and angular, with steel-gray hair cropped close to her head and the kind of face that had probably never delivered good news gently. Her gaze swept the room, cataloging the crowd with visible surprise.
“Dr. Ellery,” Blake said, rising from his chair.
Knox’s neurologist.
I tried to read her expression, searching for any tell, any flicker that would hint at what she was about to say. But her face was stone. Unreadable. Professional.
“They’re all family,” Blake assured her before she could comment on the audience.
Dr. Ellery nodded once, accepting this. She closed the door behind her with a soft click that somehow sounded deafening.
“Well”—she slid her hands into her coat pockets—“we’ve completed the CT scan and the MRI. Mr. Blackwood does have a linear fracture at the base of his occipital bone, along with a grade two concussion.”
I gripped the bed rails. Linear fracture. Occipital bone. My nurse brain translated automatically: a crack at the back of his skull where it met his spine. Serious. Painful. But linear fractures were cleaner than depressed fractures, less likely to drive bone fragments into brain tissue.
Okay. Okay. What else?
“He also sustained smoke inhalation and second-degree burns on both forearms and his lower legs. They’ve been cleaned and dressed, and we’ll monitor for infection, but they should heal well with proper care. And he should recover from the smoke inhalation as well.”
