"Don't you dare leave me now... I refuse to lose you... you're mine..."
I tried to run toward him, but my legs wouldn't obey. The wound in my abdomen tore wider with each step, blood streaming down my thighs, pooling at my feet. The distance between us seemed to stretch infinitely—no matter how hard I fought to reach him, he remained impossibly far away.
"He can't save you,"Beatrice hissed, suddenly beside me again."He doesn't really want to. This is just guilt, pretty words to ease his conscience when you die."
"No," I gasped, forcing myself forward another step. "You're wrong. He?—"
"He what? Loves you?"Her laughter grated."Alexander Moore doesn't love anyone except himself and his precious Ronan. You're just another acquisition, another conquest to add to his collection."
But even as she spoke, Alexander's voice grew stronger, more insistent. I could hear other sounds now too—loud beeping, the rustle of fabric, footsteps on linoleum. The real world calling me back from this nightmare landscape.
"I should have protected you better... should have seen this coming... should have killed that psychotic bitch the moment I realised what she was."
His voice was rough with self-recrimination, with pain that matched my own. Raw, unfiltered emotion.
"But I promise you this... when you wake up… and you will wake up—nothing and no one will ever threaten you again."
The forest began to waver around me, reality bleeding through the edges of the nightmare. Beatrice's form flickered, becoming translucent, her voice growing fainter.
"When you wake up, you'll remember what you are,"she whispered, making one last desperate attempt to pull me back into darkness."What you can never escape."
But I was already turning away from her, reaching toward the light where Alexander waited. The wound in my abdomen still burned, still bled, but now it felt different—not like death, but like something I could survive, something I could fight through.
"You're mine now, Aoife O'Malley, and I protect what's mine."
The conviction in his voice, the absolute certainty, gave me strength I didn't know I possessed. I took one step toward him, then another, each movement easier than the last as the darkness began to recede.
Behind me, Beatrice's laughter faded to nothing, her threats dissolving like smoke. The forest crumbled away, shadows giving way to something warmer, realer—the promise of a future I'd thought was lost.
The light grew brighter, and Alexander's face became clearer. He looked exhausted, haunted, an absolute mess. He had dried blood on him. My blood, I realised right away. But his eyes—those dark eyes I'd fallen in love with—burned with fierce determination.
"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. You hear me, beautiful? I'm staying right here until you come back to me."
I reached out, my fingertips almost touching his, when another voice cut through the light—older, wearier, but unmistakably familiar.
"Alexander."Ronan's voice, careful and measured."You need to eat something. Sleep. You've been here for two days."
Two days? Had I been lost in that nightmare forest for two days?
"I'm not leaving her."Alexander's voice was flat, implacable."Not until she opens her eyes."
"She's stable. The doctors say her vitals are strong. She's going to pull through this."
"You don't know that."The crack in Alexander's voice made my chest ache."You don't know... Christ, Ronan, I can't lose her. I can't lose the only thing that's ever mattered."
A pause, heavy with unspoken understanding.
"Then tell her,"Ronan said quietly."Tell her what she means to you. Sometimes they can hear us, even when they're unconscious."
Footsteps retreated, leaving us alone—or as alone as we could be in what I was beginning to realize was a hospital room. The beeping I'd been hearing was a heart monitor, tracking the rhythm of my own pulse. The antiseptic smell, the soft lighting,the uncomfortable chair creaking as Alexander shifted closer to my bedside—all of it filtered through the haze of medication.
"I don't know if you can hear me,"he said, his voice so soft I had to strain to catch the words."But I need you to know... I need you to understand what you've done to me."
His hand found mine—warm, calloused, steady despite the tremor I could hear in his voice.
"Before you, I existed. I followed orders. I built my cocoon. I protected what mattered to Ronan. But I didn't live. I didn't know what it meant to wake up every morning with purpose beyond duty, beyond survival."
A pause ensued, filled with the steady beeping of machines keeping watch over my broken body.
