Page 46 of Bleed with Me

“No, we don’t,” I answered quickly, shrugging. “She loves masks and secrecy.”

“So, you are protecting the woman you know nothing about.” Zyon pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning back into his chair. “After everything she’s done, you don’t ask for revenge but mercy. What the fuck happened to you?”

I bit my lower lip, forcing my brain to come up with a response. But nothing seemed good enough to explain how I felt about ma vilaine, so I decided on a different approach.

“You kidnapped Valeria, and she married you,” I reminded him carefully. “Is it truly such a dramatic difference?”

“You’re mixing apples with oranges, Dorian,” he countered, subconsciously touching his wedding ring. “Valeria was never a threat. This woman attacked our family. She attacked you.”

“I see your point,” I said, agitation crawling up my spine. I was trying to explain something I didn’t fully understand myself. I didn’t know why I cared about ma vilaine. I didn’t know why the thought of never seeing her again twisted something sharp in my chest. She touched a part of me no one ever reached. As illogical and stupid as it sounded, I couldn’t just throw her to the wolves.

“Do you?” Zyon pressed, eyes flashing with a warning. “Because we both know you were a breath away from not waking up, and you still act like what she did is okay.”

“What if the kidnapping has nothing to do with our family?” I started, but he instantly cut me off.

“I don’t play what-if games, Dorian,” he rumbled in his typical commanding voice, but it was my time to dismiss his remark.

“What if she just wants me?” He glared at me, his mouth opening in protest, but I didn’t give him a chance to speak. “She’s my problem; I’ll deal with it.”

“She almost killed you!” He threw his arms in the air in frustration, like I was a disobedient child who refused to listen to him.

“She’s my wife.” The words ripped out of me with a force that startled us both.

“Not legally!” He stared at me as if I had completely lost my mind. “You’re not thinking straight!

“My wife, Zyon!” I abruptly stood up, holding his look without blinking. “You will not touch my wife!”

In almost forty-one years, I could count on one hand how many times I refused to do his bidding. I was raised to do anything he required. He was the boss, but not this time, not when it meant giving her up.

Fuck! Did I really stand up to my brother for her?

-26-

Dorian

Zyon’s voice was still echoing in my head when the shrill ring of the hospital phone cut straight through the tension like a scalpel through skin.

I stood behind my desk, jaw clenched, hands planted on the wood hard enough to feel the vibration travel up my arms. My brother’s final words hung in the air between us like the promise of a war postponed. He wanted her gone. Permanently. I wanted time to think, to understand why the idea of never seeing her again wrapped around my heart like a chain.

I glanced at the screen, my brows furrowing.

Head Nurse. Trauma.

She didn’t even give me a chance to answer it properly.

“There’s an incoming trauma,” she reported. “Pediatric. ETA forty seconds.”

“I’m on my way.”

I grabbed my coat, my brain switching tracks with ruthless efficiency. Zyon’s presence lingered like cold smoke behind me, but there was no time to explain. My body moved on instinct. A child’s life depended on how quickly I took control.

The elevator ride felt too slow, my foot tapping against the floor as my thoughts snapped into clinical alignment. Pediatric trauma was a different beast. Smaller bodies crashed faster, with less warning. And fear alone could push them over the edge just as quickly as blood loss if it wasn’t handled right.

The doors slid open on the ground floor just as the ambulance screeched to a halt outside the ER entrance, and chaos spilled in with it.

The paramedics burst through the doors, boots slick with blood and rain, a stretcher between them holding a small, trembling shape covered with a silver thermal blanket that did nothing to hide the red seeping through.

“Six-year-old female,” the paramedic shouted. “Fell down a staircase; glass wall shattered on impact. Conscious but hysterical. Multiple lacerations, possible head injury, abdominal wound. Vitals unstable but holding.”