The hospital corridor stretched like an endless white tunnel under fluorescent lights that never dimmed. Three o'clock in the morning, yet the place felt awake and watchful, as though the building itself knew the night was not finished with us.
I walked slowly, each step deliberate so my knees wouldn't buckle. The silver dagger was still strapped to my thigh; I hadn't thought to remove it. Smoke clung to my hair and skin, mixing with the metallic reek of blood—Scarlett's blood—dried in rust-colored streaks across my forearms and throat. Soot blackened the edges of my torn jacket. I looked like something dragged up from a battlefield, not a woman coming to see the father of her child.
Nurses froze when they saw me. One dropped a clipboard. Another took an involuntary step back, hand flying to her mouth. I didn't blame them. I caught my reflection in a glass partition: eyes too wide, lips cracked, face streaked with ash and crimson. A monster wearing my skin.
Marcus appeared at the mouth of the corridor, broad shoulders filling the space. He took one look at me and angled his body between me and the frightened staff.
"Luna," he murmured, voice low. "This way."
He didn't ask if I was hurt. He already knew the only wounds that mattered tonight weren't visible.
Leo sat on a plastic bench outside the ICU, small legs swinging. He was wrapped in Damon's oversized jacket, sleeves rolled a dozen times. When he spotted me, he didn't run like I expected. He simply slid off the bench and walked straight to me, pressing his face against my thigh without a word. His little arms circled my leg, careful to avoid the dagger sheath.
My hand settled on his curls, trembling. "It's done, baby," I whispered. "She's gone. We're safe."
Leo nodded against me, breathing me in—smoke, blood, and all—and held on tighter.
Marcus opened the ICU door and stood aside.
Inside, the room was dim except for the green glow of monitors. Machines hissed and beeped in steady, indifferent rhythm. Ryan lay propped against white pillows, IV lines snaking from both arms, oxygen tubing tucked beneath his nose. The silver poisoning had stripped weight from his powerful frame; the strong column of his neck looked almost fragile above the hospital gown.
His eyes—those storm-gray eyes I had once hated and still somehow loved—were open. Fixed on the door.
The moment he saw me, they flared wide with terror.
Ryan surged upright, ripping at the tape holding the heart monitor to his chest. Wires tore free. Alarms shrieked. "Aria—!"
"Ryan, no—" I crossed the room in four strides and caught his shoulders, pushing him gently but firmly back against the pillows. His skin burned beneath my palms, fever lingering from the poison. "Stop. I'm okay."
He fought me for only a second before the weakness took him. His hands clutched my wrists, fingers slipping in the dried blood. "Who hurt you?" His voice cracked like a teenager's. "Tell me who—tell me the name—"
"It's not my blood, Ryan." I leaned over him, letting him see my eyes, letting him smell the truth on me. "It's hers. Scarlett's. She's dead. I made sure of it."
The fight drained out of him all at once. The monitors slowed their frantic screaming. Ryan stared at me, chest heaving, taking in the soot, the dagger, the exhaustion carved into every line of my face. Something broke open behind his eyes—relief so sharp it looked like grief.
"Goddess," he breathed. "Look what I turned you into."
I eased down onto the narrow strip of mattress beside him. The moment my weight settled, the adrenaline that had carried me through the warehouse finally, cruelly, abandoned me. A tremor started in my knees and climbed my spine until my teeth chattered. I folded forward, elbows on my thighs, hands clasped to stop the shaking.
Ryan's fingers—IV bruise blooming purple at the crook of his elbow—brushed a strand of filthy hair from my cheek. His touch was feather-light, as though he was afraid I might shatter.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice raw. "I'm so damn sorry."
I laughed once, a cracked sound that hurt coming out. "You're apologizing to me? You almost died."
"I should have died before I ever let you walk into that place alone." His thumb traced the line of my jaw, smearing a streak of someone else's blood. "I was supposed to be the shield, Aria. Not you. Never you."
I closed my eyes. The antiseptic smell of the room warred with gunpowder still caught in the weave of my shirt. "You didn't let me do anything. I chose. For Leo. For the pack." A pause, heavy as winter. "For you."
Silence pooled between us, thick and aching.
Then, so quietly I almost missed it: "I need to tell you why."
I opened my eyes.
Ryan couldn't meet my gaze. He stared at the ceiling instead, throat working. "Five years ago… when I rejected you in front of the entire pack…" His voice splintered. "It wasn't because you were rogue-born. That was the lie I let everyone believe. Including you."
He drew a shuddering breath.
"I was twenty-three. My father had just died. Rogues were burning villages on the borders every week. The Council was breathing down my neck—take a chosen mate from one of the old bloodlines or they'd strip the title from our pack. I was drowning, Aria. And then the Moon Goddess gave me you—nineteen, fierce, beautiful, and completely unsuited to their politics." A bitter smile ghosted across his mouth. "I panicked. I was a coward hiding behind pride. I thought if I pushed you away hard enough, you'd be safe from the mess I was about to inherit. Safe from me."
Tears slipped hot down my temples, into my hair. I hadn't expected to cry tonight. I thought I was too empty.
"I broke us," he whispered. "I broke you. And every day since, I've carried that mark worse than any silver wound."
The room's machines kept their steady time, counting heartbeats that belonged to both of us now.
I turned my face into his palm. "You did break me," I said, honest and soft. "Some nights I still wake up tasting the rejection like blood in my mouth. I won't pretend it didn't happen. I can't."
"I know." His voice cracked again. "I don't deserve forgiveness. I'm not asking for it tonight. I'm asking for time. Every day for the rest of my life, I want to earn the right to stand beside you and Leo. Not as the Alpha who rejected his mate. As the man who will never fail you again."
I studied him for a long moment—the pallor under his tan, the new silver threading early at his temples, the desperate truth shining in his eyes.
Then I leaned in and pressed my forehead to his. "Day by day," I murmured against his skin. "We'll start there."
His exhale trembled across my lips. Slowly, carefully, mindful of tubes and wires, Ryan cupped the back of my neck and drew me into a kiss.
It tasted of salt and hospital antiseptic, of smoke and tears and five lost years. There was no hunger in it—only healing, slow and fragile as the first light of dawn. When we parted, our breaths mingled in the small space between.
The door creaked. Leo stood in the gap, clutching Damon's jacket like a cape, eyes enormous in the dimness.
"Mama?" he whispered. "Can I come in now?"
I opened my arm without thinking. Leo padded across the tiles and climbed up, careful of the wires, burrowing between us like a small warm animal seeking its den. Ryan's arm curved protectively around us both, palm resting over the place where Leo's tiny heart beat steady and strong.
Outside the window, the sky began to pale from black to indigo. The machines kept their quiet vigil. Exhaustion finally won; I felt it pull me under like deep water.
I curled on my side at the very edge of the bed, Leo tucked against my chest, Ryan's hand still tangled in my hair. For the first time in five years, no nightmares waited behind my eyes.
The sun rose gentle and gold over a city that no longer had to be afraid.
And in the quiet room, surrounded by beeping monitors and the scent of antiseptic and smoke, the three of us slept—truly slept—without fear.