Page 128 of Ruthless Beasts

"Do you have proof of residency?" The officer crossed his arms over his chest, and I was sure Mercer was seconds away from snapping his neck with his bare hands, but Hannah stumbled forward, her face grey and ashy as she plowed into me.

My arms wrapped around her automatically as she sobbed. "Oh god. Ace. He's dead."

"Who?" I muttered.

"There is so much blood," she cried.

"Hannah. Who is dead? Whose blood?" Mercer demanded.

"I… he was going to kill Adam." She sniffed before a sob wracked her body.

"Who?"

Without answering the question, she continued, "And Belle... oh god."

"HANNAH!" Mercer growled. "Get yourself together and answer our fucking questions."

Shouting probably wasn't the best course of action because it had an adverse effect on the girl, and she crumbled. I scooped her up, and we pushed past the police, who tried to keep us away. If our residency wasn't established by Hannah running to us, then fuck him. He could try to arrest us.

My feet grew heavy the closer we got to the rose garden. Lead weighed down my steps, trying to keep me in place. A place where my heart was safe and I wouldn’t feel a damn thing. But the thing about safe places is if you experience nothing outside of your comfort zone, you never truly appreciate all you have. So when I stepped into the garden and saw the paramedics surrounding our girl and my best friend, I wanted nothing more than to be in our safe place, upstairs, in bed with them.

Why had I left this evening, anyway?

Nothing seemed more important than they were. I tried not to drop Hannah as I sat her down, but every fiber in me was pulled forward toward my family. My child. My life. With Mercer at my side, we fell to our knees beside them, my hand instantly finding Belle's.

"Baby." I was practically begging her to respond. But she didn't. Her eyes didn't flutter. Her mouth never moved. She was frozen in this cold rainy night, with her hair sticking to her forehead and Mercer's torn and stained shirt barely covering her skin.

"You need to move." The paramedic shoved me aside, using so much force that it peeled my palm away from her cold hand, and I instantly felt the loss. "We need to move her. The flight will be here."

"Flight?"

"She needs a hospital now," he said, not looking at me, but hooking up various straps to my girl.

"What happened?" He didn't respond to that. Instead, they took her away, tearing my heart out as her hand flopped over the side of the gurney, and rain trailed down her arm, funneling to the ground.

"I'm going with her," Mercer announced, leaving no room for me to argue as he chased our woman. I wished it was me. Wished I was stronger. Wished I could handle the possibility of the outcome, but thoughts of my sister filled my mind. Thoughts of her dead body on the side of the road, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't be as strong as I wanted to be.

"She— fuck. I don't know if she will be okay." Adam's strained voice broke into my thoughts and my head snapped to where he was propped against the oak tree, his back leaning against the trunk as some first responders worked on his leg. I glanced at it and quickly looked away. I've seen a lot of shit in my life, but my best friend's bone wasn't something I wanted placed into my mind. It was too close to the possibility of what could have happened.

"She'll be fine," I promised, but I couldn't stand saying the words, knowing that they might be a lie.

"So much blood, Ace. He…" Adam swallowed hard, before clearing his throat. "If Hannah hadn’t killed him, he was going to kill me and then take our child. He would have cut her out. Instead, now... fuck. Would it have been better? If he cut her out while Bellamy lived, I mean, versus this."

"I don't know what happened." I shook my head because there was not a moment in this lifetime where I'd ever admit that cutting my child out of my girl's body would be better than her being whole. I knelt next to my friend, his eyes watery as he watched the helicopter take off, fighting against the waning storm. "I don't know what happened, Adam. But she will be fine."

"My life is in that helicopter," he whispered.

"Mine too." I followed the helicopter with my eyes until it was the faintest speck in the sky. "But it doesn't erase my life on the ground either." I squeezed his shoulder. "She'll be fine. Mercer wouldn't allow anything else. We need to worry about you."

He nodded once, though I could tell his thoughts were anywhere but on the situation on the ground. We sat in silence until his leg was stabilized and they loaded him onto a stretcher. Then I promised I would take care of Mimi before following him.

I sent Mimi with Hannah, figuring her home was a lot less bloody than ours, then I watched the ambulance pull away, taking my best friend with it, making me feel the loneliest I'd ever felt in this lifetime. How could the people I loved nearly disappear from my life in the course of an hour? And how selfish was I for not telling them I loved them, knowing just how precious our lives were?

As the ambulance turned, pulling off our driveway and onto the main street, I made a promise to myself, to a god, if there even was one, that I'd tell them. I'd tell them every fucking day. Because I never wanted a moment like this again, a moment when uncertainty curled in the pit of my stomach and fear clawed at my nerves so much that it was physically painful. I never wanted regret to hold me back. I wanted nothing but happiness for the rest of our lives. If ours were all granted to us, that was.

Never again.

Never again would I let a moment slip by without whispering the words I felt to my very core.

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