Page 120 of Shadowed Hearts: Frost
The morgue. Fluorescent lights humming overhead. Dad's ragged breathing beside me as the attendant pulled back the white sheet. Sarah's face. Peaceful but wrong, her skin the same waxy color as Vanessa's now. The same blue lips.
"Is this your sister, Mr. Cross?" The words that changed everything. The moment I understood that all my precision, all my skill, meant nothing when it mattered most.
"She's dying," I whisper, the confession ripping from my throat. "Just like—I couldn't—"
The words fragment as memories cascade through my mind. My shoulders curve inward, every carefully constructed wall demolished.
"I was supposed to protect her." The admission comes out broken, barely audible. "Supposed to be there. But I was… I was winning fucking trophies while she… while he…"
My voice cracks completely. The control I've spent years building crumbles like sand.
"I had to identify her body." The words emerge as a whisper. "Had to look at her face and tell them yes, that's Sarah Cross. That's my sister. The one I failed."
Jax steps closer despite everything, his usual energy dampened by the gravity of my breakdown.
"I can't lose her, Kade." My voice doesn't sound like mine anymore—raw, desperate, stripped of every defense. "I can't watch another person I—I can't do this again."
"You won't have to," Xander says through his broken nose, blood still streaming down his face. "She's fighting, man. Look at the monitors. She's fighting back."
The monitors blur through my tears. Her heart rate, while irregular, shows patterns, resistance patterns. Her body rejecting the poison, fighting to survive.
"Vitals are improving," Remy announces, adjusting another IV drip. "Blood pressure's coming up. Respiratory rate's stabilizing. The counteragent's working."
The monitor continues its irregular but persistent beeping. Vanessa's chest rises and falls in increasingly steady movements. Her heartbeat whispers against my fingertips, faint but steadily gaining strength with every passing minute.
"She's going to make it," Kade says with quiet certainty. "She's tougher than she looks."
I nod, unable to speak. The ice I've lived behind for years has melted completely, leaving me raw and exposed. My team, battered, bloodied, but still here settles into watchful positions around the medical bay.
Not leaving. Not abandoning their broken teammate or the woman who somehow cracked him open and showed him how to feel again.
For the first time in years, I'm not alone with my ghosts.
And Vanessa keeps breathing.
thirty-one
Asher
"You look like hell."
Kade's voice cuts through the antiseptic haze clouding my thoughts. The scent burns my nostrils. Sharp chemicals mixed with something softer, warmer. Vanessa's scent, but wrong. Tainted.
"Forty-seven hours." The words scrape my throat raw. My back remains rigid against the corridor wall, every muscle fiber screaming from prolonged tension. "Remy dismissed me twenty-six minutes ago after correcting their dosage calculation. Twice."
Coffee appears in my peripheral vision. Dark roast, black. The ceramic burns against my palm, my split knuckles stinging as I accept it, steam carrying bitter heat that grounds me for exactly three seconds.
"The team's rotating shifts." Kade positions himself where he can monitor both approaches to Vanessa's room. Classic overwatch. "You don't have to stand guard alone."
"Yes, I do."
The monitor beyond the door beeps steadily. One-point-seven-second intervals. I've counted forty-three thousand, two hundred and sixteen heartbeats since her vital signs returned. Each one carves deeper into my chest.
My jaw muscles spasm. I force them to relax, tasting copper where I've bitten my tongue. The coffee scalds going down, but the heat centers me enough to think tactically.
"We need Miguel Reyes."
Kade's eyebrows lift. "Her family's been notified, but—"
