Page 88 of The Captive
This was what family meant—not just blood or obligation, but choosing to stand together when everything else fell apart.
I found a sliver of peace in the steady rhythm of Aoife's breaths, the warm weight of her hand in mine, and the promise of tomorrow if she could just keep fighting.
If she survived this, if she opened those green eyes and smiled at me again, I would spend the rest of my life making sure she never regretted choosing me.
Unless she didn't choose me...
I pushed the thought away, focusing instead on her pulse beneath my fingertips. She was strong—stronger than Beatrice, stronger than the bullets and blood and madness that had brought us to this moment.
She would survive this. She had to.
Because I refused to live in a world without Aoife O'Malley in it.
The heart monitor beeped steadily, marking time in a room where life and death balanced on a razor's edge, and love was the only thing standing between hope and despair.
Twenty-Six
AOIFE O'MALLEY
Darkness.
Not the gentle darkness of sleep, but something deeper, more consuming—a black void that pulled at my consciousness like quicksand. I tried to surface, to claw my way back to light and air and the sound of Alexander's voice, but the darkness had weight, substance, dragging me down into its depths.
Pain bloomed in my abdomen, sharp and spreading, but even that felt distant, muffled by layers of shadow that wrapped around me like grave shrouds. Was I dying? The thought should have terrified me, but instead it felt almost peaceful—a release from the weight of the expectations and violence that had shaped my entire life.
But then I heard it—laughter, high and broken, echoing through the void.
"Did you really think you could have him? Did you think you could just take what was mine?"
Beatrice's voice, dripping with venom and madness, cut through the haze like a blade. Suddenly I wasn't floating in peaceful oblivion—I was running, crashing through a forest thatgrew darker with each step, branches tearing at my skin, roots catching my feet.
Behind me, her laughter grew louder, closer, accompanied by the sound of pursuit that never seemed to gain ground but didn’t fall behind, either. The trees pressed in around me, their branches forming a canopy so thick that no light could penetrate, until I was running blind through the pitch dark.
"You can't escape what you are,"Beatrice's voice whispered from all directions at once."Connor O'Malley's daughter. A killer's child. You think love can wash the blood from your hands? You think Alexander will choose you when he remembers what your family did to his?"
I stumbled, my hands hitting the forest floor hard enough to split my palms open. When I looked up, she was there, standing between the trees like a spectre, her blonde hair gleaming in light that came from nowhere, her dress still stained with blood from the wounds that had killed her.
"He only wants you because you're forbidden,"she continued, circling me with predatory grace."Because fucking Connor O'Malley's daughter feels like the ultimate conquest. But when the novelty wears off, when he remembers that you're everything he should hate..."
"You're wrong," I tried to say, but my voice came out as barely a whisper in the oppressive darkness.
"Am I? Then why are you here, in the dark, dying? Why didn't he protect you?"Beatrice's laugh was shrill, almost deafening."Because deep down, he knows what you are. What you'll always be. His enemy."
The forest seemed to pulse around us, branches reaching out like grasping fingers, trying to pull me deeper into shadow. I struggled to my feet, pain radiating from my abdomen with each movement, warm wetness spreading across my stomach.
Blood. So much blood.
"Yes,"Beatrice whispered, her voice filled with satisfaction."Feel it leaving you. Feel your life draining away. This is what you get for trying to take what wasn't yours."
I pressed my hands to the wound, feeling warmth pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat. But even as I tried to stem the flow, the darkness grew deeper, the cold more intense. Was this how I would die? Alone in a nightmare forest, haunted by a madwoman's ghost?
But then—impossibly—I heard something else cutting through Beatrice's laughter. A voice I knew, strong and desperate and achingly familiar.
"Stay with me, beautiful. That's a fucking order."
Alexander. His voice was like a lifeline thrown into the abyss, something real and warm and alive in this world of shadows and death. I turned, searching the darkness frantically, and there—in the distance, barely visible through the pressing trees—I saw him.
He stood in a pool of light that seemed to emanate from his skin, one hand extended toward me, his face etched with desperate need. His lips were moving, but I could only catch fragments of what he was saying.
