Page 138 of Requiem
Micah.
Heather races toward him. Blood still soaks through the pressure dressings around his abdomen, while his skin has gone frighteningly pale beneath the flashing lights.
“Micah!” she sobs.
His eyes barely open.
I move toward him, feeling like my body is splitting apart trying to stay with both of them at once.
Micah looks at me through half-conscious eyes, barely there, but still fighting. And that fuckingkillsme.
I grab his hand hard. “I love you, brother,” I tell him, my voice shaking. “You hear me? I love you so fucking much. I’m so sorry.”
His fingers twitch weakly around mine before the paramedics pull him toward the ambulance, too.
Heather breaks completely after that.
A horrible sob tears out of her as she stumbles back toward me, and I catch her when she collapses against my chest, shaking. I hold onto her while she cries, both of us standing there covered in blood while the ambulances get ready to depart into the night carrying the people we love most.
“I’m s—sorry,” I gasp into her hair. “Go with Micah, Heather. I’ll see you there.”
Nearby, Rafe is being loaded into another ambulance while Adela grips his hand tightly enough that neither of them seems willing to let go. Kieran and Nico stand several feet away, speaking rapid Russian with officers and paramedics, both of them stained with blood and ash beneath the flashing emergency lights.
Behind us, Alexei’s mansion burns like a funeral pyre against the snowy sky.
Chapter thirty-seven
JUDE GRAVES
The ambulance smells like blood, antiseptic, and smoke. Everything inside it rattles as we tear through the snowy streets, red emergency lights flashing across the walls in wild pulses that make Emma’s skin look almost gray beneath the streaks of blood staining her clothes.
I’m kneeling beside the stretcher because there isn’t enough room for anything else. “Stay with me,” I keep saying, even though I don’t know if I’m saying it for her or for myself anymore. “Emma, look at me.”
Her lashes flutter weakly before her eyes finally find mine again. They’re unfocused, confusion drifting in and out of them like she’s struggling to see. Her hand twitches weakly in mine before her gaze shifts toward the blood covering my shirt, my face, my hands. I watch her try to process all of it through whatever haze the pain medication and blood loss are creating inside her head.
“You’re hurt?” she asks softly.
“No.” The answer leaves me too fast. “No, baby, it’s not mine.”
Not most of it anyway.
The paramedic says something sharply in Russian to the driver before pressing harder against Emma’s wound. She winces instantly, a little whimper leaving her as her body curls weakly against the straps.
“Sorry,” the paramedic mutters in broken English, though he barely slows.
Emma’s breathing turns shallow after that.
I lean closer, brushing bloodstained hair carefully back from her face while panic keeps climbing higher and higher inside my chest. I’m so fucking scared.
“You’re okay,” I whisper, even though I don’t know if that’s true. “You hear me? You’re okay.”
Her eyes drift toward me again. “M—Micah?” she asks weakly.
My throat tightens instantly. “He’s alive,” I say. “Heather’s with him.”
She nods faintly at that before her gaze finds the ceiling, exhaustion evident in her fluttering eyelids. For a second, neither of us says anything. And then I think about Adriana’s voice over the phone.
Have a beautiful life with that beautiful woman.
