Chapter 3: Dangerous Stitches

Cade's POV

The pain was an old enemy, but the face looking down at me was impossible.

I had died watching her choke on grey ash. On Day 212, my boots had hit the dirt twenty minutes too late; her brother was cold, raiders were swarming like flies, and a rusted spear was buried in her stomach. I had held her while her pulse faded into nothing, screaming her name until an anti-materiel round took my skull from two hundred yards.

Now, she was hauling two hundred pounds of my dead weight out of an alley, smelling like vanilla and clean soap, her pulse hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

*Nora Calder.* Alive. Seven days before the sky was supposed to turn to poison.

"Keep your head down," she hissed in my ear.

Her grip around my uninjured arm was surprisingly fierce, digging into the nylon of my jacket. Rook flanked my bleeding side, his broad shoulder pressing into my hip to keep me upright.

We cut through the service entrance of a pre-war apartment tower two blocks down, slipping past an empty boiler room into an underground corridor of padlocked wire storage cages.

She shoved me into *Cage 18B*, kicked the gate shut, and eased me down against an overturned plastic milk crate. My breath tore out of my throat in a ragged, burning wheeze. Blood was pooling inside my boot, soaking through my tactical trousers.

"Sit. Don't bleed on the concrete," she ordered, dropping to her knees in front of me.

She reached behind an old bicycle frame, into the gloom beneath a dusty tarp. When her hands came back into the dim amber light of the corridor bulb, she wasn't holding dusty clutter.

She had four sterile trauma packets, a bottle of medical saline, a curved suture needle, and two blister packs of military-grade ciprofloxacin.

My hand moved on pure muscle memory.

Before she could rip the packaging with her teeth, my fingers locked around her wrist, clamping down hard enough to bruise.

"Where did you pull that from?" My voice sounded like gravel grinding in a drum.

She didn't flinch. Her dark eyes met mine, steady and unblinking, carrying a cold, ancient exhaustion that no twenty-two-year-old civilian should have possessed.

"A medical bag behind the bike," she said smoothly. "I keep emergency supplies in my locker."

"I ran security logistics for eight years, sweetheart," I rasped, leaning in until our breaths tangled. "Nobody keeps sealed field-surgery kits behind a ten-speed unless they're expecting a hit team. Who sent you? Did Augustin Reeve tip you off?"

At the mention of Augustin's name, her jaw tightened—just a fraction of an inch, but I caught it.

"Nobody sent me," she said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "If I wanted you dead, I would have left you by that dumpster for the black SUV circling the block. Let go of my wrist so I can plug your leak, or bleed out on this floor. I really don't care which."

She twisted her arm with a sharp, leverage-based snap—a counter-grip technique taught in tactical close-quarters defense—breaking my hold before my weakened fingers could reset.

My heart hammered against my ribs. *She didn't know how to do that in the last life.*

"Anything you put in my veins," I gritted out, leaning my head back against the concrete wall as sweat stung my eyes, "you taste first."

"You're paranoid."

"I'm breathing."

Nora didn't roll her eyes. She didn't hesitate. She popped a broad-spectrum antibiotic from the foil, snapped it in half with her thumbnail, placed one half on her tongue, and swallowed it dry while holding my gaze.

She held the other half to my mouth.

I parted my lips, took the bitter chalk from her fingertips, and swallowed. For a fraction of a second, her thumb brushed the rough stubble of my lower lip. The contact sent an electric, violent heat shooting straight through the haze of blood loss.

"Hold still," she murmured, leaning in close.

The sting of saline tore a muffled curse from my teeth. The bullet had taken a three-inch furrow out of my lower ribs, chewing through muscle but missing the bone.

Nora worked with terrifying speed.

She threaded the needle, braced her left hand against my bare flank, and drove the curved steel through the flesh. Her fingers were warm, steady, and deliberate. Every time she pulled a knot tight, her hair brushed against my bare chest, sending a jolt through my nervous system that had nothing to do with the pain.

Eleven stitches. She tied off the last suture with a pocket scalpel and sat back on her heels, wiping a line of sweat from her upper lip with the back of a bloody forearm.

Rook nudged his wet snout under my limp palm, giving a deep, trembling sigh. My hand buried itself in his thick scruff, tracing the brass tag. *RK-9.*

"He knows you," Nora whispered, watching my fingers.

"Dogs like meat," I lied, keeping my face a stone wall. "I smell like a butcher shop."

"You're a terrible liar, soldier."

She reached down, gathered the bloody gauze wrappers, and shoved them into her jacket pocket. When she stood up, the harsh overhead light caught the spark of a massive, flawless diamond ring sitting on the fourth finger of her left hand.

Julian's ring.

The sight of it hit me like an iron bat to the gut.

*She's still wearing it.* Which meant Julian Reeve was still playing the doting billionaire heir, and Tessa was still pretending to be her loyal shadow.

"What's your name?" she asked, looking down at me.

"Cade," I said. It was the first true thing I'd given her today.

"Cade." She tried the word on her tongue, her expression flickering with something unreadable. "Stay in this cage until sundown. The building superintendent doesn't check the basement on Mondays. I left water and protein bars behind the tool chest."

"And where are you going?" I asked, pushing myself an inch higher against the wall, fighting the urge to grab her hand.

Nora adjusted the cuffs of her dark hoodie, a cold, predatory smile touching the corner of her lips.

"I have a lunch date with my fiancé," she said. "I need to bleed his bank accounts dry."