Twenty Seven

I rested back against his chest and let myself breathe for a moment. The heat coming off him was the only warmth I could feel that wasn't the burning venom kind, and I was aware — distantly, in the part of my brain still functioning clearly — that I was enjoying this. Being here. Against this particular chest. With this particular difficult, closed-off, dangerous, complicated man who had saved my life and then threatened it and was now sitting with me while I lost it.

Funny how that worked out. Well of all the bad things that had happened this was something good.

"Exactly why I'm talking," I said. "I might not get to again. Might as well frustrate you while I still can."

I smiled. I could feel the blood trail on my lips when I did it and I smiled anyway.

"If you really want to die," he said quietly, "tell me now. I'll make it quick."

I didn't answer immediately.

Instead I did something I hadn't thought to do before. I went quiet, and I listened — past his voice, past the words, past everything he projected outward so carefully. I pressed my ear against his chest and I listened to the thing underneath all of it.

His heartbeat had skipped when he spoke.

Not the slow, controlled rhythm of a man who felt nothing. It as fast and slightly uneven, the way a heartbeat sounds when someone is working very hard to appear calm and only almost succeeding. The way a heart beats when it's trying to hide something from another person.

And I knew he was lying.

This man who had sentenced me to a hunt game. This man who had said *so be it* when my death was on the table. This man who sat with me now and said he'd make it quick and meant it to sound like nothing.

His heart was racing.

And I had caught him.

"You wouldn't," I said with confidence and certainty after finding out. Something I wouldn't dare try before some how dying gave me that confident.

"Dare me." He took a slow breath, the kind that meant I had worn him out in a way he hadn't expected and didn't know what to do with.

I gathered the last of what I had left. Not much. Barely enough. But enough for three words.

"I dare you," I whispered.

And then everything started going in the wrong direction very fast.

My hand went first. I felt it drop from where it had been resting and I told it to come back and it didn't listen — the signal travelling too far, arriving too late, like something had already cut the line between my brain and my body without asking me first.

Then my eyes.

Aiden's face above me went soft at the edges. The ceiling dissolved. Everything blurred the way it does at the edge of sleep except I knew — some last clear part of me knew — that this wasn't sleep.

My heart was slowing pumping blood and it finally stops moving.

The last thing I felt was the warmth of his chest beneath me.

The last thing I thought was — *I dared him. I dared him and now I'll never know if I was right.*

The last voice I thought I heard was my name from his mouth.

“April”

Then I felt nothing anymore. The pain was gone and I was lost in the darkness.

And just like that, just as said the last word I died.

He felt it before he understood it.

The exact moment her weight changed — not much, just slightly, just enough — the way a room changes when something living leaves it. Something that had been present one second and simply wasn't the next.

"April."

Silence filled the air and the one who beat the name didn't make a move in response.

"April!!!."

His own voice came back to him strange. It sounded sharp and too urgent for a man who wasn't supposed to care about this particular girl on this particular night in this particular way.

Then he moved.

He wasn't thinking — thinking had nothing to do with it. His body had already made the decision before his mind caught up and he was running, full Alpha speed, blowing past Nathan in the corridor without a word, past Marcus who spun around startled, past every careful measured wall he had spent years constructing around himself brick by careful brick.

He was back in seconds.

In his hand was a small vial — dark glass, thick liquid inside red in colour. The one thing he kept locked away and never touched, kept for a day he told himself would never come.

He dropped to his knees beside her.

Wrenched her jaw open with one hand.

Poured it in.

Then his hands found her chest and he pressed down. Once. Twice. Again. Again. Counting in his head, jaw set, eyes fixed on her face — that stubborn, bloodstained, smiling face that had looked up at him and said *I dare you* with barely enough breath to form the words.

His hands were steady.

He made sure of that.

His hands were always steady.

But Nathan, standing in the doorway watching, noticed something he had never seen before in all the years he had known this man.

Aiden wasn't breathing.

"April, come back now!," Aiden said through his teeth, pressing down again. It wasn't a plea nor a request. The voice of a man who had spent his entire life taking what he wanted from the world through sheer force of will, and was now directing every last piece of that at one girl who had dared him to prove he meant it. "Don't tell me you have you really given on living." Aiden pounded her chest, pressing down.

“If you haven't given up, wake up now”

He pressed down again.

"Come back."

Nathan looked at Marcus.

Marcus looked at Nathan.

Neither of them said a word.

Because neither of them had ever seen Aiden run for anyone before.

And neither of them knew what it meant.

Yet.