A WAR IN THE ICU.

ANASTASIA. 

My eyes snapped open, the sterile, antiseptic air of the ICU stinging my nostrils. 

The reality I had desperately tried to suppress crashed over me, cold and suffocating. My father–my brilliant, scowling, secretly soft-hearted father–could die. 

A raw, salty taste filled my mouth. I was drinking my own tears. This wasn't a reaction to a word in a notebook. This was terror, pulled from a place so deep inside I didn't know it existed. 

He was my only family. The man who painted my world in bright, defiant colours. The thought of a world without his off-key “Happy Birthday,” without his late-night tea because I couldn't sleep, without the home we built together….it felt like the floor had vanished beneath me. 

A shiver jolted me upright as a heavy jacket slid from my shoulders into my lap. My fingers traced the tough fabric. The scent hit me immediately–vanilla, spicy, woodsy, with a faint, familiar musk. 

It doesn't matter that I don't remember him putting it on me or how I ended up in the chair. The smell gives it away. 

Damien. 

The memory was a blur of tears and desperate arms flung around a rigid, unyielding body.. 

He didn't touch me back, didn't console me, but having him there, even immobile, was enough for me. 

His body was still tight and rigid like the day of the kiss. He still refused any contact with me, just like back then, but that's okay. 

He covered me with his jacket. And maybe I can keep it like I've kept a lot of him with me. 

Like his notebook, his shirt, which he once forgot, and his hoodies from when he was with Dad. Most of them were my father’s, but if Damien wore them even once, they became his. Don't ask me why. It's the law. 

And no, I'm not a stalker. I just like collecting. And by collecting, I mean the things that belong to him.

But he was gone now and had abandoned me to this ocean of grief.

And there's a hole the size of a continent in the pit of my stomach because now I'm thinking he's abandoned me, and I need to deal with these jumbled feelings on my own. 

I came on too strong again, didn't I? Now, he really thinks I'm an unstoppable pervert who’ll keep touching him whenever I can. 

Pushing to my unsteady feet, I folded the jacket with a reverence it probably didn't deserve and went looking for him. The coat needs to be all prim and proper like him. Though I probably smudged it with my snot and tears earlier. 

Shit.

My fingers graze the bracelet he gave me as I tiptoe around the corner, searching for a very familiar tall man with eyes that could send someone to hell. 

Specifically me. 

I couldn't have my father's still form alone. I needed his stoic, immovable presence, even if he found me to be a burden. 

I found him around the corner, and my heart clenched like a fist. 

He wasn't alone. Payton was with him. The Witch, as Dad called her. She was everything I wasn't–polished in her sharp suit, her blonde hair a banner of confidence. Her waist is almost non-existent, and she has a slim build. She’s the only woman he pays any attention to, the only woman he shows that slight twitch in his lips to. 

Some people would call it a smile. But I've always considered it half a smile. Almost there are, but not really.

Anyway, he only shows it to her, and I hate it and her.

But what I hate the most is how compatible she is with Damiem. How effortlessly they flow, how good they look together without even trying. 

He'd once told my father he admired women with fire, women who were his equals. The King had no use for a damsel in distress. 

The realization was a physical blow. I was his obligation—his best friend's broken, messy daughter. 

I retreated before they could see me, the vanilla scent of Nate’s jacket now feeling suffocating. I would return it. I would stop being a pain in his ass. 

But my flight was halted by a vision in garish pink standing before my father's window. Cierra. My father's step-mother, a woman whose face was a taut mask of Botox and bitterness beneath a ridiculous feathered hat. 

“Cierra?” I said, my voice small. 

“He's in such a bad shape,” she stated, her tone devoid of emotion. “The bastard finally got what he deserved.” 

I fight the tears trying to escape and clunk my thumb against my forefinger beneath Damien’s jacket. So it's my nails against his coat. In a way, he's here with me. 

Also, there is a bandage around my finger that I didn't notice before. Was he the one who put it there?

“How can you say that?” I whispered, my fingers nervously plucking at the jacket. “He's facing death.” 

“As he should.” She stepped closer, her expensive perfume a toxic cloud. “Here's some advice, little girl. Drop the cases and get out of the house. My lawyer said I can take it all back–the house, the shares your father stole. Just sign the papers I'll have drawn up, and you can keep your trust fund.”

Cierra reaches her gloved hand out and clutches my chin between her thumb and forefinger, and gives it a little shake. “I'd hate to squash a little girl like you, so why don't you save us both the trouble and drop everything?”

Rage, hot and clean, cut through my grief. “No.”

Her swollen lips twisted. “What did you say?” 

“I said no!” I stepped back, my body trembling with a fury I didn't know I possessed. “I won't let you take what's his. He's not dead, Cierra. He's going to come back and make you regret this.”

“You're in over your head. Get ready to be crushed.” 

I was fumbling for a retort, my mind a swirl of panic and anger, when a cold and precise voice cut through the tensions.

“That warning should go to you, Mrs King.”

Damien. 

I startle, my chest doing that squeezing thing, coupled with a zap at the sound of his voice.

He strode to my side, a wave of solid, imposing calm. Before I could process his presence, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. Is this some sort of dream? Or maybe it's a dream coupled with a nightmare.

Cierra raised her chin. “You can't stop this, Damien. The law is on my side.” 

“Perhaps, if you were speaking to her lawyer. But you are now addressing a member of her family.” He paused, and the world seemed to hold its breath. 

“Her future husband, to be precise.” 

The air vanished from my lungs. 

The jacket slipped from my numb fingers, and the only thing holding me upright was the weight of his arm, anchoring me to a reality that had just been utterly rewritten.