Chapter 28

The sound was sickening.

Luca hit the floor hard, and the gym went silent. I was moving before I realized it. But the team medic was already there, kneeling beside Luca’s crumpled form.

“Let me see,” he said. But when he cut away the fabric of Luca’s shorts, his face went white.

The gash was deep, running from his knee to mid-thigh. Blood was everywhere, soaking into the court, pooling beneath him.

It looked bad—the kind of cut that needed stitches. But as I knelt beside him, something made me freeze.

The wound was… smaller than it should have been.

He dabbed at the blood with gauze, then stopped. His face went pale. “What the hell?” the medic whispered. “This wound… it’s closing.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. I could see the confusion in his eyes, the way he was trying to process what he was seeing. In another few seconds, he’d start asking questions. Not here, not now, not with hundreds of people watching.

“He bleeds too much from little wounds,” I said, grabbin