Chapter 63: The Sound of a Heart Still Beating

The deep, resonant silence of the lakeside night was a living thing. It was punctuated only by the gentle, rhythmic lap of water against the pilings below and the occasional creak of the old wooden building settling into its foundations. But for Sabatine Stalker, the only sound that existed in the entire universe was the soft, uneven rhythm of Anton’s breathing, mere inches away.

He lay rigid on his back, staring into the darkness, hyper-aware of every point of contact. The warmth of Anton’s hand, still laced with his, was a brand. The faint dip in the mattress between them felt like a gravitational pull, a force he had to consciously fight against with every fiber of his being. The shared body heat under the thick wool blanket was building a small, perilous country where only the two of them existed.

He had spent a lifetime training himself to be a creature of observation. To notice the flicker of a curtain in a distant window, the slight bulge of a concealed weapon, the micro-expression of a lie on a subject’s face. It was a survival skill, a way to impose order on the chaos of a hostile world.

But now, that same focused attention had turned inward, into the intimate space of their shared bed, and it was dismantling him piece by piece.

He was memorizing Anton’s breathing.

He noted the faint, almost imperceptible catch on the inhale, a ghost of the panic and fury from hours before. He tracked the slower, deeper exhales as sleep finally began to claim him, a testament to a trust that felt both miraculous and terrifying. He could distinguish the soft rustle of cotton as Anton’s chest rose and fell from the sound of his own.

This was beyond observation. This was… absorption. He was mapping the very cadence of Anton’s life, the unconscious, autonomic proof of his existence. And with every breath he cataloged, a cold, sharp terror grew in the pit of his stomach.

Bullets were simple. They were physics. You calculated trajectory, you moved, you countered. You either lived or you died. The fear was clean, a spike of adrenaline that faded.

This was different. This was a slow, insidious poison.

This was the sound of a heart that was still beating. A heart that, for tonight, he was responsible for. A heart that had, against all odds and his own best defenses, become the central organizing principle of his own.

I protect you like I’ve already lost you once.

The confession, spoken in the heat of fear and blood, now echoed in the quiet with a new, deeper meaning. He hadn't just been talking about a hypothetical future. He had been describing this exact, unbearable present. The phantom loss wasn't a future event; it was a constant, haunting companion, made real by the profound, fragile gift of Anton’s presence beside him.

Every soft breath was a reminder of what that silence would sound like.

His mind, treacherous and weary, began to play the tape. Not of a future loss, but of the one that had almost happened hours ago. The café window exploded. The split-second decision to move. If he had been a fraction of a second slower, if his instincts had been dulled by a moment of distraction—by a thought of the man waiting for him in a hotel suite—the bullet wouldn't have grazed his shoulder. It would have torn through his spine, his brain. He would be a cooling corpse on a dirty floor, and Anton would be alone.

And Anton would not survive alone. The sniper, the assassin, Evelyn… they would pick him apart. He was brilliant, resilient, fierce, but he was not a soldier. He was a king in a world of assassins.

The thought was a physical pain, sharper than the throbbing in his shoulder. It coiled in his gut, a nauseating dread. He was the lone wall between Anton and the abyss. And walls could be breached. Walls could crumble.

He felt a shift in the bed. Anton stirred, a soft, sleepy sound escaping his lips. His fingers tightened reflexively around Sabe’s, an anchor in the depths of sleep. The simple, trusting gesture was a lance through Sabe’s heart.

This was the true vulnerability, far more dangerous than any physical wound. This connection. This terrifying, quiet intimacy. Letting someone in meant giving them the power to destroy you. It meant that your own survival was no longer the primary objective. It created a weakness that an enemy could exploit.

He had learned that lesson in blood and fire in Bakhmar. Caring makes you sloppy. Love got people killed.

And yet…

And yet, lying here in the dark, listening to the evidence of Anton’s life, feeling the warm, solid weight of his hand, the alternative seemed even more horrific. A return to the gray, silent existence before Anton. A life of ghosts and guilt, with no living, breathing reason to fight through the next day. The memory of that hollowed-out feeling in the Aosta hangar, when he had walked away from this, was more chilling than any sniper’s scope.

He was trapped. Paralyzed. To pull away, to rebuild the walls, was to choose a living death. To lean into this, to fully accept the terrifying gift of this man’s trust and his own roaring feelings, was to risk a cataclysm that would make his past failures look like minor setbacks.

Anton’s breathing hitched again, a little nightmare flitting behind his eyelids. Without conscious thought, Sabe reacted. He turned onto his good side, wincing at the pull in his shoulder, and faced Anton. He didn't let go of his hand, but he raised his other one, hesitating for a moment in the air before gently resting it on Anton’s side, just above his waist.

A simple touch. A grounding pressure.

Anton stilled instantly. The tense line of his shoulders relaxed. A long, slow, peaceful exhale warmed the space between them. He didn't wake, but he shifted, curling slightly, his head tilting toward Sabe, seeking the source of comfort even in his dreams.

And in that moment, Sabatine Stalker made his choice.

The terror didn't vanish. If anything, it intensified, because now it had a name. It was the price of admission to a world he’d never dared believe could be his.

He would memorize the rhythm of this breathing. He would let the sound of this heart become the soundtrack to his life. He would make himself exquisitely, painfully vulnerable. Because the alternative—a world without this sound—was no world at all.

He closed his eyes, his forehead nearly touching Anton’s in the dark. He stopped fighting the pull of the gravitational field between them. He let his body relax into the warmth, his hand a steady weight on Anton’s side, their fingers still intertwined.

The fear was now a part of him, a cold stone in his gut. But layered over it, warmer and stronger, was a resolve so ferocious it felt like a physical force.

Let them come. Let the snipers and the schemers and the ghosts try to take this away.

They would find that a man with nothing left to lose was dangerous.

But a man with everything to lose… he was a force of nature.

And as he finally, finally allowed sleep to pull him under, the last thing he was aware of was the sound of Anton’s heart, still beating, a quiet drum in the dark, counting out the moments of a life he would defend to his last, terrified breath.

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