A STRANGER

Nadia's POV

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"Yuck!"

I muttered it under my breath, kicking a pebble off the narrow path as I walked. The shortcut through Delvin Road smelled like wet concrete and bad decisions — which was exactly why I never used it.

Except tonight my brain decided to betray me.

*Take the short route, Nadia. You might meet your soulmate.*

I don't know what part of my subconscious thought that was helpful information at 10:47 PM after a twelve-hour shift at the teaching hospital, but here I was. Tired, hungry, and walking down a road that hadn't seen proper streetlights since probably 2009.

"Yuck," I said again, louder this time, because the ground was damp and my sneakers were not built for damp.

I don't need a soulmate. I need a shower, a full plate of rice, and eight hours of sleep that nobody interrupts. I am twenty-three years old, one semester from my medical degree, and I have a plan. The plan does not include soulmates. The plan includes graduating, passing my licensing exams, and never eating hospital cafeteria food again.

I pulled my jacket tighter and kept walking.

That was when I heard it.

A groan.

Low. Rough. The kind that doesn't ask for help — the kind that escapes before the person making it can stop it.

I froze.

My brain said 'keep walking.' My feet said 'find the source.' Four years of medical training broke the tie immediately — I was already moving toward the sound before the argument in my head finished.

He was on the ground beside a black car that had rolled halfway into the ditch running along the road's edge. I almost missed him in the dark. Almost.

But I didn't.

I dropped to my knees beside him without thinking, my bag already off my shoulder, fingers going to his neck for a pulse. It was there — faint, unsteady, but there. My eyes swept him fast. Male. Young. Broad-shouldered, dressed in what looked like an expensive suit that was currently soaked through with blood from a wound below his left ribs.

Not an accident. The car hadn't rolled — it had been driven off the road. And the wound wasn't from glass or impact.

Someone had shot this man.

'Walk away, Nadia.'

I didn't walk away.

"Hey." I tapped his face lightly. "Hey, can you hear me?"

His eyes opened.

They were dark. Startlingly dark, and even half-conscious, even bleeding on the side of a road, the look in them wasn't fear or confusion. It was assessment. He was looking at me the way people look at a situation they're trying to control.

It lasted about three seconds before his eyes closed again.

"No — stay with me." I pressed my hand firmly over the wound, feeling the warmth of blood seep through my fingers. "I need you conscious. What's your name?"

Nothing.

"Okay. That's fine. You don't have to talk." I was already pulling my scarf from around my neck, folding it into a compress. "I'm going to apply pressure. It's going to hurt. I need you to stay with me anyway."

Another groan. His jaw tightened.

"I know," I said, and I meant it. "Just breathe."

I worked quickly, the way they trained us to work — efficiently, without panic, without wasting movement. The bleeding was significant but the angle was survivable if I kept pressure on it and got him help within the next twenty minutes. I reached for my phone with my free hand and dialed emergency services.

The line connected.

Then his hand closed around my wrist.

My breath caught.

His eyes were open again — fully this time, focused on me with an intensity that made my stomach do something I didn't have time to analyze.

"Don't." His voice was low, wrecked but certain.

I stared at him. "You're bleeding. I need to call—"

"Don't call anyone." He said it like it wasn't a request. Like it had never been a request. "Call my number. Jacket pocket. Left side."

"Sir, you need a hospital—"

"Call. My number."

There was something in his voice that my body responded to before my mind caught up. Not fear exactly. Something more like 'recognition' — the instinct that understands, without being told, that this man was not someone who repeated himself.

I ended the emergency call.

I told myself it was because he was lucid enough to make decisions about his own care. I told myself it was the rational, patient-centered thing to do.

The truth was simpler — something in his voice left no room for argument.

"Happy?" I said flatly.

He didn't answer. His breathing had evened slightly but the blood soaking through my scarf said we were running out of negotiating time. I needed better supplies. Proper ones. The compress was holding for now but 'for now' had an expiry.

"I need to clean this wound properly," I said, more to myself than him. "What I have isn't enough."

"I'll be fine."

I looked at him. "You will not be fine. You have a gunshot wound below your ribs and you're bleeding through a scarf that costs less than your shirt button. You are the opposite of fine."

His jaw moved. Something that might have been irritation — or amusement. It was too dark to tell.

"I don't need—"

"I live four minutes from here." I cut him off cleanly. "I have a kit. Proper supplies. I can close that wound without a hospital record, which I'm assuming is what you want since you stopped me from calling anyone." I held his gaze. "Or you can stay here and prove a point to nobody and bleed out on a road that smells like old rain and a piece of sh*t. Your choice."

Silence.

The kind that meant he was actually considering it — which surprised me. I had expected another flat refusal.

His dark eyes moved over my face slowly. Still assessing. Always assessing.

"Four minutes," he repeated.

"Four minutes."

Another silence. Then — almost imperceptibly — he shifted his weight, bracing to move.

"Slowly," I said immediately, hand still firm on the wound. "And don't argue with me about the pace. I set it, not you."

The look he gave me could have stripped paint.

I didn't move.

He didn't argue.