Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Ravyn's hands trembled as she hailed a taxi on the dark street corner, her mind racing with worst-case scenarios. 

The twenty-minute drive to St. Catherine's Hospital felt like an eternity, each red light another lifetime lost, each slow-moving car another obstacle between her and her son.

Rhysand. My baby. Please be okay. Please.*

She burst through the hospital's emergency entrance with enough force to startle the security guard posted by the door. Her eyes scanned the waiting area desperately until she spotted Dante pacing near the admissions desk, his usually composed face drawn with worry and exhaustion.

"Dante!" she called out, rushing toward him.

He turned immediately, relief flooding his features as he caught sight of her. Dante Archer—Miles' younger brother by two years, and the only member of the Archer family who had remained loyal to her after everything fell apart. While Miles had moved on to Aspen without a backward glance, Dante had quietly stood by Ravyn, helping her navigate the impossible situation of being an imprisoned mother with a newborn son.

At twenty five, Dante was tall and lean, with the same dark hair as his brother but kinder eyes—eyes that held genuine concern  and worry for people close to him rather than calculation. He wore a rumpled button-down shirt that suggested he'd been pulled away from something important, and there was what looked like a child's handprint in what might have been finger paint on his sleeve.

"Thank God you're here," he said, gripping her shoulders briefly before releasing her. 

"I've been going out of my mind. They won't let me see him—I'm not listed as family, and they're being absolute hardasses about it."

"Tell me everything," Ravyn demanded, her voice steadier than she felt. "From the beginning. What happened?"

Dante ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in unruly spikes. "Mrs. Chen from next door called me around six-thirty. She said she'd heard Rhysand coughing—really harsh, wet coughing—and when she went to check on him, he was having trouble catching his breath. His face was red, his lips were starting to turn blue around the edges."

Ravyn felt her knees weaken but forced herself to remain standing, to keep listening.

"She called 911 immediately, thank God," Dante continued. "The paramedics got there within ten minutes. They gave him some kind of breathing treatment in the ambulance and brought him here. I met them at the entrance, but that's when everything went to hell."

"What do you mean?" Ravyn asked, though dread was already pooling in her stomach.

"The admissions staff," Dante said, his voice hardening with barely suppressed anger. 

"They took one look at us—me in my paint-stained clothes from the art class I was teaching, Rhysand in his secondhand pajamas—and I could see them making assumptions. They did the bare minimum examination, confirmed he was stable enough not to die in the next five minutes, and then informed me that any further treatment would require payment upfront."

"How much?" Ravyn asked, though she knew the answer wouldn't matter. She didn't have money. Not real money, not the kind that bought emergency medical care at private hospitals.

"The initial treatment plan—and they were very clear this was just the *initial* plan—was estimated at fifteen thousand dollars," 

Dante said flatly. "That covers the examination, basic tests to determine what caused the reaction, a chest X-ray, and observation for six hours. If they find anything that requires actual treatment—medication, procedures, admission—that's extra. And they want fifty percent down before they'll even start."

Ravyn felt the ground tilt beneath her feet. Fifteen thousand dollars. She didn't have fifteen hundred dollars. She didn't have fifteen *dollars* in accessible funds. The Hawkins family had seen to that, freezing every account her grandmother had set up for her years ago, claiming the money had been "held in trust" pending her return from abroad and would be released once certain conditions were met.

Conditions that, she was beginning to realize, would never actually be met.

"I tried," Dante said quietly, seeing the despair in her eyes. "I offered my credit card, told them I'd pay for everything. But my limit isn't high enough to cover even the deposit they're demanding. I called every friend I have, but at this time of night, on a Saturday, nobody could get that kind of cash together quickly enough."

Ravyn's mind raced through possibilities and discarded each one as quickly as it arose. Her family would never help—they'd made that abundantly clear. She couldn't ask Rhys Larsen, a man she'd met literally hours ago; he'd think she was exactly the kind of gold digger her family had probably already painted her as. She had no friends left in this city, no connections that hadn't been systematically destroyed during her imprisonment.

No connections except one.

"Ravyn," Dante said hesitantly, clearly about to suggest something he knew she wouldn't like. "I know you don't want to hear this, but... what about Miles?"

Ravyn's laugh was sharp and bitter. "Miles? You're suggesting I call Miles?"

"He's still your fiance," Dante said, though the words came out sounding uncertain even to him. " And whatever else he is, now to you, especially with the Aspen bullshit, he got going on, he has money. He has access to the kind of money that could—"

"No," Ravyn said flatly, the word dropping like a stone between them. "Absolutely not. I am not calling your brother."

"Ravyn, be reasonable—"

"I am being reasonable," she interrupted, her voice rising slightly before she caught herself and lowered it again. They were in a hospital, after all, and making a scene would only make things worse. 

"Miles made his choice five years ago when he let them send me to prison for a crime I didn't commit. He made his choice when he never once visited, never once wrote, never once asked questions about what actually happened. He made his choice tonight when he got engaged to Aspen and didn't even have the decency to warn me it was happening."

"I know," Dante said quietly. "I know he failed you. Failed both of you. But this isn't about pride or hurt feelings, Ravyn. This is about Rhysand's life."