Todos los capítulos de The Heirmaker's Bride: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

“What..” someone whispered.“Pulse!” a nurse shouted suddenly. “He has a pulse!”Sera sucked in a broken breath, disbelief slamming into her chest.Again.Beep.Stronger this time.Louder.Alive.“Vitals returning,” another voice said, stunned. “Heart rhythm stabilizing, how...”Sera didn’t stop.She didn’t cry.She snapped back into command like a switch had been flipped.“Everyone back to your positions,” she ordered sharply. “Now. He’s not done fighting, and neither are we.”The shock in the room was palpable.They had watched him die.They had heard the flatline.And yet...There he was.Alive.Barely.But alive.“Prep the field again,” Sera said, already moving. “Increase support. Stabilize autonomic response. We continue.”“Yes, Doctor,” they responded in unison now.Hands moved. Instruments returned. Machines recalibrated.Sera leaned closer to Damian, her voice low, fierce, trembling with something dangerously close to love.“You don’t get to scare me like that,” she whispered

A guard stepped forward uncertainly. “Ma’am, please lower your voice.”Lysandra rounded on him. “Do you know who I am?”“Yes,” he said carefully. “And this is still a hospital.”Sera didn’t smile. Didn’t gloat. She simply watched Lysandra unravel.“You think you’re important because you wear black and cry in front of cameras,” Sera said quietly. “But grief doesn’t give you permission to be cruel.”That landed.Hard.Lysandra’s eyes gleamed. “You have no right to speak about grief.”Sera’s jaw tightened for half a second.“Oh,” she said softly. “You’d be surprised.”Their voices carried.Down the corridor.Past the ICU doors.Right into the room where Damian Blackwell’s parents stood with the attending physician.“…He’s alive,” the doctor was saying carefully. “But critical. The surgery was successful, however...”“What is that noise?” Damian’s mother asked sharply.Raised voices echoed again.Lysandra’s voice, unmistakable. Sharp. Hysterical. Familiar.Damian’s mother’s spine went rig

She sat there for a long time, listening to distant traffic, to birds she didn’t remember missing, to the steady beat of her own heart slowly calming itself.She stood eventually, shoulders squaring, tears dried but eyes still bright with unshed emotion.She wasn’t that girl anymore.Just as Sera shifted her weight, ready to turn away, something caught her eye beyond the iron gates.Movement.Slow. Familiar.Her breath caught.Her mother stood in the garden.She was bent slightly at the waist, gloved hands carefully pruning a rose bush, movements unhurried and almost reverent. Her hair was threaded with more gray than Sera remembered, pulled back loosely, a few strands escaping to brush her cheeks in the breeze.Her father was a few steps away, kneeling in the soil with quiet focus, sleeves rolled up, dirt staining his hands. He wasn’t speaking. Neither of them were.They didn’t need to.The silence between them was heavy, practiced, shaped by years of things left unsaid.Sera’s chest

Consciousness came back to Damian in pieces.First, pain.Not sharp. Not sudden. Just everywhere. A deep, bone heavy ache that made it feel like his body had been broken down and poorly reassembled. Breathing hurt. Existing hurt.Then light.Blinding. White. Merciless.It pierced through his closed eyelids until he groaned faintly, a raw sound tearing from his throat. His lashes fluttered, eyes cracking open just enough for the brightness to stab straight through his skull.He hissed softly and squeezed them shut again.Machines hummed around him. A steady beep somewhere near his head. Another softer rhythm beneath it. Air moved in and out of his lungs without him fully deciding to breathe.Tubes.He felt them before he saw them. In his arms. His chest. His side. Something down his throat that made swallowing impossible. His fingers twitched weakly, instinctively trying to move, and a sharp pain bloomed in response.He froze.Memory rushed in like a tidal wave.Gunshots.Darkness.Fir

The ICU room was dim, hushed, wrapped in the quiet authority of machines and monitors.Damian lay propped slightly on the bed, pale against the white sheets, dark lashes stark against skin that had lost its usual color. Tubes ran from him in too many places. His chest rose and fell slowly, carefully, as if breathing itself required permission.The door opened softly.Lysandra slipped inside like she belonged there.She moved to his bedside immediately, heels silent on the floor, eyes already shining as if on cue. She took his hand carefully, fingers warm and possessive against his cold skin.“Damian,” she breathed, voice trembling. “You scared me.”Damian’s jaw tightened.His eyes opened fully this time, sharp despite the haze of pain, and they fixed on the ceiling rather than her face.“You shouldn’t be here,” he said hoarsely.Lysandra ignored it.“I warned you,” she continued, squeezing his hand. “I told you the other families were coming. I told you they’d put a bounty on your hea