Semua Bab The Worthless Ex-Wife's Revenge : Bab 241 - Bab 250

Ethan Ashford I went fishing after I was done with the shelter.The rock formation that jutted into the water fifty metres down the beach created a shallow natural pool at low tide and I spent forty minutes crouched beside it with a length of cargo net fashioned into something functional enough. My right side made the crouching unreasonable and I did it anyway.Three fish. Small, but real.I did not think about what building a fire with a compromised right side and two damaged ribs was going to cost me. I thought about Serena needing protein. I thought about Noah and Iris needing Serena to have protein. I thought about those things and I built the fire.I cleaned the fish with a piece of debris that had a usable edge and I cooked them over the flame. My ribs sent their protests up through my chest continuously and I processed them as information and kept working.Serena ate without arguing.That told me how hungry she was.When she finished she looked at me across the small fire a

Serena I don't know what time it was when the fever began to break.The change was gradual. The heat under my hand becomes slightly less. His breathing deepened slightly. The restless surface quality of his sleep gives way to something more genuine.I had not slept.I sat beside him, kept the cloth cool and watched the light change outside the shelter.Just then, I heard voices. Human voices. Not that of Ethan. My heart races in my chest.God, the voice was coming from somewhere in the interior — not close, but not far. My hand tightened around Ethan's wrist.He was unconscious. Fever broken but exhausted, genuinely under for the first time in twenty-four hours. The cable was at the shelter entrance where he had left it.I reached for it slowly.The voices were getting closer.And something in the tone of them — something in the way they moved through the trees, not calling out, not searching openly the way rescue moved — told me that whoever was in that forest was not looking for

Serena The pain I was feeling made me uncomfortable.Not immediately. It's with pressure, low and centralised, the kind that made me stop what I was doing and stand still for a moment and wait to see what came next. I had been moving carefully all morning, conscious of the ankle, conscious of everything, and I told myself it was the exertion. The stress from the island, the men in the trees and two nights of inadequate sleep on a seat cushion.I told myself a lot of things in that first minute.Then the pain arrived again.It came in a wave — building from the pressure, wrapping around from my lower back to the front, tightening in a way that had nothing to do with muscle or movement or anything I could attribute to the crash or the beach or the physical demands of the last three days.I put my hand on the shelter wall and breathed through it.Don't panic, I thought. Don't panic yet. One event is not a pattern.Ethan was at the fire, feeding it. His back was partially to me. The f

Ethan Ashford My heart hammered against my ribcage as Serena went pale.Not gradually — the color left her face in a single, rapid withdrawal and her hands, which had been gripping mine, went slack. Not unconscious. Still present. But somewhere very close to the edge of a threshold I was not going to let her cross."Stay with me," I said. My voice came out steady. I don't know how. But my heart was beating rapidly."I'm here." Barely a sound.I assessed with hands that did not shake because I would not allow them to shake. Position, the way she was sitting, what I could determine without equipment I didn't have. The pain she had described — the differentiation from the contraction pattern, the something that felt wrong — every worst-case interpretation of those words was trying to occupy space in my head simultaneously and I refused all of them entry.One thing at a time.She needed warmth. She was shaking now, the fine continuous trembling of a body managing pain and shock at once.

SerenaThe medics were moving toward us before the helicopter had fully settled.Two of them were moving faster with professionalism, a stretcher between them, and I saw their eyes go immediately to my stomach in the way of people who had been briefed and knew exactly what they were coming to. Behind them the helicopter blades kept turning, kept the noise, kept the pressure of air pushing outward across the beach.I had never heard anything more beautiful in my life.Ethan had his arm around me as we moved toward them. I was crying without fully knowing when I had started. The tears were just there — not dramatic, not loud, just the continuous release of three days of everything that had been held too tight for too long."We have her," the lead medic said, reaching us, her hand already going to my arm. "Mrs. Ashford, we've got you.""She needs immediate obstetric assessment," Ethan said. His voice was the professional voice — stripped, precise, every relevant fact delivered in seque