Chapter 31 #2
As I came undone, Tristian chased his own climax, hauling me back by my hair when he came.
My back pressed against his chest as his arms wrapped around my waist and chest, pinning me to him, my name uttered over and over again as he kept me there, buried inside me.
His chest heaved as he tilted my head, his mouth slanting over the parts of mine he could reach.
His arms pulled me in tighter. We stayed there until his wild heart calmed against my back.
Pulling out, he sat me on the table, his head resting against mine as a shudder ripped through him. I sat there silently as we just breathed the same air until he brushed his lips against my forehead, informing me that he had to go. He gathered my items, placing them in my lap as he ran out.
“Sasha,” Levi prompted.
My head snapped in his direction. “What’d you say?”
“Damien asked how your night was and said you looked tired,” Levi said.
“Ingrid then said she doesn’t think you need to keep coming to see Bretta if it’s too much.
Patrick asked if you’ve slept recently. Isla said they’d keep Jaxhole away from you.
” Everyone stared at me except Tristian. He took a long drink of his coffee.
“Oh,” I muttered, shifting, only to brush against Tristian again. “I’m fine, not concerned with Jaxon. Just tired. The Ward is struggling to keep up.”
It wasn’t a cover. I was doing too much. The added mental weight of what had happened between Tristian and me had chased me through the Ward. The way he had looked at me, the anguish he had released on my body—I didn’t understand it. It had been different. He had been different.
“Are you doing too much in the Ward? We all know you want to help, but there are limits,” Damien said, his eyes heavy with concern.
“Owen asked if you were all right last night. Said he’s seen you every night,” Ingrid told me. I was sure Owen had told her how other illnesses had run me ragged, making me almost disturbed as I sat with death. They all kept looking at me. My skin began to crawl.
“Do you want me to take your shift so you can rest?” Rumi asked.
I shook my head. “You just worked one.”
“Rums, you also need rest,” Patrick said as a bell sounded.
“I’m due in Lyssa’s office.” Tristian stood up. Did this have something to with how he had taken me?
Levi went still. “Why?”
“Patrol report. I need everyone here at the twenty-third bell. No exceptions. If you’re held up in any way, meet in the supply room. It’s time. No one is to know. Understood?”
Everyone agreed as the relaxed energy in the room dissipated. Tristian’s eyes ran over each of us before he left.
“What’s going on, Rumi?” Damien demanded. “Don’t say you don’t know. You always know.”
“Hayes had a rough shift. A couple of guys attacked a woman near the Kitchens. It was too late when he got there. She died. It was brutal. Hayes didn’t arrest anyone,” Rumi recounted quietly, the implication there. “The cadets in his patrol squad are spooked. Burdon is demanding he come in.”
Patrick grabbed his cross, his elbows finding his knees, a low whistle escaping him.
“Hades?” Damien asked.
“Hades,” Rumi confirmed.
“Shit,” Levi whispered, eyes flying to the door.
I couldn’t say anything as the way he had taken me swarmed me, how he had clung to me so desperately, his hands unwilling to leave my body.
“What’s tonight about?” Ingrid asked.
“If he isn’t giving us details yet, there’s a reason,” Levi told us. “We keep it to ourselves. No boyfriends and no sisters are told. Everyone will be here. Understood?”
Unease lay heavy upon the room. Had Tristian figured something out?
“Did he mean it’s time, time?” Damien asked quietly.
Levi stood, all eyes on him. “See your people. Eat, rest. Be ready. We took an oath. No one will be late.”
There was a muttering of agreement as people shifted around me, heading out for their day. Patrick headed to bed.
Rumi remained sitting. Her gaze bored into me as she whispered just for me to hear, “The girl had the same color hair as you.”
My chest hollowed out. It remained that way as I slept on the couch until my shift.
Throughout my patrol shift, I searched for one Force member that towered over the others.
I didn’t find him. When the bell tolled, giving me three bells before our unit meeting, I beelined for the Ward, tying my apron on.
I hadn’t even been there for a full bell when Owen came sprinting toward me.
His hair was a mess, his clothes completely disheveled.
“Did something happen with Bretta?” I demanded as Owen skidded to a stop, clutching his side.
“No,” Owen panted. “Not Bretta or Ingrid.” He shook his head.
“I’ve been running all over the tunnels for you.
I didn’t know, when your patrol ended, if you’d come here.
It’s Kumar. He wants to see you before—” Owen stopped, panicked.
I saw dried tear tracks raking down his face. My heart raced painfully.
“I thought he was okay,” I barely got out.
“He isn’t.”
“Where is he?” A bell tolled. In two bells, I was supposed to be with Unit Seven.
“His office. Hurry.” Owen took off. I raced after him, fear pumping through my veins. This was an exception Tristian would have to accept.
Owen bypassed the line at the entrance. People pushed against one another for care. Shouts filled the air. The Force would be sent down here soon enough. The illness was winning.
Owen’s white coat whipped wildly behind him as he navigated the curtained halls, hurrying toward Kumar’s office. Other people in white ran too, all in different directions. Kumar had to be okay. He had to be.
“I don’t think—” Owen clutched his chest, as he stopped outside Kumar’s door. “He asked for Death’s Angel, Sasha.” Owen shook his head, fresh tears falling. He didn’t bother to wipe them away.
My heart thudded almost to a stop, turning sluggish, understanding. I wasn’t here to try to save anything. I nodded, knowing what he couldn’t say, what he fought. “I’ll be there.”
“He’s my family, all I have left. The Ward won’t survive without him,” Owen admitted, his voice breaking.
Shouts carried over to us, mixed with wet, rasping coughs.
“I’ve taken on his patients. I have to go.
” Owen spared a single heartrending look at the door before he ran off, chasing life—leaving me with what I knew.
I pulled the door open, embracing the name Kumar had given me—the role that was needed—even as I trembled against it.
The office was quiet and dark. Kumar lay on a pile of blankets on the ground, not even bothering to take a cot from those who needed it.
His long black hair, streaked with gray, lay unbound, his glasses nowhere to be found.
His dark eyes opened, finding mine. He smiled.
I didn’t know how he managed. How could someone smile in the face of death?
“You came,” he told me, his voice raspy and labored.
I dropped to my knees beside him as I helped lift him up, shoving a blanket and pillow behind him. He slouched into them as a cough shook his entire body.
“Of course,” I said. I remained silent, waiting. I could have run an exam. Demanded to know how long this had been going on. Inquired about medications.
I could have bartered with death. I could have tried, but I knew this needed a different type of trying.
I knew where denying death got me. I knew what it would take from Kumar.
So I waited and tried…I tried to shut down that part of being human that demanded survival—that others survive.
I quieted it until the beast raged so painfully that my hands shook.
His eyes skated over my face like he saw it all. “You have grown so much,” Kumar commented, coughing. “You were but a girl when you came here carrying your sister, Lara.”
My heart ached at the mention of my sister, but her ghost stayed away like she knew what I sat with. “She would be proud of you,” Kumar said. “I shall tell her about the woman you became and that I did as she asked.”
My brows pulled in. Kumar attempted to chuckle, but it became lost in his coughs; I helped him into a seated position as he worked through it.
He settled back into his pillow and explained, “I examined her while you slept before Dr. Uri had you both isolated. She told me about you. Asked me to watch over you. To take care of you. I gave her my word. I don’t think I had an option.
She was fierce even at the end. Like you. ”
His words ripped the air from my lungs. No one had ever seen the two of us as alike.
Our whole life had been about how we were different.
I thought of how she defended Eli. How she took up the helm of being a mother.
She had been mighty in her own way—in a way I had never mastered. I wish I had told her.
“I admit, I did not realize just how difficult of a task you would make that,” Kumar said, his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered to him and my sister’s ghost.
“Don’t be. It was the job of a lifetime watching you. I would gladly do it all again for her and you,” Kumar told me. “But I’m afraid my time has ended.”
“You don’t know that,” I told him. The weight of his words was a physical blow. “You can recover,” I pleaded like people always did. Begging death to wait. Had I learned anything?
“I’m dying, Sasha,” Kumar told me plainly, as if commenting on the weather.
“I am ready.” The dying almost always were…
it was the living who never were. “I am tired. I cannot survive the next war that is coming. It is my time.” He reached out, taking my hand.
I wanted to beg him to stay, but I knew from the look in his eyes that it would do no good.
Still, I shook my head. “Can Uri help? I can go get Uri,” I pressed, desperate.
“Do not get Uri,” Kumar said sternly. “Look at me, Sasha. You cannot go to Uri for anything. Do you understand? Sides have been taken.”
“What sides?”
“Not everyone cares that Haven is running out of time. There are those still trying to finish what the war started. They do not care about the greater good. But we must face the real reason I called you here. With me gone, no one will be here to protect you”—he sucked in a deep breath, battling a cough—“from the consequences.”
I swallowed. “I’ll figure it out alone.”
“I have covered your tracks. Your chart and Levi’s are on my desk”—Kumar took a shallow breath, the rattle I knew there; my heart raced against my ribs as if aware the other heart in this room had run out, like I could give him some of my beats if it reached him fast enough—“should you wish to change your fate.” Kumar raised his hand toward his desk. It shook violently.
“I don’t.”
Kumar smiled sadly at me, his hand cupping my cheek. “I pray one day you let the rest of the world see you. It is a crime that you hide the very best in you. You must be careful now, child. The others are not like us.”
I grabbed his hand, squeezing it against my cheek. “Tell me what to do,” I begged helplessly as I blinked back tears.
“Just stay, Sasha,” Kumar said. My hand shook. “I do not wish to go alone.”
His hand dropped to his lap. I wrapped both my hands around his, but my breathing was difficult. “Okay, Kumar.”
“Hari, my name is Hari. My mother named me.”
“I am here, Hari,” I assured him.
He smiled through uneven breaths. “I am eager to see her. To see my wife and children.”
A bell chimed. I would be late, but then when had death ever cared about my needs before?
Panic coursed through me as words slipped from my mouth before time ran out. I didn’t want to carry more regrets. “Thank you for caring for me. For believing in me.” I squeezed his hands. “I am thankful for you. You were the best teacher, Hari.”
“Always surprising me. I am grateful I knew you, Sasha. You filled me with hope that I thought I would never find again. You gave me hope in humanity. I am forever in your debt,” Hari Kumar confessed, his eyes finding mine.
I shook my head, unworthy, tears falling on him.
“When I meet my maker, I will tell him of you,” he whispered, his eyes closing. “Maybe I shall find you in my next life.”
“I would like that,” I told him, tears streaking down my face.
“I wish I had the proper time to explain everything to you. Funny how we always think there will be more time. On top of the charts, the key is for you. A bird brought it for you, along with a message: Use it to keep hope alive. Listen to me, keep it hidden and find the snake, Sasha,” Kumar told me through pants.
“Find the snake and protect the dead, Death’s Angel. I can’t anymore.”
I held his hands as death came. I sat alone as death left.
My world went quiet.