Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
LANI
The sirens intrude before the shock fully settles.
By the time the flashing blue lights spill through the windows, I am still kneeling in front of Sol, my hands pressed against his side, feeling the warmth of his blood seeping between my fingers. The guys helped move him to the sofa in the lounge but I can’t seem to leave his side. He’s so pale.
The house smells like gunpowder and copper and fear.
My fear.
Fear for Sol. For his wounds and for what might happen to us all now that there’s a dead man in my grandmother’s house. I don’t know what happened. One minute my father was leaving, and the next I’m drowning in silence and blood.
My father’s body lies on the wooden floorboards of the hallway several feet away, covered now with a sheet one of the guys grabbed from the airing cupboard and threw over him so that I’d stop staring and shaking.
Finn steps forward the moment the police cross the threshold.
His posture shifts subtly – not defensive, not aggressive, but composed in a way that suggests control rather than chaos. He identifies himself calmly. He states what happened clearly: armed entry, syringe, threat to life, weapon discharged first. He names witnesses. He names evidence.
No embellishment.
No hesitation.
The officers listen differently once they recognise him.
One of them kneels beside the sofa to speak to Sol.
“Sir, you’ve been shot. We need to transport you to the hospital for treatment.”
“I’m not going,” Sol replies evenly. His voice is somehow steady, but I feel the strain in it through the bond.
That’s new.
I file it away for later.
“You don’t have a choice,” the officer insists.
“Yes, I do.” He doesn’t look at them when he says it. He looks at me as he clambers to his feet, wincing and grimacing. A sheen of sweat immediately breaks out on his forehead and I scramble up to follow him.
My pulse is erratic now – not only from what just happened, but from the way something deeper is shifting beneath my skin. The fear is fading. Something hotter is replacing it.
The officer tries again. “You could have internal bleeding.”
“If I leave,” Sol says, still watching me carefully, “she destabilises.”
The word makes the officer blink.
“That’s not how—”
“It is,” Sol cuts in quietly.
Kai steps closer to his other side, hands hovering like he’s ready to catch him if he sways. Koa stands just behind me, a wall of heat and steadiness. Finn finishes giving his statement and moves toward us.
“He’s not going to a hospital,” Finn says calmly to the officer. “A private physician is already en route.”
“That’s not protocol—”
Finn holds his gaze, unblinking. “It is today.”
Silence stretches.
Money and influence move faster than argument.
The officer exhales sharply and stands. “Fine. But if he deteriorates—”
“He won’t,” I say.
They all look at me then.
My voice doesn’t shake.
Because something inside me has locked into place. After a pause, they nod.
The officers finish their sweep quickly after that. Statements are wrapped. The gun is bagged. The syringe is collected carefully, though I don’t look at it again. I don’t look at the sheet covering my father either, nor do I watch when his body is removed.
When the front door finally closes behind them and the flashing lights disappear from the windows, the house falls into a thick, oppressive quiet.
Sol slumps back down onto the sofa. His shirt has been cut away at the side by one of the twins. Blood stains the waistband of his trousers.
“You’re pale,” Kai mutters.
“I’m fine.”
He’s not.
But he’s upright. Ish.
And he hasn’t taken his eyes off me.
The burn under my skin has intensified now that the immediate threat is gone. The fear that triggered it has transformed into something else – something deeper and more focused. My scent fills the room without my permission.
Kai inhales sharply.
Koa goes still.
Finn’s eyes flick to me in understanding.
“She’s spiking,” Kai says quietly.
“I know,” Sol replies.
Despite the pain etched on his features, he reaches for me anyway. His hand finds the back of my neck, fingers warm and steady – which surprises me. If our roles were reversed I’d be shaking like a leaf for sure.
“If you leave,” I whisper, “it will get worse, won’t it?”
His thumb brushes against my skin. “That’s why I’m not leaving.”
The bond tightens at the words.
Not violently.
Securely.
The front door opens again, and this time it’s not the police.
The private medic Finn arranged enters with a compact bag and no questions. He works quickly and efficiently, cleaning and stitching the wound, while Finn stands nearby answering whatever documentation is required.
“The bullet passed through,” the medic says finally. “You were lucky.”
“I know,” Sol replies.
He doesn’t look away from me.
When the medic leaves and the house empties again, the four of them close in without speaking.
Not crowding.
Containing.
Kai rests a hand against my lower back. Koa sits on the arm of the chair, close enough that his thigh brushes my shoulder. Finn leans against the counter, arms folded but gaze sharp.
The air thickens.
My body reacts in waves now. Heat pulses low in my abdomen, not frantic, not cyclical – triggered. My senses are heightened to the point of ache. Every shift of fabric, every inhale of their layered scents feels amplified.
“I don’t want to go back to being suppressed,” I say quietly.
No one interrupts.
“I don’t want to be cured. I don’t want to be fixed.”
Sol’s hand tightens slightly at the back of my neck.
“You won’t be,” he says.
Kai’s voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. “No one’s fixing you.”
Koa’s hand slides to my shoulder, grounding. “You’re not broken.”
Finn meets my gaze last. “You’re not a solution. You’re a choice.”
The word settles in my chest.
Choice.
I look at Sol.
At the blood still oozing through his fresh bandage and the way he seems to have aged ten years in one night.
At the feral edge he barely contained when he saw my father with that syringe.
At the way he refused to leave.
I look at Kai, who didn’t hesitate to move.
At Koa, who shielded me without being asked.
At Finn, who pulled the trigger and will carry that weight without flinching.
“I choose this,” I say with a certainty I didn’t feel before this moment.
The heat shifts the moment I speak.
It deepens.
Not chaotic.
Not wild.
Awake.
This time there is no fear in it.
Only certainty.
And none of them step back.