14. Ghost
The hospital smells of industrial bleach and dying hope. It’s a scent I’ve known my whole life but here, in the heart of London, it feels colder. More sterile. Like the walls themselves don’t give a damn if you live or die.
Shade leads the way, his boots clicking a frantic, uneven rhythm on the linoleum. He gives the woman at the front desk our names—or rather, his name. They check a screen, murmur something about the ICU, and point us toward a set of heavy double doors.
My heart isn’t beating; it’s slamming against my ribs like a sledgehammer. Every step feels like walking through deep water. I’ve killed men. I’ve seen the worst things humanity has to offer. But the thought of seeing her—of seeing my Angel broken—is the only thing that has ever truly terrified me.
We reach the room. The door is cracked open.
I push past Shade, my breath hitching in my throat, but I freeze two steps inside.
There is a man in the chair next to her bed.
He’s younger than me, maybe mid-twenties, with dark circles under his eyes and a mess of blonde hair. He’s slumped over, asleep, but his hand is clamped firmly around hers. He’s holding her fingers like they’re the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth.
My blood boils. A raw, primitive roar builds in the back of my throat.
I want to lunge across the room, grab his arm, and rip it clean off his shoulder.
How dare he? How dare this stranger touch her?
How dare he sit in the seat that belongs to me?
I don’t care that he’s the roommate. I don’t care that he called Shade.
In this moment, he is an intruder in a sanctuary that should only belong to us.
Next to me, Shade lets out a soft, broken sound. He’s gone pale, his eyes fixed on the girl in the bed. For a second, the rage falters, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.
The man in the chair—Oliver—jolts awake as the door swings fully open. He blinks, his eyes red and unfocused, before he sits up straight. He looks at Shade, then at me, his gaze lingering on the sheer violence radiating off my frame.
“Shade?” he asks, his voice hoarse.
“Yeah,” Shade rasps, moving toward the bed.
Oliver stands up, his movements stiff. He looks at me again, narrowing his eyes as I step closer to the bed. I don’t give him a chance to introduce himself. I don’t care about pleasantries.
“What the fuck happened?” I growl. The sound is low, lethal, and vibrating with the need to destroy something.
Oliver doesn’t flinch, but his jaw sets. He looks like a man who has seen too much in the last twenty-four hours to be intimidated by a biker from California. He doesn’t answer immediately. He doesn’t have to.
I look down at Angel.
The world stops. The air in the room vanishes.
She looks so small. So fragile. The hospital gown is too big for her, and her skin is the color of parchment. But it’s her neck that makes the room spin. The bruises are dark, ugly, and unmistakable—the purple-black imprints of fingers that squeezed the life out of her. I’ve seen those marks before.
The rage returns, but this time it’s directed outward. I want a name. I want a face. I want to find the man who did this and peel the skin from his body.
“We were at a club,” Oliver says, his voice flat and clinical, though I can hear the tremor beneath it. “The Velvet Society. We have a system—we go together, we leave together. We check in. We share locations.”
He looks at Angel, his expression softening for a fraction of a second before he turns back to us. “I was at the bar when I saw the man she was with. He was bolting.”
He looks at me when he says the word, but he keeps going. “I checked the location app on my phone. She was still in the club.”
My hands are balled into fists so tight my knuckles are cracking.
“I found her on the bed in one of the rooms,” Oliver continues, his voice cracking. “She was... she was bleeding. She was gagged. And she wasn’t breathing. Her heart had stopped.”
Shade let out a jagged, choked-off sob, burying his face in his hands. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. She wasn’t breathing.
“I’m a med student,” Oliver says, looking at Shade. “I started CPR immediately. I didn’t stop until the paramedics got there and took over. They got a pulse back in the ambulance.”
A nurse, a middle-aged woman with a tired but kind face, steps into the room to check the monitors. She looks at Oliver, then at Shade. “Are you the family?”
“I’m her brother,” Shade says, his voice muffled.
The nurse nods, looking at Oliver with genuine respect. “You should thank this young man. He’s the reason she’s still with us. If he hadn’t known what he was doing—if he’d waited even another minute—she would have had permanent brain damage. That is, if she’d even woken up at all.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Permanent brain damage. If she’d even woken up.
The panic I’ve been trying to suppress explodes in my chest.
I look at Angel, at the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, and I realize how close I came to losing her forever.
While I was sitting on my bike in California, feeling sorry for myself, she was dying in a room across the ocean because I wasn’t there to protect her.
I failed her. Again.
“Is she going to be okay?” Shade asks, looking up at Oliver. “The doctor said... they said she woke up briefly, but she’s back under.”
Oliver nods, his shoulders dropping an inch. “The scans came back clear for major trauma, but we won’t know the full extent until she’s fully conscious and we can run some cognitive tests. But physically? Yes. She’s strong. She’s going to make it.”
He looks at me, and I see the suspicion in his eyes again. He knows I’m the reason she’s here—not the man who choked her, but the reason she fled to London in the first place. He knows I’m the one who broke her heart.
I don’t care what he thinks. I don’t care that he saved her—I’ll find a way to pay him back for that later. Right now, all I care about is the fact that there is a man out there in this city who thinks he can touch what is mine.
I reach out and take Angel’s other hand. Her skin is cold, so cold. I lean down, my forehead almost touching hers, and I whisper a promise into the sterile air.
I am going to find him, Angel. And I am going to make him pray for the death he tried to give you.
I look at Shade. He meets my eyes, and I see the same dark, Halo-born vengeance reflected there. He doesn’t need to ask what I’m thinking. We are brothers, and someone has dared to touch one of ours.
“Oliver,” Shade says, his voice turning cold and sharp. “The man she was with. Did you see his face? Do you know his name?”
Oliver looks at us, and for the first time, he doesn’t look like a med student. He looks like someone who understands exactly what kind of men we are.
“I saw him,” Oliver says. “And I have his membership details from the club. I was waiting for the police, but...”
“Give them to us,” I say.
The hunt is on. And London isn’t big enough for him to hide.