Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
AOIFE O'MALLEY
Darkness.
Not the gentle darkness of sleep, but something deeper, more consuming—a black void that pulled at my consciousness like quicksand. I tried to surface, to claw my way back to light and air and the sound of Alexander's voice, but the darkness had weight, substance, dragging me down into its depths.
Pain bloomed in my abdomen, sharp and spreading, but even that felt distant, muffled by layers of shadow that wrapped around me like grave shrouds.
Was I dying? The thought should have terrified me, but instead it felt almost peaceful—a release from the weight of the expectations and violence that had shaped my entire life.
But then I heard it—laughter, high and broken, echoing through the void.
"Did you really think you could have him? Did you think you could just take what was mine?"
Beatrice's voice, dripping with venom and madness, cut through the haze like a blade. Suddenly I wasn't floating in peaceful oblivion—I was running, crashing through a forest that grew darker with each step, branches tearing at my skin, roots catching my feet.
Behind me, her laughter grew louder, closer, accompanied by the sound of pursuit that never seemed to gain ground but didn’t fall behind, either. The trees pressed in around me, their branches forming a canopy so thick that no light could penetrate, until I was running blind through the pitch dark.
"You can't escape what you are," Beatrice's voice whispered from all directions at once. "Connor O'Malley's daughter. A killer's child. You think love can wash the blood from your hands? You think Alexander will choose you when he remembers what your family did to his?"
I stumbled, my hands hitting the forest floor hard enough to split my palms open. When I looked up, she was there, standing between the trees like a spectre, her blonde hair gleaming in light that came from nowhere, her dress still stained with blood from the wounds that had killed her.
"He only wants you because you're forbidden," she continued, circling me with predatory grace. "Because fucking Connor O'Malley's daughter feels like the ultimate conquest. But when the novelty wears off, when he remembers that you're everything he should hate..."
"You're wrong," I tried to say, but my voice came out as barely a whisper in the oppressive darkness.
"Am I? Then why are you here, in the dark, dying? Why didn't he protect you?" Beatrice's laugh was shrill, almost deafening. "Because deep down, he knows what you are. What you'll always be. His enemy."
The forest seemed to pulse around us, branches reaching out like grasping fingers, trying to pull me deeper into shadow. I struggled to my feet, pain radiating from my abdomen with each movement, warm wetness spreading across my stomach.
Blood. So much blood.
"Yes," Beatrice whispered, her voice filled with satisfaction. "Feel it leaving you. Feel your life draining away. This is what you get for trying to take what wasn't yours."
I pressed my hands to the wound, feeling warmth pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat. But even as I tried to stem the flow, the darkness grew deeper, the cold more intense. Was this how I would die? Alone in a nightmare forest, haunted by a madwoman's ghost?
But then—impossibly—I heard something else cutting through Beatrice's laughter. A voice I knew, strong and desperate and achingly familiar.
"Stay with me, beautiful. That's a fucking order."
Alexander. His voice was like a lifeline thrown into the abyss, something real and warm and alive in this world of shadows and death. I turned, searching the darkness frantically, and there—in the distance, barely visible through the pressing trees—I saw him.
He stood in a pool of light that seemed to emanate from his skin, one hand extended toward me, his face etched with desperate need. His lips were moving, but I could only catch fragments of what he was saying.
"Don't you dare leave me now... I refuse to lose you... you're mine..."
I tried to run toward him, but my legs wouldn't obey. The wound in my abdomen tore wider with each step, blood streaming down my thighs, pooling at my feet. The distance between us seemed to stretch infinitely—no matter how hard I fought to reach him, he remained impossibly far away.
"He can't save you," Beatrice hissed, suddenly beside me again. "He doesn't really want to. This is just guilt, pretty words to ease his conscience when you die."
"No," I gasped, forcing myself forward another step. "You're wrong. He—"
"He what? Loves you?" Her laughter grated. "Alexander Moore doesn't love anyone except himself and his precious Ronan. You're just another acquisition, another conquest to add to his collection."
But even as she spoke, Alexander's voice grew stronger, more insistent. I could hear other sounds now too—loud beeping, the rustle of fabric, footsteps on linoleum. The real world calling me back from this nightmare landscape.
"I should have protected you better... should have seen this coming... should have killed that psychotic bitch the moment I realised what she was."
His voice was rough with self-recrimination, with pain that matched my own. Raw, unfiltered emotion.
"But I promise you this... when you wake up… and you will wake up—nothing and no one will ever threaten you again."
The forest began to waver around me, reality bleeding through the edges of the nightmare. Beatrice's form flickered, becoming translucent, her voice growing fainter.
"When you wake up, you'll remember what you are," she whispered, making one last desperate attempt to pull me back into darkness. "What you can never escape."
But I was already turning away from her, reaching toward the light where Alexander waited. The wound in my abdomen still burned, still bled, but now it felt different—not like death, but like something I could survive, something I could fight through.
"You're mine now, Aoife O'Malley, and I protect what's mine."
The conviction in his voice, the absolute certainty, gave me strength I didn't know I possessed. I took one step toward him, then another, each movement easier than the last as the darkness began to recede.
Behind me, Beatrice's laughter faded to nothing, her threats dissolving like smoke. The forest crumbled away, shadows giving way to something warmer, realer—the promise of a future I'd thought was lost.
The light grew brighter, and Alexander's face became clearer. He looked exhausted, haunted, an absolute mess. He had dried blood on him. My blood, I realised right away. But his eyes—those dark eyes I'd fallen in love with—burned with fierce determination.
"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. You hear me, beautiful? I'm staying right here until you come back to me."
I reached out, my fingertips almost touching his, when another voice cut through the light—older, wearier, but unmistakably familiar.
"Alexander." Ronan's voice, careful and measured. "You need to eat something. Sleep. You've been here for two days."
Two days? Had I been lost in that nightmare forest for two days?
"I'm not leaving her." Alexander's voice was flat, implacable. "Not until she opens her eyes."
"She's stable. The doctors say her vitals are strong. She's going to pull through this."
"You don't know that." The crack in Alexander's voice made my chest ache. "You don't know... Christ, Ronan, I can't lose her. I can't lose the only thing that's ever mattered."
A pause, heavy with unspoken understanding.
"Then tell her," Ronan said quietly. "Tell her what she means to you. Sometimes they can hear us, even when they're unconscious."
Footsteps retreated, leaving us alone—or as alone as we could be in what I was beginning to realize was a hospital room.
The beeping I'd been hearing was a heart monitor, tracking the rhythm of my own pulse.
The antiseptic smell, the soft lighting, the uncomfortable chair creaking as Alexander shifted closer to my bedside—all of it filtered through the haze of medication.
"I don't know if you can hear me," he said, his voice so soft I had to strain to catch the words. "But I need you to know... I need you to understand what you've done to me."
His hand found mine—warm, calloused, steady despite the tremor I could hear in his voice.
"Before you, I existed. I followed orders. I built my cocoon. I protected what mattered to Ronan. But I didn't live. I didn't know what it meant to wake up every morning with purpose beyond duty, beyond survival."
A pause ensued, filled with the steady beeping of machines keeping watch over my broken body.
"You changed everything. From that first night at your father's gala, when you looked at me like you could see straight through every wall I'd built around myself. You saw the darkness in me and didn't flinch. Didn't try to change me or save me or make me into something softer."
His thumb traced circles on my palm, a gesture so gentle it made my chest ache.
"I told myself it was just attraction. Physical need. That sleeping with Connor O'Malley's daughter was the ultimate act of conquest, the final fuck-you to everything your father represented."
The admission should have hurt, but somehow it didn't. Because I could hear the truth beneath his words—the realization that had terrified him as much as it had me.
"But it was never just that. It was the way you matched me in everything—intelligence, determination, the willingness to do whatever was necessary to survive. It was watching you fight Beatrice with your bare hands, seeing you refuse to break even when she had a knife to your throat."
His voice grew rougher, more strained.
"It was realizing that I'd found someone who could stand beside me as an equal, not behind me as a follower. Someone who understood the weight of power, the cost of loyalty, the price of love in our world."