48. Lorcan
LORCAN
Iwoke to a white ceiling blurred by harsh fluorescent light, the smell of antiseptic filling my lungs. Wires stretched across my chest, monitors making quiet electronic beeps, while cool oxygen flowed through the plastic beneath my nose with every shallow breath.
My chest burned beneath a crushing weight, as though someone had driven a battering ram straight through my sternum.
What the hell happened?
Memory crashed into me all at once. The Sons’ underground hall.
The auction. Alistair’s gun trained on Liath.
My body moving out of instinct as I threw myself between them and raised my own weapon.
The crack of my shot. Alistair falling. Then the explosion of pain inside my chest. Liath crying over me as I said goodbye.
Liath.
As if conjured from my dreams, her face came into focus.
Her plump pink mouth, now being worried between her small white teeth. Her chestnut hair falling over her forehead and tangling into those long dark eyelashes.
And those stormy eyes that I could never hide from.
For one impossible second, I wondered if I’d imagined her, if death had finally given me the one thing I’d wanted. Maybe this was heaven?
Then her scent reached me. Black violets and warm skin. Home.
She was real.
She was here, which meant I was alive.
She sat beside the bed with her fingers wrapped around mine, her thumb stroking slow circles across my skin.
I lay propped against hospital pillows, tape securing an IV in my arm, its line disappearing into a bag hanging beside the bed.
I was tethered to machines that hummed and blinked around me, every breath reminding me just how badly my body had been broken.
Even speaking felt like dragging broken glass over my throat.
When my voice emerged, it sounded rough, weak, and barely recognizable.
“Did we free them?”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks before she answered. “Yeah, baby.” Her voice cracked as she reached for the cup waiting on the bedside table. “We freed them all.”
She lifted the straw to my lips before I even had to ask. The water hit my tongue, cold enough to sting, and I drank greedily, washing away the metallic taste coating my mouth. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
Apart from her pussy. Even as broken as I was, my cock stirred under the sheets as I peered at her over the cup, yearning for the moment I was well enough to pin her down and sate this hunger already growing inside me for her.
I was broken. Not dead.
“Alistair’s dead,” Liath said as she placed the empty cup back on the table and wiped a drop of water from my bottom lip. “Bas has enough to expose the Sons now. Magdalene is yours.”
A shaky smile broke through her tears.
“We did it.”
The knot that had been cinched around my lungs for weeks finally loosened.
I let my head fall back against the pillow, only to hiss as pain radiated through my torso. My gaze dropped to the thick bandage covering the center of my chest. My fingers found the edge of it, tracing the dressing with careful uncertainty. “What happened?”
Liath swallowed. “Your heart.”
My hand stilled.
“They had to give you another one.”
The words took a moment to register before years of medical studies surged to the surface ahead of the shock. A heart transplant. A compatible donor. Waiting lists that stretched for months, sometimes years, and sometimes never ended at all.
Impossible.
I frowned. “How?”
She held my gaze. “Deargán.”
Everything inside me stilled as the implications wrapped around my lungs. “But then he’d…”
She nodded as silent tears slid down her face. “He doesn’t have long.”
My father was dying.
His heart was beating inside my chest.
He had surrendered his heart, and his life, so that I could keep mine.
My hand lifted to my chest without conscious thought and settled over my sternum. Beneath my palm, I felt the strong and steady rhythm.
I knew exactly what I should be feeling as a medical student. Transplanted hearts never quite felt like the ones people were born with. Their presence demanded attention in a way a healthy heart never did because most people spent their lives forgetting they even had one.
Every beat beneath my hand belonged to me and him. The man who had once held a knife against my throat was keeping me alive from inside my own body.
How was I supposed to love him? How was I supposed to keep hating him?
We shared blood. We loved the same woman.
He had threatened my life. He had given me life.
He had tried to take everything I loved. He had just given me the rest of my life.
Every truth canceled another without erasing it. And everything collided inside me, refusing to be untangled, choking me until breathing itself became difficult.
But still my hand refused to move.
I stared at my hand pressed against my chest, against the gift he’d sacrificed his life to give me.
Christ. I had no idea what to do with any of this.
“So he knows.” My voice barely existed. “About me being his…”
Liath nodded slowly. “I had to tell him.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “I’m sorry.”
I squeezed her hand as much as my weakened grip allowed. “It’s okay.”
She drew a shaky breath. “He only has hours left.” The words settled heavily between us. “He’s next door.”
She stood and pulled a wheelchair closer, the metal frame rolling quietly across the polished floor until it stopped beside my bed.
Fuck. The space to think vanished. There wasn’t time to process. There wasn’t time to breathe.
I pushed myself upright too quickly and my vision blurred as agony ripped through my chest, the monitors erupting into frantic alarms.
She was already beside me, her gentle hands on my shoulders as she tried to soothe me. “Lorcan—”
“I can’t see him.”
“Lorcan…”
“I won’t.” The words tore free through clenched teeth. My entire body trembled, though whether from pain or everything tearing me apart inside, I couldn’t tell. “He tried to kill me. He tried to take you from me.” My breathing became ragged. “I can’t just forgive him.”
I wanted to believe that was why I couldn’t go. That his selfish actions were enough to condemn him. That my hatred was justified enough to deny him redemption.
But somewhere beneath all of it lay the truth I couldn’t bear to touch.
How did I stand in front of the man I hated when I owed him my life? How did I thank him for giving back the very thing he tried to steal?
How could I say goodbye to a father I’d only just found?
Liath’s expression softened. “I’m going to go say goodbye.” Her fingertips brushed across my cheek with heartbreaking tenderness. “No matter what you decide, I love you.”
She leaned forward, and her lips found mine. She was impossibly soft, warm, and real, and every ache disappeared beneath her kiss.
My hand slipped from my chest to cradle the back of her neck.
I kissed her with everything I had left, drinking in the feel of her and the familiar scent of black violets wrapped around us both.
My chest felt impossibly full, every heartbeat beneath my ribs pounding with such fierce emotion that it threatened to split me open all over again.
She was here. She had chosen me. Entirely. Completely. Without hesitation. She loved every broken piece of me.
This was what Deargán had given me. Not just another heartbeat.
Liath.
A life with her. A future beside her.
The future he never got to have with my ma.
Liath drew back slowly, her forehead resting against mine for one lingering second before she stepped away.
At the door, she paused with her hand closed around the handle and looked back. “When you hold on to hate, you have no room for love.” Her eyes glistened. “It cost him everything. Don’t let it cost you, too.”
She held my gaze for one last heartbeat.
I didn’t answer. My hand drifted back to my chest, settling over the heart that wasn’t mine, and I stared at the closed door long after she’d gone.