Chapter Twelve
“They haven’t moved.”
Naomi dragged her focus toward the nurse, the words cutting through the fog that clung stubbornly to her mind. The room felt too bright, too clean, the steady beep of the monitor beside her a constant reminder that she was here—alive—when she hadn’t expected to be.
“Who hasn’t?” she asked, her voice rough, thinner than she liked.
The nurse adjusted the IV line with practiced care, then glanced toward the closed door. “The men outside your room. They arrived a few hours ago. Haven’t left. Haven’t sat down. Just ... standing there.”
Naomi’s gaze flicked to the door, her body tightening instinctively despite the weakness dragging at her limbs.
“Have they come in?” she asked.
The nurse shook her head. “No. Said they’d stay out there.”
That should have reassured her.
It didn’t.
Her phone buzzed in the nurse’s hand.
“Here,” the nurse said, passing it over.
Naomi’s fingers curled around it, slower than they should have been. “Tamsin?”
“Hey,” Tamsin’s voice came through, steady, grounded. “You awake?”
“Barely,” Naomi muttered, a faint smile tugging at her lips despite everything. “Your timing’s terrible.”
“Yeah, well, you always did like chaos.”
Naomi exhaled softly, some of the tension easing at the sound of her voice. “I’ve got two very large men apparently guarding my door, should I be worried?”
“No,” Tamsin replied without hesitation. “I sent them.”
Naomi closed her eyes briefly in relief. “Okay, thank you.”
“They’re not going anywhere,” Tamsin added.
Naomi believed that.
“How are you feeling?” Tamsin asked.
Naomi hesitated, her gaze drifting to the ceiling as she tried to find a version of the truth that didn’t sound as bad as it felt.
“Fine,” she said.
Silence.
Then—
“Try again.”
Naomi huffed a weak breath. “You’re annoying.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She shifted slightly, her stomach turning as nausea rolled through her, sharp and immediate. She swallowed hard against it, her grip tightening on the phone.
“I’m ... not great,” she admitted. “Everything hurts. I feel like I might throw up if I move. And I’m—”
She stopped.
Tamsin didn’t fill the silence.
Naomi exhaled slowly. “I’m scared,” she finished, quieter now. “But I’m pretending I’m not.”
“That sounds about right,” Tamsin said gently.
Naomi let out a small breath, something in her chest loosening.
“You’re safe,” Tamsin continued. “Those men outside your door? Nothing gets past them.”
Naomi glanced toward the door again, imagining their size, the stillness the nurse had described. “Okay.”
“I’ll come see you in the morning,” Tamsin added.
“Yeah,” Naomi said. “I’d like that.”
“Get some rest.”
“You too.”
The line went quiet.
Naomi lowered the phone slowly, her hand lingering there for a second before letting it fall to the bed beside her.
The nurse checked the monitors, gave her a soft smile, and slipped out, the door closing quietly behind her.
And just like that—Naomi was alone.
The silence pressed in. Her gaze drifted to the ceiling again, but the calm didn’t hold. It never did. The memories slipped in without warning.
Cold metal. Restraints biting into her wrists. Voices that never used her name. She was just the test subject.
She could still feel it—the way her body had betrayed her, locking, seizing under something it didn’t understand. The way the pain had gone beyond sharp, beyond unbearable, into something deeper. Systemic. Wrong.
She remembered going under.
Breaking.
And when she’d come back—they’d been surprised. Confused. Like she wasn’t supposed to survive.
They’d put her back in the cage after that.
No comfort. No explanation.
Just more of their insidious tests. Blood, tissue samples, needles and the spinal tap—Naomi’s breath hitched, her body tightening against the memory, a sharp pulse of phantom pain sparking down her spine.
That had hurt.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers curling weakly into the sheets.
She’d thought—more than once—that dying might be easier.
And then—Tamsin came in. The door breaking open. The fight. The moment everything changed. Naomi exhaled slowly, her body sinking back into the bed, the present pulling her away from the past just enough to breathe.
She was here. She was safe.
She had a chance at—
Something flickered within her. Her brow furrowed slightly, her fingers twitching against the sheets. The nausea spiked again. Stronger this time.
Her vision blurred at the edges, the light overhead suddenly too bright, too harsh as a low ringing started somewhere deep in her ears.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself, her voice unsteady. “Okay, that’s—”
Her hand lifted, but it didn’t quite obey her. A tremor ran through it. Then another. Her breath hitched. Something wasn’t right.
The ringing grew louder. Her pulse stuttered.
Her muscles tightened without her telling them to.
“What—” she tried, the words barely forming.
The first spasm hit hard. Her back arched slightly, her body locking as the signal misfired, her vision fracturing into sharp bursts of white and black.
Her fingers clenched. Her jaw tightened. The world tilted.
Then—everything went dark.
****
He had never dropped to his knees for anything in his life.
Not for a man. Not for a fight. Not for anything that demanded submission or surrender.
And then her scent had reached him through the sterile hospital air, and something ancient and unrelenting had torn straight through him, dragging him down without warning.
Mate.
The word hadn’t been spoken, but it had settled just the same, deep and immovable, locking into place before his mind had even caught up.
Now he stood outside her door, arms folded loosely across his chest, his body still and controlled in a way that didn’t match the storm running beneath his skin.
Malik stood beside him, just as silent, just as contained, but Jamal could feel it in him too—the same awareness, the same instinct to break through the door and claim what had already been marked as theirs.
“She’s quiet,” Malik said, his voice low enough that it barely carried beyond the space between them.
Jamal didn’t take his eyes off the door. “She’s resting now that the nurses have left.”
His jaw tightened as he forced himself to stay exactly where he was instead of acting on the instinct that told him to move, to check, to make sure she was still breathing.
“What if she hates us?” Malik said quietly, the words slipping out like he’d been holding them back for too long.
Jamal’s gaze flicked to him then, sharp, assessing. “Then we don’t give her a reason to.”
Malik huffed a breath that didn’t carry any humor. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
Jamal looked back at the door. He knew exactly what he meant.
What if she looked at them and saw monsters? What if the size of them, the power of them, the reality of what they were pushed her further away instead of drawing her in?
What if she was afraid?
The thought didn’t sit well.
“She gets time,” Jamal said after a moment. “We don’t push. We don’t take. We give her space to choose.”
Malik nodded once. “And we stay.”
Jamal’s mouth curved faintly. “We don’t leave.”
They stood there, working through it without needing to lay out every step, both of them thinking ahead in the same direction. They would guard her, earn her trust, show her what they were without forcing her to accept it before she was ready.
They would court her. The word was old, but it fit. It meant patience. It meant intention. It meant she had a say in how this played out.
Jamal was prepared to give her that.
He was not prepared for what came next.
The alarm cut through the corridor without warning, sharp and violent, shattering the quiet in an instant. It wasn’t the distant hum of hospital machinery or the low murmur of conversation—it was immediate, urgent, demanding action.
Jamal was already moving before the second tone hit.
Nurses rushed past them, voices rising, controlled urgency threading through every step as one of them called it out.
“Seizure in twelve—move!”
Her room.
Jamal didn’t think. He pushed the door open, Malik right behind him, and the moment he stepped inside, everything in him locked onto her.
Naomi lay on the bed, her body arched, muscles rigid as the seizure took hold. Her hands were clenched tight, her entire frame shaking in a way that was too violent, too wrong, her system misfiring in a way that set something dark and dangerous loose in his chest.
He crossed the room in two strides. “Naomi—”
“Out of the way.” The command snapped sharp, a nurse cutting in front of him without hesitation, her focus already on Naomi as she reached for her, another nurse moving in on the other side.
Jamal stopped.
Malik’s hand came down hard on his arm, holding him there, anchoring him in place when every instinct he had screamed at him to move, to do something, to stop it.
Naomi’s body jerked again, the motion violent, uncontrolled as the medical team worked fast, one nurse stabilizing her head, another checking her airway while a third reached for medication.
“Diazepam, now.” A syringe appeared. A line was cleared. The drug pushed through. Still, her body fought.
Jamal’s hands curled into fists at his sides, his entire body vibrating with the need to act, to tear through whatever was hurting her and end it with his bare hands.
“Hold,” Malik said under his breath.
Time stretched, warped by the intensity of the moment, each second dragging under its weight. Her body fought against something they couldn’t see, something buried deep inside her that the medication was only just beginning to touch.
Then, slowly, it started to ease. The tension left her in increments, her muscles loosening, her body collapsing back into the mattress as the seizure finally broke.
Silence followed, heavy and charged. Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again.
She was alive.
Jamal exhaled, the breath leaving him rough and unsteady in a way he didn’t recognize.
“Ten minutes,” someone said quietly.
It had felt like years.
The nurses didn’t stop moving. They shifted into assessment, checking vitals, drawing blood, adjusting lines as a doctor stepped in, reviewing the readings with a frown that didn’t sit right with Jamal at all.
“Something’s off,” the doctor said, more to the team than to them. “Her neurological response isn’t consistent with standard seizure activity. There’s another variable here.”
Jamal stepped closer, not aggressive yet, but close enough that the man felt it. “Explain.”
The doctor hesitated, his gaze flicking between them. “We don’t know yet. The tests are showing irregularities we can’t account for.”
Malik’s voice dropped, low and dangerous. “Then account for them.”
“We’re trying—”
“Try harder.”
Jamal didn’t push further. Not yet. Because now they were working.
Minutes passed, the urgency settling into controlled monitoring as Naomi’s body stabilized, her breathing evening out, her vitals holding.
For now.
The doctor nodded to his team, murmured instructions, and then they were leaving, one by one, the room quieting again until it was just the machines and the three of them.
Jamal moved to her side without hesitation. Malik mirrored him.
Jamal reached for her hand. Slowly.
Carefully.
Her skin was warm beneath his fingers, too warm, but alive. He held on anyway, his thumb brushing lightly over her knuckles as something settled deeper inside him.
Malik took her other hand, his grip just as steady, just as deliberate.
The bond shifted. Not the sharp strike of recognition from before, but something quieter, more constant, threading between them, anchoring them in place.
Jamal looked down at her, at the fragile rise and fall of her chest, at the evidence of everything she had endured etched into the stillness of her body.
“What did they do to you?” he murmured.
Because this wasn’t random. This wasn’t damage left behind by accident.
This was something built.
Something done.
And it was still inside her.
Still hurting her.
His grip tightened slightly.
“We’re going to fix it,” he said, the promise settling into the space between them.
Malik’s gaze hardened, his focus narrowing. “And we’re going to find them.”
Jamal’s expression darkened, something cold and absolute locking into place. “Every last one.”
Because there was no other option. No walking away from this. No leaving her to fight whatever this was alone.
Whoever had done this to her had just made themselves a target.
Jamal leaned in, his forehead hovering just shy of hers, his voice dropping to something quieter, something meant only for her.
“You’re not alone anymore,” he said.
Malik’s hand tightened gently around hers. “We’ve got you.”
They stood there, holding her between them, guarding her in the silence that followed.
And beneath it all, one truth settled in, sharp and unyielding.
They would end everything and everyone that wanted to hurt her. They would burn Chimera to the fucking ground, and she would be theirs forever. There was no version of this story where they lost her.
Not now. Not ever. Period.
The End