Chapter 44 | Anna
I didn’t remember falling asleep.
One minute I was sitting in the chair by the bed, the next I was waking up with a stiff neck and needles in my hand from leaning on it.
The room was still dark. Not yet morning.
I didn’t know if Ulrich and Ludwig were still here.
I wasn’t leaving the chair to find out. Because if he woke even for a second, I intended to be sitting right here.
I’d only left for a brief moment to wash the blood from my hands. It was still caked under my nails.
He lay where they left him in the middle of the bed.
Too still. Too pale. Stitched back together with a hope and a prayer.
Bandaged and utterly unlike the man who filled an entire room with his mere presence.
The antiseptic smell of bandages mixed with the copper tang of blood. His breathing was shallow but steady.
I didn’t know how either of us were going to survive this.
Because if he didn’t, I wouldn’t.
We’d been in situations like this before. But nothing ever this dire.
The doctor had said the worst part would be the waiting. Infection. Internal bleeding. Shock. A dozen quiet ways this could still kill him even after we’d escaped with our lives.
I hated that I couldn’t fight those things.
I could fight men. I could fight conditioning. I could fight destiny, apparently.
But this?
This was sitting. Watching. Hoping.
I reached out without thinking. My hand in his. His skin was warm. That mattered more than I could articulate. Feeling the faint beat of his pulse. A reminder. He was still here.
I sensed the presence before I saw him. I lifted my head to see him standing on the other side of the bed, his snowy white wings spread behind him. Those bright blue eyes I knew so well peering down at Kincade, then at me.
Cashiel.
“What are you doing here, Uncle?” I asked, my voice quiet in the hush.
“He’s holding on,” he said, “because you’re here.”
I looked from him to Kincade. Watched the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest. The way his fingers curled faintly around mine.
“I came to him,” Cashiel continued. “After the alteration.”
My head snapped up. “You did?”
“I told him what they did to you was a desecration,” he said. “I told him that he was the only one who could pull you back from the edge.”
The world tilted.
And I understood.
He stayed because he chose to. He brought me back from that nightmare because he chose. He let me become what I am—without fear, without judgment—because he chose.
My heart lurched painfully in my chest.
“And he did,” I whispered.
Cashiel’s wings stirred, a flutter of acknowledgement.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said. “I can’t fix him. I can’t fight this for him.”
His voice softened. “No. You aren’t meant to. You aren’t the warrior here.”
I fixed my gaze on Kincade’s face.
“You are the tether,” he continued.
Something in my chest cracked open at those words.
“The thing he’s reaching for even now. He pulled you back once. Now it’s your turn to call him home.”
When I looked up again, Cashiel was gone.
I was still sitting there waiting for him to come back to me when Ludwig wandered into the room. He paused in the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms crossed. But he wasn’t looking at Kincade, he was looking at me.
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“You’re running on fumes.”
“I’m not leaving.”
He disappeared from the doorway for a moment, then returned, walking into the room.
He handed me a bottled water. I took it, held it in my free hand.
He crossed to the other side of the bed and sat in the empty chair.
Filling in the same space Cashiel had stood.
He regarded me with something like interest.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I snapped.
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?” My gaze flicked up to him.
“You don’t want me here?” And for a moment, the flirty man was back. But he quickly masked it.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what I wanted.
Yes, I did. I wanted to be alone. I wanted him to wake up.
There was a long silence.
“He saved my life,” he said. “I owe him mine.”
I took that to mean Ludwig was as invested in his recovery as I was.
I released Kincade’s hand, leaned back in the chair, and cracked the lid on the water. Took a sip. The water was blissfully cold. I hadn’t realized how dry my throat was.
“How did he save your life?” I asked.
For a split second, Ludwig looked like he wasn’t going to answer. His gaze drifted away, fixed on some distant point only he could see, as if weighing how much truth I was owed.
“You don’t know much about us, do you?” he said.
“The Quiet Watch? No,” I said. “I was only recently introduced.”
All I knew was that it was a shadow organization Kincade led. And that I knew what it had taken from him to build it in secret.
“He was sent to retire me,” Ludwig said.
I took retire to mean death.
“But he didn’t,” I said.
Ludwig’s mouth curved—not a smile. Something closer to acknowledgment.
“No,” he said. “He decided I was still worth the trouble.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked, curious.
“Longer than I want to admit.”
And I wondered—was he ancient, too? Immortal, too? Was that a prerequisite? But I didn’t ask because my throat tightened at the way he sounded. Grateful.
“That was the day the Quiet Watch stopped being an illusion,” he added. “And became a second chance.”
I looked at Kincade then. At the lines of his face. The weight he carried even when unconscious.
“He does that,” I said softly. I reached for him again. My thumb traced the back of his hand. Still warm. Still here. “Decides people are worth saving. Even when it takes pieces of him.”
Ludwig’s gaze followed mine.
“And that,” he said, “is why we’re all still here.”
And why Decker hated him.
Because he was willing to give people a second chance.
Because he dismantled systems from the inside without a thought for his own safety. Because, I realized, that part never mattered to him.
People did.
Choice did.
Then, because my brain couldn’t sit inside the terror without trying to put it into boxes—because I needed to understand what I watched happen—I asked the question that had been clawing up my throat for hours.
“He got shot through the gut,” I said, flat, like if I made it clinical it wouldn’t make me shake. “He almost bled out. A surgeon stitched him together like he was… like he was human.”
Ludwig didn’t look away from Kincade when he answered.
“He bleeds like a man,” he said. “He breaks like a man. He just doesn’t stay broken the way you do.”
My throat tightened.
“So, bullets don’t kill him.” It came out sharper than I meant it to, like an accusation. I was angry at the universe for giving me this loophole and still making me suffer.
“No,” Ludwig said simply. “Not usually.”
Not usually.
The two words landed with a cold kind of warning.
I stared at him. “Define usually.”
That earned me a quick, assessing glance. Like he could see the exact moment I became dangerous.
“There are rules,” he said. “Old ones.”
“Of course there are,” I muttered. “There are always rules. There’s probably a handbook. Or a laminated card. Maybe a PowerPoint.”
One corner of his mouth twitched.
Then he went still again—serious, careful.
“Lead is damage,” he said. “Pain. Blood. Shock. Enough of it will put him down. Long enough for someone to do something stupid.”
My fingers tightened around Kincade’s.
“But it won’t finish him,” Ludwig continued. “Not unless you destroy what can’t be rebuilt.”
Everything in me stilled. “Like what?”
Ludwig’s gaze stayed on Kincade as he spoke, and when he did, his voice sounded like a man reciting doctrine he hated.
“Burn him until there’s nothing left,” he said. “Take the head. Destroy the brainstem. Ruin the heart and the mind together.”
My stomach turned.
“And the other ways?” I asked quietly, because I could feel there was more. There was always more.
Ludwig exhaled through his nose. “The ways that stick aren’t human.”
I held his gaze now. “Tell me.”
His eyes sharpened. Approval flickering there, brief as a blade flash. Like he respected that I’d asked straight, without flinching.
“Consecrated metal,” he said. “Relic-bound weapons. Rites that poison the healing.”
My skin prickled. My mind immediately leapt to the Brotherhood, to their obsession with holy violence and ancient artifacts and systems that outlived empires.
“And,” Ludwig added, quieter, “names.”
The word hit like a bell inside my chest.
I didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
“What about names?” I asked.
Ludwig’s gaze flicked to me, and for the first time he looked like he wanted to choose his words with surgical precision.
“His immortality has an address,” he said. “A tether. A point the world can grab.”
My throat went dry again. “His true name.”
Ludwig didn’t confirm it out loud. He didn’t need to.
“If someone has it,” he said, “and they know what to do with it… bullets become the least of your problems.”
My pulse thudded in my ears.
“So he can survive this,” I whispered. “He can survive getting shot through the gut.”
“Yes,” Ludwig said.
Relief struck so fast it almost made me dizzy. But the terror didn’t leave. It changed shape.
“Anna,” Ludwig said, and my gaze snapped back to him.
His expression had gone sober again—no flirt, no humor. Just truth.
“The threat isn’t that he can’t die,” he said. “The threat is what happens while he’s down.”
I felt my stomach drop. Containment. Capture. Ritual. Everything the Brotherhood loved.
I looked back at Kincade. At the stillness of him. At the way his chest rose with shallow, stubborn breaths. And the bell in my chest didn’t stop ringing.
Because I wasn’t hearing Ludwig anymore.
I was hearing him—the moment he’d given it to me. No ceremony. No warning. Just a silent, deliberate offering, like he’d placed something priceless in my palm and trusted I wouldn’t drop it.
I’d thought it was intimacy. I’d thought it was love. I hadn’t understood it was also access.
An address. A point the world could grab. And I had it.
Not in a ritual. Not with witnesses. In the dark, with his mouth against my skin, like it was another kind of honesty. Like it wasn’t the most dangerous thing a man like him could ever offer.
My fingers tightened around his hand. Like my grip could rewrite the rules.
The trust wasn’t poetic. It was tactical. It was fatal. It was a blade laid across my palms and labeled handle with care.
And he’d given it to me, anyway.
I chose you, he’d said.
Not as a comfort. Not as a line. As a decision. As a claim. As a vow he’d carved into the dark and handed to me with both hands.
Me. He chose me.
The thought didn’t soothe. It cracked something open. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry or scream.
Behind me, Ludwig shifted.
He’d been watching my face. Watching the realization take shape.
“Now you understand,” he said.
My throat burned. “I do.”
“Good,” Ludwig murmured. “Because if the wrong hands get it… bullets become the least of your problems.”
I gripped him again like my hand was the only thing keeping him here.
“Welcome to the Quiet Watch, Anna,” Ludwig said, a smile in his voice. “You’re one of us now.”
The words hit me like a thunderbolt.
I was part of them.
Not because I was useful. Not because I was dangerous.
Because I was chosen. Whether Ludwig knew that or not.
Emotion clogged my throat, aware of how much that mattered. How much being chosen always had. I didn’t trust myself to sit with that feeling for more than a second.
“So,” I said, breaking the moment, “is there a secret handshake? Or a blood ritual?”
Ludwig snickered. “The blood ritual comes later.”
I smiled. “Good to know.”
Ludwig’s expression didn’t change. Another long silence as we both sat together.
“You should get some sleep,” he said again, urging. “Ulrich is on a supply run. But he’ll be back. I can keep watch.”
“No,” I said again. Then, quiet, “I can’t.”
He unfolded his tall frame from the chair. “I’ll be in the next room.”
He started to go, but I stopped him.
“You’re staying?” I don’t know why that surprised me.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “He’d never forgive me if anything happened to you.”
Like that was pre-planned. I wondered if they’d talked about it. I didn’t ask. The answer felt obvious.
And then he slipped out of the room, pulling the door closed but leaving it cracked behind him.
I dropped the bottle on the floor, then put my head down on the edge of the mattress.
And waited.
I fell asleep again.
I snapped awake, pain lancing down my back and my arms were numb.
My head pounded, thick with sleep fog. And my arm under the bandage throbbed with every pump of my heart.
I’d ignored it for hours. Couldn’t ignore it much longer.
A quick glance at it showed blood staining it in a small circle.
I was going to need help with that. Later. When he wasn’t dying.
This sucked.
I tested his pulse. Slow. Steady. Still there.
His fingers twitched. Such a small movement. It meant everything. My heart skipped. I took his hand and then… a faint squeeze.
He made a gruff sound. His brows drew together. Like he was trying to decide how angry he was going to be because he was incapacitated. Which seemed so much like him.
I gave his hand a squeeze back.
His eyes came open. I stopped breathing.
They were unfocused at first. Dazed. Clouded with pain and whatever drugs the doctor had given him. But they found me anyway. Like they always did.
And in them I saw everything—relief, clarity, anger, relief again—all at once. He said nothing as he looked at me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
I was still wearing the tank stained with blood. He saw the bandage right away.
“You’re hurt.” His voice was rough, gravelly, thick.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“The others?”
“They’re fine, too. You did your dramatic hero thing.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. He knew I was lying. Then he shifted and hissed in pain.
“Don’t move,” I said. “You’re on strict orders.”
His thumb brushed over my knuckles. A deliberate touch. “You yelled at me.”
I blinked. “I did?” I searched my memory. Everything was such a blur.
“If I died, you’d kill me.” For a second, the familiar dry humor was back.
“Oh. I suppose I did,” I said, nodding, remembering. “Good thing you didn’t die then. Or this would be a totally different conversation.”
This time he did smirk. “Funny girl.” Then he closed his eyes. My stomach dropped. But no, his breathing stayed steady. He was exhausted. “How long?”
I assumed he meant how long he was out. “I don’t know. Several hours.”
I’d lost track, honestly.
His voice was gruff when he spoke. “We didn’t finish.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said, instantly dismissing it.
He didn’t argue. “Go rest.”
Still giving me orders. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Silence descended between us. Heavy. Loaded.
Then, “Good.”
That one word settled something in my chest that had been twisted tight for hours. Exhaustion pulled him under again.
But this time, I wasn’t afraid.
I stayed right where I was. Holding his hand. Counting his breaths. Calling him home.