Chapter 45 | Kincade
I came back to myself in pieces. Pain first. Deep, insistent, radiating from my abdomen like a warning flare. Hot. Burning. Every breath pulled at the stitches. Reminded me I’d come close.
I listened. The stillness of the room. Quiet. A distant voice but not hers. Someone else. Footsteps. Movement.
Faint light pressed through the gap in the curtains, someone having left them open an inch. Like whoever stood vigil forgot to close them.
She was no longer in the chair beside the bed. She was gone. And a part of me was glad because she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.
She probably hadn’t.
She needed rest more than I needed watching.
I had no concept of time. Didn’t know what day it was. Didn’t know how long I’d been in this bed. The light was wrong. Morning? Afternoon? How long had I been out?
It hurt too much to move.
But I could still think.
Staying here wasn’t an option. We were too close to the facility where everything had collapsed. Where our plan had fallen apart. Where the price of failure was paid for in blood.
And if they were smart—and I knew they were—they were already looking for us. Tracing movement. Watching for patterns. Following our trail until they found her.
That couldn’t happen. Not while I was still breathing.
Decker at the facility was no accident. He’d been waiting. Which meant they knew. Had always known. Whether he’d planned to kill her or capture her didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was going to find him. And when I did, he wouldn’t walk away.
The door creaked opened, followed by footsteps. Too heavy to be hers.
Ludwig appeared carrying a bottle of water and a handful of pills.
“Good, you’re awake.” He handed me both.
I eyed the pills with suspicion. Old habits. Even from people I trusted.
“It’s not poison,” he said. “Pain management and antibiotics. Standard post-op protocol. If you want to live, you’ll take them without complaint.”
I said nothing as I took the pills, then drank. The water was cold. Helped clear the fog.
“You’re a terrible patient,” he said, sitting in the chair by the bed. “Even the doctor agreed.”
“Who’d you get?” I asked.
“Otto,” he said. “Came in the middle of the night to stitch you back together.”
I leaned my head back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. None of us expected a surgeon to be necessary. We’d seriously underestimated everything. We’d been arrogant. Assumed clean in, clean out. Nearly got us all killed.
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping on the sofa,” he said. “I had to make her. She didn’t want to leave.”
Of course she didn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to physically remove her. The image pulled at my mouth. I kept it flat.
After a long pause, he said, “Your girl is something.”
My girl. Something about those words cut to the bone. Because they were true. And that terrified me more than the bullet had. My first instinct was to deny it, to say she wasn’t. But I knew she was.
I cut him a glance. He sat there, arms folded across chest, legs stretched out in front of him like we were having a friendly chat.
I said, “What about her?”
“She didn’t fall apart. Not once. You were bleeding out, she was shot, and she held pressure on your gut like her life depended on it. Didn’t faint at the sight of blood. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate.”
And still coherent enough to threaten me. Don’t you die on me, dammit. If you do, I’ll kill you.
“Most women would,” he said. “Fall apart, I mean.”
She wasn’t most women. She never had been. I knew that from the start.
“Ulrich didn’t know who to call,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The doctor, I mean. She grabbed Ulrich by the shirt—covered in your blood—and told him she’d rip us both apart with her bare hands if we didn’t get one. We believed her,” he said.
He sounded surprised by that.
I wasn’t.
She was a force. Had been since the day we met.
And I vaguely recalled her saying that shortly before passing out. Her voice razor sharp. She wasn’t hysterical. She was serious.
“Good thing you got one, then,” I said.
He smirked. “You know she’s one of us now.”
“No.” The refusal was quick, sharp.
“Yes, she is. Whether you like it or not,” Ludwig said. “Not because she’s with you. Because she proved it.”
The truth settled like lead in the pit of my gut. She’d made the choice I’d been avoiding making for her. All this time I thought I was stepping into her world.
Turns out I was bringing her into mine.
She wasn’t surviving it. She was standing in it. And there was no going back from that.
“And while I’d like to sit here all day and discuss how appealing that is, we have to move,” he continued.
I let the comment slide because he was right. Ludwig’s appreciation of her capability didn’t bother me anymore. He’d earned the right to see what she was.
“I know.”
“They’ll canvas the radius,” he continued. “Hospitals. Pharmacies. Anyone who made a call in the last twelve hours.”
I closed my eyes once. Briefly. The exhaustion pulled at me, but I pushed through it.
“So, we move,” I said. “How soon?”
“Not soon enough. You can’t yet. It might kill you. And she’ll never forgive that,” he said. “Ulrich is securing a new place. As soon as it’s done, we go.”
“Fine. But get in touch with Silas and tell him what’s going on.”
“Silas?” He sounded surprised. “You brought him into this?”
“He brought himself into it. He’s the reason—” I stopped talking. Ludwig didn’t know anything about the hospital or her alteration.
“The reason for what?”
Some things weren’t mine to share. But this—Ludwig needed to know.
I didn’t answer right away. “It’s a long story.”
He looked at his watch. Then gave me a pointed look. “We have plenty of time to kill.”
So, I told him. All of it. From the moment Silas showed up, to her abduction and alteration, to breaking out of Bagras to the surveillance—the full story. I’d only given him necessary pieces before. When I finished, he said nothing. His face devoid of emotion. Processing. Calculating what it meant.
Then, “Fuck. You should have told me sooner.”
His jaw was tight. Angry—not at me. At what had been done to her.
“Probably.”
“Now this is more serious than I thought.”
“Right,” I agreed.
Ludwig stood. “Get some rest. We move in forty-eight hours or less.”
“Tell Ulrich I want the route mapped before we go.”
“Already done.” He headed toward the door, paused. “For what it’s worth? She’s good for you. Makes you less…” He searched for the word.
“Less what?”
He grinned. “Ill-tempered.”
The door closed behind him.
I lay there in the silence, feeling the pull of the stitches with every breath.
She’d walked into my world without asking permission. Threatened my people. Held my life in her blood-covered hands. Refused to break when everything said she should.
Ludwig was right.
She wasn’t only with me.
She was with the Quiet Watch now.
And somewhere between Istanbul and Munich, between that first kiss and the moment she’d threatened to kill me if I died, I’d stopped trying to protect her from this life.
Because she’d already chosen it.
Chosen me.
The realization settled—not with dread, but with something close to relief.
She could handle this.
She’d already proven it.
Now I had to survive long enough to tell her.