Chapter Twenty Seven
Cassandra
The monitors are quieter now. Not silent—never silent—but steady enough that the panic in my chest has dulled to a sharp, throbbing ache instead of a knife.
Dax is still here.
Still breathing.
Still tethered to this world by machines, wires, bruises, and me.
I haven’t moved from his side. My legs ache from standing too long, my eyes burn from refusing to close, but I won’t sit, I won’t rest, I won’t fucking blink longer than a second in case when I open them—he’s gone.
Outside, the base doesn’t sleep. Boots pound across gravel.
Shouts tear through the canvas. Choppers thrum overhead, blades chopping the air to pieces.
Somewhere out there, another convoy limps back in, another stretcher carries a body that didn’t make it.
The war doesn’t pause just because my heart is on this cot.
The war doesn’t care about him.
About me.
About us.
My hand shakes when I brush the sweat-damp hair off his forehead. He looks nothing like the man who kissed me in that ruined chapel, nothing like the bastard who burned me alive with his touch. He looks younger. Hollowed out. Fragile. His lips are cracked, his lashes dusted with grit and fever.
And I hate it.
I hate how fragile he looks when the only way I’ve ever known him is unbreakable.
“You don’t get to leave me,” I whisper, my throat raw. “Not like this.”
The nurse on shift gave me a stack of letters earlier—ones that came in on the last supply run. She said reading helps, that familiar voices sometimes drag them back.
I wasn’t going to. It felt like betrayal, opening what wasn’t mine but then I saw the handwriting.
Lola.
Her letters always start with a mess of doodles in the corners—flowers, suns, little spirals that look like she’s scribbling out the silence. This one’s no different. My chest cracks open just looking at it.
I sit beside him, my chair scraping the floor, and unfold the paper slow, like it might fall apart in my hands. His hand is still under mine. Still warm. Still alive.
“Your sister wrote to you,” I murmur, my voice breaking in the middle. “Our Lola. Do you want to hear it?”
Of course, he doesn’t answer. But I start anyway, because I need to hear it too.
I read.
Dax,
I don’t know if these letters ever reach you, but I write them anyway.
Maybe it makes me feel closer. Maybe it tricks me into thinking the distance isn’t so heavy.
Cass tells me stories sometimes—she says you’re still the same stubborn bastard, and I believe her.
I don’t know how else you’d survive out there.
Everything here feels different without you. The house is quieter. The streets feel longer. But I’m still laughing sometimes. Cass makes sure of that. She keeps me sane, the same way you always did.
And I have news. I didn’t want to wait until you were home, because if something happens and you don’t know—God, I can’t live with that. So I’m writing it here, messy and rushed and probably the wrong way, but you deserve to know.
I’m getting married.
His name is Aaron. You’d like him, Dax. He’s steady. Good. The kind of man who looks at me like I’m more than the mess I feel like most days. He makes me laugh in a way that feels real. He asked, and I said yes.
It’s happening soon. Faster than I thought. Life feels too short to wait, you know?
I wish you could walk me down the aisle. I wish you could threaten him the way only you can, make him sweat a little before he says “I do.” But if you can’t… just know I’ll be thinking of you every step. You’re still my brother. Always.
Come home. Please. Come home to us.
Love,
Lola.
By the end, my voice is shaking so bad I can hardly force the words out.
I fold the paper back up slow, pressing it to my chest like maybe it’ll stop the ache ripping through me.
“She’s getting married, Dax,” I whisper, my voice splintering. “Can you believe it? Married. We’ve only been gone four months and she’s getting married.”
The monitors tick steady. His chest rises. Falls.
But he doesn’t move.
Doesn’t stir.
And my tears slip free, hot and relentless, dripping onto his wrist where my hand won’t let go.
“Wake up,” I beg. “Please wake up. You can’t miss this. You can’t leave me to stand there without you.”
But he doesn’t.
So I stay.
Holding the letter in one hand.
Holding him with the other and praying to a god I don’t believe in that war won’t steal him before she says “I do.”
The letter is still creased in my palm when the generators cough and sputter like they’re about to give out, shadows bending long across the canvas walls. Somewhere outside, boots pound against dirt, a shout cracks sharp in the distance, and I know it’s not over. It’s never fucking over.
But in here, it’s quiet.
Just the rasp of his breathing. Just the hum of machines pretending they can keep him tethered.
I drag my chair closer, metal screeching across the floor. My thighs tremble when I sink down again. I haven’t stood for more than a piss break in… fuck, I don’t even know how long.
The letter is soft from my sweat now, the ink smudged where my thumb wouldn’t stop rubbing over Lola’s name. My chest twists so hard I almost tear it in half, because it isn’t fair. None of it is.
She gets a wedding.
She gets a husband.
She gets a future that isn’t painted in blood.
And me?
I get this. A broken man half-buried under machines, lips cracked, skin too pale to belong to Dax Kingston, the bastard who once made me scream under the stars like the whole fucking world belonged to us.
“Do you hear me?” My voice breaks, the words falling out in a whisper meant for him, for me, for anyone who’ll fucking listen.
I press the letter against his chest, careful not to snag on the wires.
“She’s getting married, Dax. Lola’s walking down the aisle, and she wants you there.
She wants us both there. And if you quit on me now… ”
My throat locks. Tears sting. My body bends over his, my forehead pressing against the crook of his shoulder where his pulse should be stronger than it is. “If you quit on me now, you’re gonna miss everything.”
My hands shake. The paper crinkles under my fists. His skin is warm, too warm, damp with fever, and I can feel the tremor in him even through the sheets.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I choke, shaking my head against him. “Don’t you dare leave me to tell her why you weren’t there. I won’t. I can’t.”
The monitors beep steady, cruel in their rhythm. Alive, but fragile. Always fragile.
I stay like that. Bent. Pressed against him like my body could convince his to keep fighting. The letter mashed between us, her words smudging into his skin and for a second—just one—I swear I feel his chest rise deeper, like maybe he’s listening.
I freeze, breath caught in my throat. My fingers tighten around his wrist where the pulse trembles faint and stubborn.
“Dax?” My voice is nothing. Just a crack. Just a plea.
But he doesn’t move again. Doesn’t stir.
Still—I don’t let go.
Not of him.
Not of the letter.
Not of the hope that’s killing me more than the fear ever could.
So I stay.
The war can scream outside all it wants.
I stay.
My body finally gives out.
It isn’t dramatic. There’s no sudden fall, no cinematic collapse. It’s smaller than that. A trembling in my knees that won’t quit. A weight between my shoulders that bows me down inch by inch until the stool feels like stone and even breathing is a chore I can’t quite remember how to finish.
I try to sit straighter, to hold the chart again, to double-check his vitals. But my hands won’t listen. They shake too hard. The pen slips from my fingers and clatters to the floor, the sound sharp enough to snap through the haze.
I blink. Everything blurs. The canvas walls tilt. The monitors hum their same tired hymn, steady and endless, and Dax—God, Dax—is still lying there with tubes in his veins, his chest fighting for every shallow rise.
My chest caves.
I drop my forehead to the edge of his cot, press my face into the stiff canvas sheets, and let the sob tear loose. Not a pretty sound. Not quiet. A guttural, broken thing dragged straight out of my ribs.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper against him, though my voice is so wrecked I don’t know if it counts as words anymore. “I can’t fucking do this without you.”
His skin is hot under my cheek, fever burning even through the bandages. My hand crawls toward his, fingers fumbling, until I catch it in both of mine and drag it to my chest like a lifeline.
“Please,” I choke, breath splintering. “Please don’t make me bury you. I’ve lost too much already. I can’t lose you too.”
My body trembles harder. Too many hours awake. Too many nights split between machines and ghosts. Too many words that never should’ve been left unsaid.
And then it happens.
The fight goes out of me.
My body folds, heavy and spent, until I’m slumped across him—my arm hooked over his chest, my head tucked into the curve of his shoulder like I belong there. My breath staggers once, twice, and then the exhaustion takes me whole.
I don’t even feel the tears when they finally stop.
All I know is his heartbeat, faint but steady, under my ear.
All I know is the whisper that slips from my lips as the dark drags me under—“Butterfly…”
It doesn’t matter if it’s his voice or mine anymore.
I let it carry me down and for the first time in days, I sleep but I don’t let go of him. Not even in dreams.