Chapter 15
RIDGE
I wake to antiseptic and pain.
It comes in layers. First the distant, dull awareness that my body exists again.
Then the deeper realization that it’s furious about it.
My chest feels like it’s been crushed and rebuilt wrong, every breath scraping on the way in.
My shoulder burns like someone left a brand pressed there too long.
My ribs—hell, my ribs feel like they’re held together by spite and stitches.
I inhale anyway. Because I can.
Hospital. That much registers next. White ceiling. Too-bright lights. The rhythmic beep of a monitor keeping time with my heart like it’s daring it to stop.
Still here.
Good.
I blink, once, twice, vision blurring and snapping back into focus—and then the world narrows down to a single point.
Her.
Brylee is right there, close enough that I can see every lash clumped with dried tears, every red vein spidering through her eyes. Like she hasn’t slept. Like she’s been holding vigil over a body she wasn’t sure would come back to her.
She looks wrecked.
There’s a bruise darkening along her jaw, the kind that blooms slow and ugly. Another shadow mars her temple, partially hidden by her hair. Fear punches through my chest harder than the bullet did.
My heart stutters. Then it slams into an intense, relentless rhythm, roaring its relief.
“You’re here,” I rasp.
The words tear out of my throat like I’ve dragged them across gravel.
Her breath shudders. “Ridge.”
She says my name like it’s something sacred, something she was afraid to say out loud. Like if she said it wrong, I’d disappear again.
Her hand closes around mine, warm and shaking, grounding me instantly. “You scared me.”
Relief hits me so hard that my vision dims at the edges. She’s alive. She’s not locked in some enemy compound or bleeding out in the dark or—
She’s here.
I try to sit up, instinct overriding pain, and immediately regret it. The monitor spikes, alarms chirping in sharp protest. White-hot agony flares through my chest, but I barely register it.
All I can see now are the marks on her.
Finger-shaped bruises mar her arms, some yellowing with age, others deep purple and angry. There’s another bruise disappearing beneath the collar of her gray dress, and suddenly the room feels too small to contain what wakes up inside me.
Something dark. Something violent. Something alpha and feral that wants blood for blood.
“Who let you in here like this?” I growl, my gaze cutting past her. “Kylian. Luka. Colter.”
They materialize like they’ve been standing at attention the whole time.
Kylian’s usual unhinged grin is gone, replaced with something sharp-edged and lethal. Luka’s eyes are shadowed, exhaustion lining his face in a way only endless worry can carve. Colter stands near the wall, arms crossed, mask on, silent and massive and terrifying as ever.
“She hasn’t seen a doctor,” I snap, every word clipped and furious. “Are you out of your damn minds?”
Brylee flinches, her fingers tightening around mine like she’s bracing for impact.
I scan her again, cataloging injuries with the ruthless efficiency drilled into me by years of training. “She could have internal bleeding. A concussion. Shock. And you let her sit here?”
Kylian opens his mouth—probably to deflect or joke or both—but Luka cuts in smoothly.
“She was examined,” Luka says. Calm. Measured. “Full assessment. Imaging. Bloodwork.”
“That doesn’t look like ‘examined,’” I bite back, nodding toward the bruises.
“She refused admission,” Colter rumbles.
One sentence. Gravel and steel. End of discussion.
My head snaps back to Brylee. “You refused?”
Her chin lifts, defiant even now.
“You were unconscious,” she says quietly. “I wasn’t leaving.”
Something fractures in my chest, sharp and irreversible.
“Brylee—”
“No,” she interrupts, gentle but unyielding. “I wasn’t alone. They made sure I was okay. I just…” Her voice softens. “I needed to be here when you woke up.”
The anger drains out of me like someone pulled a plug. What replaces it is worse—cold, clawing fear that makes my hands tremble as I pull her closer, careful of the wires and IVs. I breathe her in.
She smells like adrenaline and fear and that sweetness that’s been haunting me since the first day I met her.
Mine.
“Get out,” I tell my brothers without looking at them. “Give us a minute.”
Kylian hesitates, jaw ticking. Luka studies me, weighing something I don’t have the energy to dissect. Colter doesn’t move until Brylee gives a small nod.
Then they’re gone.
The door clicks shut, sealing us into the quiet.
I lift my hands to her face, careful, reverent, thumbs brushing just beneath her eyes. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Her lips tremble. “You got shot.”
“I lived,” I say softly. “I wouldn’t have if I lost you.”
She exhales a broken breath and presses her forehead to mine.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits. “Be in a relationship with alphas, I mean. Not again. Not after… Not after before.”
The honesty guts me.
“But I know this,” she continues, voice shaking but sure. “I can’t walk away. I tried to imagine it while I was gone, and it felt like suffocating. Like tearing something vital out of myself.”
I swallow hard.
“I want to make this work,” she whispers. “With all of you. Even if I’m terrified.”
I rest my forehead against hers, breathing her in like oxygen, like survival.
“We’ll go slow,” I promise. “On your terms. But I need you to be honest with me. Always.”
She nods.
My pulse starts to race. There’s a question that’s been stalking me for a while now—since I saw two faces after I was shot, and both felt like home to me.
I pull back just enough to look her in the eye.
“Brylee,” I say quietly, deliberately. “I need to ask you something.”
She stills.
“Are you Teddie?”