Page 66 of North’s Claim

Cutter stitches him up just enough to keep him alive. He knows I’m not done with him yet.

Every punch I land on him is a release valve. Every groan he chokes out is fuel. I want him breathing when Nyxa wakes up. I want her to know he suffered.

Bullet calls every damn day. “How’s she doing, brother?”

“Still out,” I say, staring at her through the glass.

“You hang in there, North.”

Rock’s the same. “You need anything?”

“Yeah. I need her awake.”

Even Di calls twice. Her voice is sharper than I remember. “If she wakes up and you’re not there, I’ll find you and end you myself.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her. “Not without her.”

They all see it, the wreck I’ve become. I see it too. And for the first time, I get it. What my father felt. Why he was willing to risk everything for my mother.

Love doesn’t make you weak. It gives you something to die for.

I sit by her bed every day.

Some days I talk. Some days I just watch, counting the slow rise and fall of her chest.

At first, I’m pissed. “You’re a goddamn menace, Nyxa,” I mutter on the first night, my elbows on my knees, eyes burning from exhaustion. “Charging into shit you had no business being in. You could’ve been killed. You almost were.”

But her words from the warehouse keep slicing through me.

My life has no meaning without him.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t wrapped up like some romance line. It was the raw, reckless truth. And it’s mine now. Whether I wanted it or not.

Fifth night.

I come back from the cage with Myka’s blood under my nails and my knuckles swollen like rocks. Cutter told me to ice them. I didn’t. I just sit down next to her, staring at the bruises blooming along her neck and the bandage on her hand.

Something in me cracks open.

I reach for her hand, careful, so careful. My thumb brushes over the rough edge of the bandage. The words feel heavier than any promise I’ve made in my life.

“I was a coward,” I admit, my throat tightening. “Thought keeping my distance meant control. That I could protect you without…” I exhale hard. “Without letting you be the thing I can’t lose.”

I drop my head, pressing my forehead to the mattress by her hip. “Come back to me, Firefly. I don’t care how. Don’t leave me here without you.” My voice breaks.

And for the first time since my parents died, I cry.

Hot, humiliating tears. No one’s here to see them but her.

And I don’t care. Not with her.

Chapter 24

Nyxa

Darkness tastes like metal. It seeps down my throat, heavy and suffocating, until even breathing feels like a choice I can’t make. I’m so tired. Too tired to swim toward the flickers of light in the distance.

It would be easier to sink. No bruises here. No scars. No hands forcing me down or voices laughing when I cry. Just nothing.