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“He has to make it. My brother has to make it.” Sophie’s voice sounds wrong as she presses her fist to her mouth.

The sound of her sobs breaks something in the room. One of the Druids turns to the wall, shoulders shaking. Another whispers what might be a prayer.

By the ninth hour, my hands won’t stop shaking. All I can think is that I didn’t say yes. He gave me everything, and I was too afraid to say yes.

Finally, the OR doors swing open. This time it’s the nemesis we’ve been dreading.

The tall, dark-haired surgeon emerges in blue scrubs, his space rocket surgical cap still on. Exhaustion is etched in every line of his face. The room goes deathly quiet.

“Miss Romano?”

I stand on legs that barely hold me, my heart thundering so hard my chest hurts. “Yes?”

His tired eyes find mine. One look at him and I know—he’s not about to deliver good news wrapped in medic-speak. This is something worse.

The room goes still, breaths held as we wait for the blow to fall.

“The surgery was . . .” He stops and swallows. Then takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. The gesture is so like Cade that a small sound escapes me, and I fold my arms around myself.

“Mr. Quinn presented with catastrophic injuries.” His tone is carefully neutral, but the words land like hammers. “The knife completely destroyed his spleen and cut into several major blood vessels. We had to remove the spleen, part of his left kidney, and repair a punctured lung.

I’m nodding as if my head understands what my heart doesn’t.

“He crashed twice on the table.” The words steal what little air I had left.

The room flinches collectively. Sophie gasps, the sound breaking through the suffocating quiet.

The surgeon holds up a hand—as if trying to offer some lifeline of hope. “But through what I can only describe as sheer stubbornness, Mr. Quinn stabilized. He made it through surgery.”

“He’s alive?” My voice is raw, trembling.

The surgeon’s expression softens just enough. “He’s alive. He’s in critical condition, but he’s stable.”

My knees buckle, and the floor rushes up at me, but somehow I don’t hit it. Because Phoenix’s muscled arm wraps around me.

But the surgeon isn’t finished. “However.” That one word brings silence crashing back. “The next forty-eight hours are critical. He lost a dangerous amount of blood. There’s the risk of infection, organ failure . . .” He looks around the room, meeting our eyes one by one. “I need you to understand—he’s not out of danger. Far from it.”

“When can I see him?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.

His eyes soften when they land on me. “Not until tomorrow evening at the earliest depending on how fast he recovers. He needs time to stabilize, and we need to monitor him closely for complications.”

“Callum.” Nico steps forward and takes his hand, somehow looking regal even with blood on his sleeve. “I owe you one.”

The surgeon returns Nico’s handshake, then his gaze sweeps over our strange assembly one last time. “I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard to live. Whatever you all mean to him . . . don’t give up on him now.”

He dips his head respectfully at Nico, then disappears through those heavy doors, leaving us in a strange limbo between relief and terror. He’s alive. But those words—crashed twice on the table—echo in my head and I can’t stop shaking.

Sophie breaks first. Raw, animal sounds of relief and fear tangled together. Nico catches her before she hits the floor.

“Twice,” she keeps saying. “He died twice, Nico. My brother died twice.”

Phoenix makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, then pulls me tighter against him.

“A Reaper Druid is like a homing pigeon,” he says gruffly into my hair. “They always return home, no matter what. You’re Caden’s home, Luna. You’re the one he was fighting to come back to.”

The room disappears, and I sob like a child. Until my throat feels raw. Until every thought coalesces into one single truth: there’s something Ihaveto do.

“I’m getting tested.”