Page 45 of Fallen Empire

A long, dull pain throbbed up the length of my thigh, anchoring itself into the bone like it belonged there. The pressure was constant—unyielding. Every few seconds it would spike, sending sharp jolts through my hip and groin, like the bone was splintered just enough to scream.

I didn’t know the details, not exactly. But I’d heard the words whispered over me.

Hairline fracture. Stabilized. No surgery on it…not yet.

It still felt broken. Like something deep inside had been cracked open, and now every breath pulled the pain a little further apart.

It pulsed like a second heartbeat, one made entirely of pain.

Fragments of conversations drifted in and out, like echoes from the bottom of a well. Millie’s voice cracked with tears. Ben tried to comfort her, though his own grief weighed down every word. And Jaxson... God, I knew this was killing him. I could feel it. His anguish pressing down on the space beside me like gravity.

Bits of speech kept threading themselves together, trying to build images in my mind. I caught the doctor’s voice explaining the extubation process, though I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. Everything felt like it was still floating through the air, suspended just out of reach.

It came in flashes. Like a dream you try to chase after waking, grasping for the edges before they fade into nothing.

How many days had it been?

How many conversations had I missed while lying here, still and silent, with no way to respond?

But this one… this one was important.

Even through the fog—through the confusion and the agony that stitched itself into every inch of me—I remembered her voice. Sharp. Furious. Cracking through the silence like a whip.

“She’s in a fucking coma, Jax.”

Nic. I could hear her as clear as if she were standing over me now.

“What the fuck did you do?”

She’d snapped at him, and the memory of her voice pulled me closer to the surface than anything else had in days.

And still, the pain raged. Worse than before.

It wasn’t just fire now, it was a storm. One that lived inside my bones and wrapped around my ribs like a vice. My chest throbbed with every breath, my leg screamed with every twitch, and my chest… it felt like it had shattered and been stitched together with broken glass. Even blinking, even thinking, felt like dragging my mind through barbed wire.

But that voice...

That memory...

It reminded me that someone was still out there.

And no matter how much the blackness called to me—how much I wanted to let it take me under just to escape this torment—I couldn’t.

Not yet.

Because somewhere, on either side of this pain, were the people I loved.

And I had to claw my way back.

For them.

My eyes were trying to flutter, strained and sluggish, like lifting weights I hadn’t trained for. The muscles around them fought against me, dry and unused, as if the simple act of opening them had been forgotten altogether. The skin pulled tight. My lids stuck together. Every blink was a war.

But I was going to show them I was still here.

I wouldn’t dare speak of the raging pain that tore through every nerve ending—of how breathing felt like broken glass, or how my body seemed to burn and freeze in tandem—but I could do this. I could open my eyes. I could let them see me. Let them know I hadn’t given up.

"Jaxson," I heard Millie say, a plea of hope dancing in her tone.