Page 105 of Infamous

It’s like being punched and kissed at the same time. I holster the gun and tear at the straps. “Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “Yeah, I did.”

Her gaze unfocuses. “Lucian?” she murmurs, and for a second - I swear - she looks right through me, into someone else.

But then she blinks again, and her eyes clear just enough to find me. “No,” she whispers. “You’re Jude.”

“I’m here, sweetheart.” I brush the hair off her face, blood and sweat slick against my hands. “You’re okay now. I’ve got you.”

She shakes her head, slow, dreamlike. “You feel like him. Same fire. Same ache,” Nadia breathes, as she falls into my arms.

My chest caves in around her words. I don’t know what to say. All I can do is hold her.

Kellerman groans on the floor, but Scar’s already there - the click of his gun loud, decisive. “Stay down, or I put you down,”he says, his voice like gravel, before he orders Jayson to tie him up.

I scoop Nadia up, careful but quick. She’s weightless, fragile, whispering nonsense against my chest. She smells like blood and morphine, and still so undeniably Nadia.

As I carry her out of the room, she murmurs one last thing, voice thin and trembling:

“You found me.”

“I will always find you,” I whisper back.

And I swear, in that moment, as thunder breaks outside and the night splits wide open - I feel it.

That tether. That invisible, unbreakable bond between us.

She’s not just the woman I love.

She’s the pulse I’ve been chasing my whole life.

62

LUCIAN

She’s light in my arms. Too light.

I can feel the heat bleeding out of her with every step I take up those narrow basement stairs. Her head rests against my shoulder, her breath a thin, trembling thing that barely brushes my neck. I keep whispering to her -Nadia, come on, stay with me, sweetheart, just breathe for me- but I don’t know if she hears me.

The walls blur. The smell of my grief mixes with the salt of my sweat as I push through the door at the top. The house feels tighter now, smaller, like it’s folding in around us. Every echo, every creak, every shadow screams that I’mtoo late.

Scar’s voice cracks through the radio somewhere behind me, ordering Mason to clear the perimeter. Jayson’s shouting for the medic to move faster. None of it matters. My whole world has narrowed to the small, limp body in my arms.

Her skin is ice against mine by the time we reach the top of the stairs. I take one step out, and then she just - stops.

No sound. No breath. No heartbeat against my chest.

Her body goes limp in my arms, heavy in that awful, final way. For a heartbeat, I tell myself she’s just unconscious. That it’sthe drugs, the blood loss - anything but this. I shake her once, twice, gentle at first, then harder as panic tears through me like shrapnel.

“Nadia.” Her name breaks out of me, rough, desperate. I pull her closer, fingers digging into her back like I can hold her spirit in place through sheer force. “Don’t you fucking do this,” I whisper against her temple, my voice splintering. “You hear me, Nadia? You don’t get to leave me. Not like this.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Nadia!”

Nothing.

The sound that comes out of me isn’t human. It rips up from somewhere deep and ugly - a wounded, breaking thing that doesn’t care who hears it, who feels it. I drop to my knees, clutching her to my chest. My heart’s hammering so hard it hurts, like it’s trying to beat for the both of us.

“Mason!” I roar, my voice cracking, raw and inhuman. The room erupts with motion as the Gatti med team floods in like a blur of white and black. They pull me back, and I fight them like an animal until Mason himself grabs me, slamming a hand against my chest.