Page 121 of The Beast's Broken Angel

Worth living for.

Worth everything.

THE UNMAKING OF A BEAST

NOAH

Two Years Later…

The Halcyon Gallery gleamed beneath the hush of evening, Mayfair’s winter light filtering through the arched skylights like it too had come to admire her work. The air hummed with reverent murmurings, the slow clink of crystal, and the soft cadence of shoes crossing polished marble. Isabelle’s name was everywhere. Her work was everywhere. Her story whispered like gospel.

“Medicinal Metamorphosis” had drawn the city’s elite, but no one moved as if they were the important ones. The center of gravity belonged to her.

She stood tall in emerald silk, the fabric carved to her form like the dress had been painted on, not sewn. Her cane gleamed black and gold, carved from obsidian with her initials at the tip. It wasn’t for need anymore, not really. It was part armour, part declaration. A reminder of where she’d been. Of what she had survived.

I stood near the back, as always, one hand in my pocket, theother brushing against the condensation of a whiskey I hadn’t touched. I didn't need it. The high came from watching her.

“She remade herself,” a woman murmured beside me, gesturing toward a canvas where fractured spine fragments bloomed into heliotropes. “There’s nothing like this. Not since Kahlo.” Her voice trembled like she knew she was witnessing history.

Isabelle caught my eye through the press of admirers. She didn’t need to say anything. Her smile reached me anyway, private and soft, the kind that still made my chest ache. We had come so far.

Four years of treatments. Two years of experimental therapy that left her exhausted and angry, radiant and reborn. Calloway funding had unlocked doors medicine had sealed shut. She walked now. She danced sometimes. Her voice no longer trembled at the end of sentences. She painted like the world owed her its truth.

“She’s not just surviving anymore,” Adrian said behind me, his voice low and steady. “She’s thriving.”

I turned, breath catching despite myself. He looked at home here in a way I still wasn’t used to. No mask tonight. The scar across his cheek caught the gallery light like a war medal, and the lines near his mouth softened when he looked at me.

“You came,” I said.

His hand brushed mine. He always touched with purpose now. “Of course I did.”

People stepped out of his way with a reverence born of fear and fascination. London knew who he was now. Not just whispers. Not just myth. They knew, and still they looked.

“Your sister’s work raised half a million tonight,” he added. “Ten percent of that goes directly to her foundation. You should be proud.”

“I am.”

“And not just of her.”

I turned toward him then, fully. He didn’t flinch under it. His hand settled at my waist, casual in the way we’d once thought impossible. “You still look at me like you’re waiting for me to disappear,” I whispered.

“I’m just still surprised you stayed.”

“I didn’t just stay,” I said. “I built a life with you.”

The Hastings Trauma Response Centersat quietly in the center of Westminster Memorial’s research wing. No fanfare. Just a steel plaque near the entrance and a corridor humming with quiet purpose.

The woman touring us adjusted her glasses, flicked through her data sheet. “Your trauma algorithms have changed our field protocol,” she said, beaming. “Survival rates jumped thirty-eight percent. We’ve reduced critical mortality in both rural hospitals and military field units. What you built here—it’s saved thousands.”

I nodded, but my hands were already in my pockets again. I didn’t need to hear the numbers. I already knew the cost.

Adrian walked beside me, calm and unreadable, until we passed the emergency care simulation room. He glanced through the glass at the training dummies and emergency code maps, then leaned in closer.

“Does this make it worth it?”

“It makes the bleeding quieter.”

He nodded once. “We bled so others wouldn’t have to.”