Page 67 of The Beast's Broken Angel

NOAH

Two Years Later…

T he 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, the other 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 Center sat 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.”

“We still do,” I said. “But the wounds are cleaner now.”

He chuckled, just once. “We keep telling ourselves that.”

Further down the hall, near the glass doors leading to the recovery suite, a plaque bore Isabelle’s name. The Isabelle Hastings Foundation for Autoimmune Research . Five new research fellowships had been funded through her foundation in the last year alone.

“She donates ten percent of everything she makes,” Adrian said quietly. “It funds this place—the research, the fellowships. She wants to give back.”

“She believes in building something that lasts.”

“So do you.”

Ravenswood didn’t hum like it used to. It breathed.

The east wing no longer smelled like bleach and regret. It smelled like antiseptic, sure, but also sage and tea tree oil and the faint scent of jasmine. The burns unit was fully operational now. A living monument to what he had survived. What others still could.

Healing hadn’t stopped at survival. After years of failed treatments and scars that never softened, Adrian finally let me do things differently.

I’d pushed for new grafting techniques, pressure therapy, and laser treatments—approaches I knew worked, even when old-guard consultants scoffed.

Bit by bit, his mobility came back. The chronic pain faded.

The rigid scar bands relaxed, just enough that he could lift his arm without wincing or button a shirt with both hands.

He started trusting his body again, and sometimes, in the mornings, I’d catch him flexing his right hand in the sunlight, just to see if it was real.

It wasn’t a miracle. The scars would always be there. But so was the progress—hard-won, tangible, and ours. Every day, Adrian healed a little more. Not just in flesh, but in the way he let himself be seen. In the way he let me touch him.

“This wasn’t just for me,” Adrian said as I led him through the recovery halls. “You built this because you needed to. You couldn’t leave the wounded behind.”

I paused, fingers grazing the edge of a chart. “And you gave me the place to do it.”

He watched a nurse pass, then turned back to me. “You gave me a reason to let it happen.”

The facility served Calloway personnel and select patients from Westminster. People who didn’t fit the system. People like we’d once been. Patients came here when no one else would take them. People who’d been discarded, broken, burned.

They left with scars and a future.

Isabelle’s new studio took up the old conservatory, all glass and light. Her newer pieces were messier, louder. Color had returned to her world, aggressive and unapologetic.

She painted like the sun was a person she was in love with.

“Her art’s in clinics now,” I told him. “Her foundation funds therapists who integrate creative therapy into pain management. The work she’s doing here—it’s healing more than nerves and muscles.”

“It’s healing people.”

We passed renovation plans for Sophia's suite near the main staircase. Adrian glanced down at the blueprints. “She insisted on larger windows. Said she was tired of pretending she didn't need light.”

I smiled. “She'll like it here. Being closer to Isabelle.”

“She's growing softer.”

“She's growing.”

He looked at me like he couldn't believe it was real. That we were real. That we'd survived everything Harrison had set in motion.

The first six months after Harrison's death had been brutal.

His network of allies and enemies alike had tested our resolve, probing for weakness in the power vacuum he'd left behind.

Adrian had responded with surgical precision—eliminating the most dangerous threats while offering strategic partnerships to those willing to negotiate.

By the end of the first year, the message was clear: the Calloway empire had evolved, but it hadn't weakened. If anything, removing Harrison's manipulative influence had made it stronger.

Later, when the house was quiet and the fires burned low, I found him in his study.

The shelves had grown over the last two years. Books in languages I didn't read. Poetry anthologies. First editions. Medical journals. A few mystery novels I recognized as mine.

He didn't turn when I entered, just kept flipping through the old journal he'd been reading for weeks now.

“Harrison's final writings?”

“Fully decoded,” he said. “He detailed every stage of my conditioning. Every test. Every control phrase.”

“And yet here you are.”

He looked up at me. “I still wonder if any of me was ever mine.”

I crossed the room and sat beside him. “You've spent the last two years tearing out every thread he stitched into you. Dismantling his network. Proving that what he created couldn't contain what you chose to become. That sounds like you to me.”

“I feel it sometimes. When I'm tired. When I'm angry. The old programming.”

“You override it. That's choice.”

His eyes met mine, shadowed but steady. “Do you ever regret it? Staying through all of it? The retaliation, the threats, watching me become what I needed to be to end his influence?”

“Saying yes to you?” I shook my head. “Never. Not when you gave Turner's allies the choice to walk away. Not when you systematically dismantled every piece of Harrison's corruption. Not when you proved that strength doesn't have to mean cruelty.”

We were quiet for a long time. Just the fire cracking softly, and the quiet murmur of wind beyond the windows.

He reached out, laced his fingers through mine. “You gave me my life back.”

“No,” I said, voice thick. “You built this life. I just stood beside you while you learned how to keep it.”

He leaned forward, resting his forehead to mine. “The Calloway operations are almost clean now. The violence is quieter. Targeted. Not random.”

“Because you chose better.”

“No. Because you made me want to.”

His lips brushed mine, not with hunger, but reverence. “Your contract expired a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“But you stayed. Through everything. Even when Harrison's people came for us. Even when choosing me meant choosing this life.”

I smiled. “Some prisoners learn their cell had a door all along.”

“And some monsters learn they're more than the worst thing they've ever done.”

He kissed me again. Deeper this time. Like maybe love didn't have to ache anymore. Like maybe it could be home.

We stayed like that for a long time. The fire burned low, and for once, there were no shadows left to chase.

Just us.

Alive.

Together.

And healing.