Across the distance, through the darkness, I see her expression shift.
Surprise.
At my approach, maybe. At the speed of it. At the raw panic that must be written all over my face.
Or maybe she's surprised that anyone would runtowardher instead of away.
"The look in her eyes made me feel like if I let her walk off... she'd cease to exist."
I leap onto the stage.
The impact jars through my knees, but I don't stop—can't stop—not until I'm beside her, reaching for her, watching as her knees buckle and her body starts to collapse.
I catch her.
Cradle her against my chest.
She's lighter than I expected—all delicate bones and lean muscle and the fragile, precious weight of someone who's been surviving on too little for too long.
Blood coughs up from her throat.
Bright red.
Arterial.
"Well," she manages, and even now—even bleeding and collapsing and clearly dying—there's a smirk playing at her lips. "This wasn't part of the script. But maybe drinking poison by force was a wrong call."
Poison.
The word hits me like a physical blow.
"JETT!" I scream, and my voice doesn't sound like mine—too raw, too desperate, toobroken. "She's been poisoned!"
Movement behind me.
Jett appears at my side, dropping to his knees, his storm-grey eyes already scanning her symptoms with the clinical assessment of someone who's spent years learning to save lives as efficiently as he takes them.
Blaze is right behind him.
They move with synchronized efficiency—Jett reaching for her pulse, checking her pupils, cataloguing symptoms while Blaze pulls components from the pack he's never without.
And Kai?—
Kai is walking toward us.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
His footsteps echo through the empty theater, measured and deliberate, like her perishing isn't of importance. Like he's not watching an Omega die on the stage where she just performed the most beautiful, devastating dance any of us have ever witnessed.
Rage flickers in my chest.
But I can't focus on that now.
Can't focus on anything except the girl in my arms, whose breath is growing shallower, whose blood is staining my clothes, whose life is slipping away faster than I can hold onto it.
"We tried to go to your place," I tell her, and I don't know why I'm talking, don't know why it matters, except that I need her to know. Need her to understand that wecame. That wetried. "It was burning."
