"You're bleeding—"
"Get her to the car."
Viktor reaches for my arm, and I twist away. "I'm not leaving—"
"Aurora." The word comes out like a fist. "Car. Now."
I take two steps toward it.
The third shot comes from the trees. Elevated. Aimed with patience and precision like someone who has been waiting, specifically waiting, for exactly this moment.
It hits Axel in the side, and he goes down.
His shoulder hits the grass, his arm buckles, and the sound he makes hollows me out completely.
I don't decide to move. I'm just there, on my knees beside him in the wet grass, and my hands find his side where the blood is coming dark and fast andwrong,so much of it, soaking through his shirt and through my fingers and I am hyperventilating, I can hear myself doing it, each breath in faster than the last and none of them doing anything useful.
There's so much blood. Why is there so much blood? This is too much. This is—
"Axel." My voice sounds like it belongs to someone falling. "Axel, look at me. Look at me right now."
His eyes find mine. Still there. Still him. But his face is the wrong color, and his breathing has changed to something shallow and careful, as if each breath costs him a calculation.
"Get—" He tries to push himself up.
"Don't move." I press both palms harder to his side, and he makes a sound through his teeth, and I hate myself, I hate this, I hate every single person who did this. "Don't you dare move."
"There are still men—"
"VIKTOR." My voice tears out of me, enormous and ragged. "VIKTOR, HE'S DOWN—"
Viktor is already there. Sergei behind him, radio crackling, and I hear gunfire slowing somewhere behind us, shorter bursts, further apart, but I can't look up, I can't look at anything except Axel's face because if I look away for even one second, I am genuinely terrified of what will happen.
He's going to be fine. He's been shot before. He told me. He's been through worse than this and he's still here. He's still here right now, he's looking at me, he's—
The hand he'd moved toward me drops back to the grass.
"Axel." I lean over him, my face close to his. My tears are falling onto his cheek, and I can't stop them. I'm not even trying. "Stay with me. Please. Please just stay with me."
"Medic is four minutes out." Viktor's voice is controlled in the deliberate way of someone suppressing something.
"Four minutes—" The words fracture. "Viktor that's too long, look at him, that is toolong—"
"Four minutes, Aurora. Talk to him."
I turn back to Axel. His eyes are at half-mast now, the sharp focus in them going soft at the edges, and something in my chest tears clean open.
"No." I take his face in both my hands, blood and all, pressing my palms to his jaw. "No. You listen to me. We just did the northern lights. We just—you told me you love me and I told you, and we just did that, and you don't get to check out now, do you understand me?" My voice is wrecked, barely holding shape, dissolving at every edge. "The baby hasn't met you. You haven't met the baby. You promised me you'd be there, you said—"
I stop.
I can't.
I press my forehead to his and breathe, just breathe, feeling his shallow breath against my face, counting it, making sure the next one comes.
"I'm so angry at you," I whisper. "I need you to know that. I am so angry. You are not allowed to do this to me." Another breath.His. Mine. "Hold on. Okay? Just hold on. Four minutes. That's nothing. You've survived everything. This is nothing."
His lips move.
