The hospital air flattens everything until the room feels washed thin. The monitors keep their steady rhythm beside me, quiet and relentless, and every sound seems to exist only to remind me that my body's become something everyone has to watch. I hate the gown. I hate the tape on my skin, the tug of the IV, the way my hand looks pale against the sheet when I lift it. Most of all, I hate the careful quiet everyone keeps around me, as if one wrong noise might make my heart remember how badly it failed.
It's early enough that the room's finally settled, the room empty save for Luca sitting on the edge of my bed with one hip barely touching the mattress, careful of every wire and line as though he's memorized the places I can be touched without being hurt. His fingers trace over my knuckles, then return to the same path again. He hasn't said anything in a while. He doesn't need to. Every time his eyes lift to my face, I see the hallway reflected there. I see the moment I went down. I see what it cost him to keep his hands steady while mine stopped obeying me.
"You're staring," I murmur. My voice still scrapes when I use it too much, and the weakness in it irritates me enough that I almost stop there. “Where is everyone?”
“They took the kids home. They were getting antsy and the doctor refused to let us all sleep here. I told them I wasn’t leaving and that was that.”
The crooked little curve of Luca’s mouth tells me he probably made himself impossible to move until everyone gave up. I look around for the time, noticing that it’s just after six in the morning.
“Maceo said they’d be back around six thirty or seven, depending on when everyone got up.”
I nod as Luca's thumb pauses over my hand, and I make myself say, "I'm still here."
His mouth tightens as he shifts closer, blue eyes searching mine like he's checking for something the monitors can't measure. "I know," he says, but his voice gives him away. "I just keep making sure."
I turn my hand under his until our fingers fit together, and the new tremor in mine's obvious enough that I can't pretend he doesn't feel it. Luca looks down at our joined hands and blinks too fast.
"I scared you," I say.
His laugh breaks before it becomes anything close to humor. "You think?"
I deserve that. I deserve worse than that. The dull ache behind my ribs shifts when I breathe, and I have to wait for it to settle before I can answer. "When it happened, I knew you were there. I could hear you, or I thought I could. Everything else kept dropping out. The room, Dorian, the floor. But I knew you were there."
Luca closes his eyes. His fingers tighten around mine until the ring finger of his bare hand presses into my skin. "I was telling you not to leave me."
"I know." My throat works around the words, and for a second I almost let the monitor speak for me because it's easier than admitting the thing that's been sitting under my tongue since I woke. "That was what scared me most."
His eyes open again.
"When everything went wrong," I say, forcing myself to look at him. “All I could think was that I was going to leave you with another unfinished promise."
Luca goes very still.
I keep hold of his hand because if I let go, I might lose the nerve. "We were supposed to choose each other years ago. Before Hudson. Before everyone else decided what your life was allowed to be. Before I got so good at waiting for safer timing that waiting started to feel like a plan. I kept telling myself there’d be a right moment to give you the rest of it. The ceremony. The witnesses. The vows we didn’t have to squeeze around danger and babies and everyone needing us somewhere else. Then I was on the floor, and all I could think was that I almost ran out of time again while still owing you something bigger than the version we settled for.”
Luca's breath catches. He looks at me like he knows where this is going and is afraid to move in case the moment breaks apart.
"I'm done letting almost enough be enough," I whisper.
His thumb strokes once over the back of my hand, a tiny motion that shakes anyway. "Blake."
I reach for the drawer built into the bedside table. The movement's clumsy, and I hate that. My fingers don't work as cleanly as they should, but Luca doesn't help. He watches me fight with the handle, tears gathering in his eyes, and gives me the dignity of doing this part myself. Grayson tucked the box there earlier, after Maceo brought the bag from home and Luther pretended not to notice all of us noticing. I’d planned to show him somewhere better. A quiet beach. The garden at Ember House after sunset. Our bedroom with the door locked and the whole pack waiting downstairs because none of them trusted me not to overthink the venue, the vows, the guest list, and whether Luca would think I was trying to make up for something too late.
The box is smaller than it feels. Dark velvet, warm from the drawer, heavy because of everything I almost didn’t get to finish. I pull it into my lap and turn it toward him.
Luca's hand flies to his mouth.
I open the lid. The new band catches the low light from the monitor, simple and strong, made to sit beside the one he already wears. It took Grayson three venues, two jewelers, and one very pointed lecture to make me stop treating this like something I had to earn before I was allowed to want it. I kept rejecting bands because they were too delicate, too heavy, too ornate, too plain, until Grayson finally put this one in my palm and said Luca didn’t need proof that he stayed. He needed a promise that looked like everyone would finally get to see it.
"Blake," Luca breathes.
“It was supposed to be better than this,” I say. My eyes sting, and I let them because there’s no version of this where I get through it untouched. “I wanted to tell you somewhere thatdidn’t smell like antiseptic. I wanted to stand up when I did it. I wanted my hands steady. But I don’t want to spend one more day pretending time’s something the world owes us. I want you to know that the second I’m cleared, we’re doing it properly.
He's crying silently, both hands pressed to his mouth, his shoulders trembling.
I lift the box. My arm shakes before I get it high enough, but I hold it there. “Marry me again, Luca. Not because we need the paperwork to make it true. Not because the bond or the first ceremony weren’t enough to make you mine and me yours. I want the vows where everyone can hear them. I want the aisle, the music, the ridiculous cake Rosalie is going to demand, the whole pack standing there while I show you off the way I should have years ago. I want to look at your hand and know I stopped letting our joy be something we tucked into the quiet.”
For one second, he doesn't move. He only stares at the ring, then at me, his face crumpling with so much joy and grief that I can barely breathe around it. Then he makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob, and leans over me with both hands cupping my face.
