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“Fucker,” she growls, hitting him on the back but clinging to him all the while.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Seriously, it’s all good.”
“And…Ilarion?” I call over, my voice trembling. “H-he was shot?”
“Come on,” Dima says. “I’m sure he’ll want to see you.”
He steers Mila around and leads us to the den. That has to be a good sign, right? If it were serious, then he’d have been brought up to the medical wing. Unless, of course, it’s so serious that he couldn’t be moved.
My heart is seconds away from flatlining. “Dima…”
But he doesn’t hear me. He pushes the door open, and I see that Ilarion is not lying unconscious on the table, bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the chest. Instead, he’s sitting up, gritting his teeth while Dr. Baranov stitches up his arm.
He looks up the moment we enter. Our eyes lock. Every internal moral conflict that’s been raging inside my head since I was brought to the Diamond fades away.
All that matters is that he’s alive.
Which is why I run at him the same way that Mila ran at Dima. Dr. Baranov wisely steps out of the way just before I throw my arms around Ilarion.
“Thank God,” I whisper. “Thank God.”
He hugs me back with his one good arm, circling my waist and drawing me as close as possible.
I always said he was the anchor tethering me to a world that’s trying to buck me off of it. One by one, my lifelines have been snipped.
I’ve lost everything else. I’ve lost everyoneelse. My father, my mother, my sister.
Ilarion Zakharov is the one person who feels invincible to me. And for a long, horrifying moment, I’d believed that the world was going to rob me of him, too.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, pressing his lips to the side of my head. “Everything is okay.”
I still don’t let go of him. I can’t. He doesn’t seem impatient about that, either. He just holds onto me as Dr. Baranov hovers in the background.
“I hope you gave as good as you got, brother,” Mila says from behind me. The relief in her voice is as obvious as my own.
He chuckles. “I did my best.”
“Mr. Zakharov, sir, I need to finish stitching you up,” Dr. Baranov interjects awkwardly.
That’s my cue to release Ilarion and let the doctor do his job. But I can’t seem to let him go. I’m probably going to regret this embarrassing display of whatever you’d call this, but for right now, holding onto him is self-preservation.
“It’s okay, Doc. Work around her,” Ilarion says. He shifts me to his left side so that Dr. Baranov can work on his injured arm.
I press my forehead to Ilarion’s neck and shut my eyes. I’m not sure how long the stitches take, but eventually, I hear Dr. Baranov shuffle away and the door clicks shut.
When we’re alone, I breathe in Ilarion’s musky scent and revel in the fact that he’s here at all. That he’s breathing. That his heart beats in time with mine, one steady thump at a time.
He’s here.
He’s mine.
He isn’t leaving.
“I’m sorry for being a baby,” I whisper after a while. “I can let go now if you want.”
The sound of Ilarion’s chuckle sends a bolt of excitement zig-zagging through my core. “I like you right here,” he reassures me. “But don’t worry,tigrionok—I won’t disappear if you let go.”
“You promise?”
