Chapter: 35

"Wha-"

My knees buckled, and I crashed to the floor as the world around me turned black.

KIERAN'S POV

I hated this feeling-the way my world tilted every time she bled and I wasn't there to stop it.

"Sera?!" My roar echoed through the phone. "Sera, answer me!"

Nothing. Just that horrifying thud after her slurred, "I think I've been shot."

The anger I'd felt moments earlier-when Celeste called sobbing about Sera's taunts-evaporated. In its place: wildfire panic, scorching through my veins.

I was out the door before my chair hit the floor. The tracking app on my phone-the one I'd kept active post-divorce, despite every logical reason not to-led me to Griffith Park. I drove like the hounds of hell were chasing me, cursing Sera's stubbornness for moving so damn far away.

What followed was a nightmare in fragments:

Blood. So much blood, pooling beneath her as I pressed my hand to the silver bullet wound still pulsing in her chest.

Speed. The longest thirty minutes of my life, her labored breaths the only sound in my car as I ran every red light.

Waiting. Pacing the OR hallway for five fucking hours, her dried blood cracking on my knuckles.

Relief. The surgeon's words-"Grazed her heart... no fatal damage... and the surgery was a success."-nearly brought me to my knees.

Now, forehead pressed to the ICU glass, I watched the machines breathe for her. The urge to shatter the window warred with the need to fall apart.

"Her recovery now solely depends on her strength of will."

I slid to the floor instead, Sera's cut-up clothes clutched in my fists. The scent of her blood-fear, pain, copper-seared my lungs.

Again. I'd failed her again. Two attacks since our divorce. Two times I hadn't been there.

She was Daniel's mother. My responsibility, even if she wasn't my wife anymore. I should've assigned guards. Should've-

A shudder racked me. Should've done a lot of things.

An unfamiliar ringtone shattered the silence-Sera's phone, buzzing from the bag of her bloodied clothes.

I fished her phone out, and my heart dropped when I saw the caller ID. "Mom!" Daniel gasped when I answered.

I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, swallowing back a curse. "Hey, Champ," I strained out.

Daniel paused for a beat. "Dad?"

I exhaled. "Hey. How's camping going?"