Chapter 14
2153words
Sinclair Dominion Hospital | Private Wing | Raven’s Room
Late Morning
The first thing Kristina registered was the dull ache in her shoulder—deep, pulsing, and insistent. It pulled her from the heavy fog of unconsciousness like a tether, dragging her up through fractured dreams and silence. Her breath caught slightly as pain surged again, sharper this time, and she shifted minutely under the weight of the blankets.
For a moment, her mind was blank. Blank, but not calm. It was the blankness before reflex—the kind her training had drilled into her. Eyes closed, heartbeat steady, she listened first. No threats. Just the low hum of fluorescent lights, the mechanical click of an IV pump, and something softer: breathing. Close. Not her own.
Her eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the pale daylight spilling in through the blinds.
White ceiling. Pale walls. A window to her right. Her left arm restrained in a sling. Her right arm wrapped with a cuff, pulsing faintly—blood pressure monitor.
She blinked once, slowly. Then again.
Lucian Sinclair was sitting beside her.
“He sat in the kind of armchair that didn’t recline—close enough to reach her, but not to crowd.” His elbows rested on his knees, fingers laced together, gaze fixed directly on the wall across from him. He looked tired—not in the disheveled sense, but in the way that lingered around the eyes. Like he hadn’t slept, or couldn’t. Like he’d chosen to stay there, for hours, simply because she had not woken up.
Her voice felt like sandpaper when she finally spoke. “What time is it?”
Lucian’s eyes widened slightly at the sound. Then, a breath. Relief. “Almost noon,” he said, softly. “Tuesday.”
She tried to push herself up, winced. Her body protested more than she expected. Everything felt sore, heavy.
Lucian moved quickly, placing a hand on her uninjured shoulder—not to restrain her, but to steady. “Don’t,” he said. “You’re okay. Just… rest.”
Kristina sank back with a slow exhale, the tension leaving her limbs in cautious degrees. Her gaze drifted down. The hoodie she wore was soft. Familiar.
Black. Oversized. Not hers.
And then she noticed the faint scent of him—clean soap and cologne lingering in the fabric. It wasn’t just any hoodie.
It was his.
Her brows drew slightly together. She looked at him again.
Lucian followed her gaze, then gave a dry, almost amused shake of his head. “The guys brought it,” he said. “They were too afraid to go through your things. Said you’d kill them.”
Kristina blinked. Slowly.
Lucian continued, “Apparently, they were terrified you’d see their fingerprints on the doorknob. So they decided wearing my clothes was less dangerous than touching yours.”
A silence stretched between them, absurd and strange. And yet… oddly warm.
She didn’t smile, not quite. But something about the image—the three of them bickering outside her door—was so painfully familiar, it ached.
Lucian leaned back slightly. His expression changed. Not pity. Not discomfort. Just a flicker of wonder. “You really scared them,” he said.
“I scare everyone,” she murmured, voice low, matter-of-fact.
He nodded once. “Not me.”
That silenced her.
Her fingers flexed gently beneath the blanket. Then she asked, “How bad?”
Lucian looked at her shoulder, then back to her face. “You lost a lot of blood. Clean stab. No vitals hit. The surgeon said… you got lucky.”
Her eyes closed briefly. Then reopened. “Maxim?”
“He left this morning,” Lucian said. “Didn’t want to. But he trusts you’re in good hands.”
She turned her head slightly toward the window. The light had shifted again. Warm now, almost gold.
Her voice was quiet. “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
Lucian didn’t respond right away. Then he said, “You fought a lot of men. I don’t think there was any ‘let’ involved.”
She said nothing. Just lay there, breathing.
And for a while, that was enough.
Sinclair Dominion Hospital | Waiting Lounge
Early Afternoon
Lucian stood outside the room for a long time after Kristina had her lunch and drifted back to sleep. It wasn’t the medicated kind of sleep now—at least not entirely. She’d stayed awake for several minutes, lucid and composed, asking after Maxim, after the threat, after the damage. Still so sharp, even when her body clearly hadn’t caught up to the moment.
She had downplayed the pain. Of course she had.
He’d watched the tightness in her jaw, the way her fingers curled into the blanket whenever she shifted her weight. There was something deeply frustrating about seeing someone so capable, so indomitable, reduced to wincing through the basics of breathing and blinking. But what rattled him more was how easily she had accepted it. Not a single complaint. Not a moment of anger at herself for being injured.
Almost like she believed she deserved it.
Lucian’s hand was still on the doorframe, the faint grain of the wood smooth beneath his palm. He exhaled through his nose, quietly, and finally stepped out into the corridor.
The hallway was still and white and cold—clinical in its silence. The occasional nurse walked past with a chart, or a cart, or a phone pressed to her ear. But none of them looked his way. No one interrupted.
He turned toward the lounge at the end of the corridor. It was a small space, tucked into the corner of the private wing, mostly used for pacing parents and long-winded lawyers. Eli was sitting there now, a half-eaten sandwich abandoned on the coffee table in front of him. His headphones were in, but he wasn’t listening to music. Just staring ahead, foot tapping the floor in a quiet rhythm of nerves.
Ash and Vex were slouched on the opposite couch, both of them dozing in that exhausted way only trained operatives could—resting with their eyes closed, but still aware of every sound.
Lucian stood there a moment longer, watching them. These people who had bled for him. Killed for him. And now carried the knowledge of something much heavier than strategy or protocol.
He cleared his throat gently.
Eli looked up first, tugging out one earbud. “She’s awake?”
Lucian nodded. “Briefly. She’s resting again.”
Ash sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. “Did she say anything?”
“Asked about Maxim. About the situation. Didn’t talk much.”
Vex blinked himself into awareness. “She okay?”
Lucian hesitated. Then, “She’s alive. That’s enough for now.”
They nodded, but no one looked entirely reassured.
Eli picked up his sandwich and gave it a look of profound disappointment.
“We still bringing her anything? Soup? Tea? A newspaper she won’t read?”
Lucian let a small breath escape. “Maybe let her wake up fully before you overwhelm her with room service.”
Ash tilted her head, voice softer now. “Did she say anything about… the clothes?”
Lucian gave her a look. “She didn’t seem bothered. But you owe me a hoodie.”
Vex snorted. “Good. I was worried she’d kill you in your sleep.”
Lucian sat down across from them.“Apparently, I’m the only one she won’t maim for touching her space. First rule, right?”
Ash nodded solemnly. “No hurting the boss.”
“But,” Vex added, raising a finger, “loopholes exist.”
Lucian let them have their banter. The truth was—he was grateful for it. Grateful for the ease they brought with them, the familiarity that wrapped around their edges like armor. They didn’t know what came next. Neither did he. But in this quiet hour, for the first time in what felt like days, the air didn’t feel like it was pressing down on him.
It just… existed.
Like they all did. Together.
Late Afternoon
The rain had finally stopped.
The light beyond the blinds had dulled to amber, casting slow-moving shadows across the room’s floor. It was the kind of quiet Lucian never trusted—too still, too weighted. Kristina lay propped up against a mound of pillows, awake now, her expression unreadable, eyes half-closed as if she were still somewhere between pain and clarity.
Lucian had been sitting there for minutes without speaking. Not because he didn’t know what to say—but because too many things wanted to be said first.
She looked at him then. A flicker of attention. The smallest acknowledgment.
“How’s the shoulder?” he asked quietly.
Kristina’s lips twitched in something like a smile, but it faded too fast to be real. “Feels like I got stabbed.”
She answered lightly, but it was muscle memory—not denial, not bravado. Pain was something she folded, labeled, and stored somewhere quiet.
Lucian let out a low breath—more exhale than laugh, “Sounds about right.”
She let out a soft, almost tired breath, and glanced toward the window. “Not the worst pain I’ve had.”
Lucian leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Why didn’t you say anything? About who you are. About everything. I just found out you're Black Harrow. Now, I also found out you're Kristina.”
The question lingered. Her gaze stayed fixed on something beyond the glass—like the truth lived out there, in the clouds and fog, where it wouldn’t make a mess of the room.
Inside, everything still felt too fragile. Too exposed.
What she wanted to say didn’t have words sharp enough to carry it. The weight in her chest wasn’t regret exactly—it was something knotted, tangled with fear and something else she didn’t dare name.
She had lived her life by rules, by silence. She’d made peace with being a weapon, not a person. But then Lucian had looked at her like she was both.
That had undone something she didn’t know how to rebuild.
“Would it have changed anything?” she asked finally.
Lucian didn’t flinch. “It changes everything now.”
Her eyes shifted toward him. “Because now I’m not Raven anymore. Now I’m Black Harrow. Kristina Alonzo. Take your pick.”
“No,” he said. “Now you’re not a role. You’re not a weapon. You’re a person. And I think you’ve been carrying all of that alone for too damn long.”
That landed. She didn’t respond right away, but something in her posture stiffened—just for a second.
Then, quietly: “I made the call, Lucian.”
He tilted his head. “What call?”
Lucian’s voice was low. “Why do you always put yourself in the line first?”
Kristina didn’t look at him. “It’s part of the job.”
“Getting stabbed isn’t part of the job,” he said. “You could’ve held back. Let someone else take point.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then, calmly, “That’s not how it works.”
“It could’ve been,” he pressed.
She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh. “I knew the risks.”
“But you took them anyway.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the blanket. “I made a choice. That’s all.”
Lucian watched her for a beat, eyes narrowing—not in anger, but in quiet realization. “You always make that choice. Even when it costs you.”
“That’s my job, Lucian,” Kristina said quietly—without edge, without deflection. Just truth. Simple, steady, and maybe a little tired.
Lucian’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look away. He let the silence stretch, like he was bracing for an answer he wasn’t sure he wanted. Then, quietly—almost like he couldn’t help it—he asked, “Was I ever just a job?”
She hesitated, eyes steady but unreadable. Her fingers fidgeted at the edge of the blanket, pressing into the folds like she could write something there instead of saying it out loud.
“You were the assignment,” she said eventually. “At first.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. “But not now?”
Kristina closed her eyes, her voice quiet when it returned. “There were things I wasn’t supposed to feel. Lines I wasn’t supposed to cross.”
“But you did,” Lucian said softly.
“I don’t know what I did,” she replied, breath unsteady. “I just know I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
For a long moment, she said nothing. The silence pressed in, filled with everything she couldn’t name. She had trained herself to calculate, to compartmentalize, to move through the world like feeling nothing was power. And it had been—until now. Until him. Something had shifted along the way, quietly, insistently. She hadn’t meant to care. But somewhere between their battles and the silences they shared, she had. And now, stripped of everything else, she felt it like a fault line beneath her ribs. "I should’ve stayed invisible," she whispered, as if to herself. "It would’ve been easier."
Lucian didn’t speak. Not yet. He could feel the weight of the moment—its rawness, its hesitation. He could push, but he didn’t. Instead, he let the silence settle like dust on glass.
And in that stillness, Kristina finally looked at him—not as a soldier or a myth, but as herself.
Not lovers. Not even friends. Not yet.
Just two people sitting in the wreckage of half-truths and near-misses, trying to figure out what still made sense.
And for the first time since the storm began, neither of them looked away.
The truth had changed everything—
but not enough to break the silence between them.
—To be continued.
