Chapter 4
Why was Alistair getting weaker every time Ronan survived?
Ronan shook his head, chasing away the ridiculous, nonsensical thought. *It's just the stress,* he told himself, checking the heavy revolver at his hip. *The Morvath scum are pushing him to the brink, and his heart can't take the fear.*
Ronan cracked his knuckles in the dark, his jaw hardening with absolute, lethal resolve.
*Let them come,* he thought fiercely. *Let the whole syndicate come. I'll take every bullet in this city before I let them break his heart.*
The manor did not sleep, and neither did Ronan.
By two in the morning, the rain had settled into a sullen, rhythmic drumming against the high leaded-glass windows of the third-floor gallery. Ronan paced the perimeter of the western wing with soft, deliberate tread, combat boots silent against the dark parquet floors. The heavy service revolver rested in the leather shoulder holster under his arm, comfortable and familiar, but his mind refused to settle.
Every shadow looked like a threat, and every draft carried the ghost of gunpowder.
He paused outside Alistair’s double doors.
The lock had clicked shut three hours ago, but the silence from within felt heavy, suffocating. Ronan leaned his forehead against the cool mahogany paneling, listening. For several long minutes, there was nothing—only the faint hiss of the radiator and the ticking of an antique grandfather clock at the end of the hall.
Then came the sharp rattle of glass, followed by a low, stifled gasp that made Ronan’s stomach drop straight through his boots.
He didn't knock. He didn't ask for permission. He slipped his master key into the brass cylinder, turned it with a clean, practiced twist, and pushed the door open.
The suite was dim, illuminated only by the dying embers of the stone hearth. Heavy velvet drapes sealed out the storm, trapping the air inside—air that was thick, suffocatingly warm, and drenched in the familiar scents of expensive cedarwood, bergamot pomade, and lavender.
Yet underneath it all, cutting through the perfume like a serrated blade, was that same unmistakable, metallic reek.
*Copper. Fresh and old.*
Dr. Julian had already left, his silver cart nowhere to be seen. But the heavy walnut desk near the window had been converted into an impromptu triage station.
Ronan crossed the room with soundless strides, his jaw set in a hard line. He wasn't supposed to pry into the lord's private quarters, but protocol was a luxury for bodyguards whose masters weren't coughing themselves to death behind locked doors.
On the corner of the desk sat an open leather satchel belonging to the family physician. Ronan looked down.
Among the polished amber tincture bottles and dried horehound lozenges sat three glass ampoules of synthetic coagulant—military-grade Hemastat, the kind issued exclusively to combat field medics to staunch catastrophic arterial hemorrhages. Two of the ampoules were empty, their rubber seals punctured by a wide-gauge needle. Beside them lay a silver kidney dish piled with thick gauze compresses, soaked through with rusted, drying crimson.
Ronan stared at the bloody compresses, his brows drawing tight.
Bronchitis produced phlegm, sometimes laced with threads of red from an irritated trachea. It did not require four rolls of sterile pressure bandage and heavy-duty clotting agents designed to stop blast shrapnel from emptying a man's circulatory system onto the dirt.
*Why would Julian keep combat coagulants in an aristocrat’s private study?*
A faint rustle from the canopy bed broke his trance.
Ronan turned quickly. Alistair was lying on his side atop the heavy down quilt, still fully dressed in his charcoal trousers and a crisp, white linen shirt. The shirt, however, was done up to the very highest button, the collar stiff and tight around his throat despite the stifling heat of the room.
His master looked impossibly young in sleep—and impossibly frail.
Alistair’s dark hair was damp with sweat, clinging to his pale forehead. His long, dark lashes rested against hollow cheeks that bore no color at all, making the delicate bridge of his nose and the sharp line of his jaw look as brittle as fine porcelain. Even in sleep, his brow was knit in a faint, agonizing wince, his slender hands curled tightly against his own ribs as if trying to hold his chest together.
Ronan approached the bed, his footsteps slowing until he barely displaced the air.
He looked down at the sleeping nobleman, a fierce, suffocating ache flaring in his chest. In the daylight, Alistair Vance was a fortress of aristocratic reserve, commanding shipping empires and turning back corrupt politicians with a single, cutting glance. But here, stripped of his sharp tailoring and cold glances, Alistair looked like something that could be broken by a careless gust of wind.
Ronan sank onto one knee beside the bed, his broad frame dwarfing the low velvet stool.
He didn't touch him—not yet. He just watched the ragged, shallow rise and fall of Alistair's chest. Every breath sounded like paper being torn in the dark.
"What are you hiding from me, Alistair?" Ronan whispered into the shadows. "Who's hurting you?"
Alistair shifted, a quiet whimper escaping his pale lips. His dark lashes fluttered, and slowly, heavily, his gray eyes opened.
For a second, they were completely unfocused, clouded with a haze of fever and pain. But as they landed on Ronan's face, the storm in Alistair's eyes cleared, replaced by a sudden, breathtaking softness that made Ronan's throat close up entirely.
"Ronan..." Alistair murmured, his voice slurred with exhaustion. "You're... still here."
"Told you I wouldn't leave," Ronan said softly, unable to stop himself from reaching out. His large, rough fingers brushed against Alistair's temple, gently pushing a lock of sweat-damp hair away from his forehead.
Alistair didn't flinch away. In fact, he leaned slightly into the touch, closing his eyes again with an involuntary, shuddering sigh. The skin of his forehead was clammy and burning hot.
"You should be resting," Alistair breathed, his words barely louder than the rain outside. "You took... a heavy impact tonight. The shock... it lingers in the bone."
Ronan let out a low, breathy huff of laughter, his thumb tracing the sharp curve of Alistair's cheekbone.
"I took a lead slug to the ribs, sweetheart, and I feel like I could run five miles uphill," Ronan murmured, dropping his voice into that dangerous, intimate register that crossed every professional boundary between master and servant. "You're the one burning up with a fever. You're the one who looks like you got dragged through the gravel."
Alistair's eyes opened again at the endearment. There was no anger in them, no aristocratic reprimand. Only an ocean of sorrow so bottomless it terrified Ronan.
"You are so stupidly strong," Alistair whispered, his lips curving into a faint, bitter semblance of a smile. "So impossibly, recklessly whole."
"That's why you pay me the big checks."
Alistair reached down, his slender, cool fingers finding Ronan’s calloused hand where it rested against the silk sheets. He laced their fingers together—a slow, deliberate intertwining that sent a wave of electric heat straight down Ronan's spine.
Ronan stopped breathing.
Alistair had touched him before—dressing a wound, straightening a tie, shoving him out of the path of a falling chandelier—but never like this. This wasn't an order or a tactical reflex. This was the raw, desperate touch of a man reaching across an abyss.
