When My Adoptive Sister Came Back

Beep. Beep. Beep. I woke to a gray ceiling, the sting of antiseptic, and tape tight on my arm. The sound told me where I was before my eyes did. Hospital. I did not ask why. I remembered. Last night. Rain stitched silver lines across the road as I left the packhouse. I took Cedar Alley out of habit—faster than the long walk around, a straight cut between two old warehouses. One end was pinched by a sagging chain‑link fence; the other opened to the street where a dead lamp turned the dark into a smudge. I told myself I was fine. Seven minutes to the door. Eight if the light fought me. Fear does not get to own my routes, I had said before. I said it again. A bottle rolled and settled. Wet cardboard, old beer, the thin metal tang that rides rain—those were the smells. My hood funneled sound. My steps felt too loud. I did not look back when a shoe scraped behind me. I kept walking, chin tucked, hands deep in my coat. The cold inside my sleeves did not come from weather. Hands grabbed me from the dark. One clamped my mouth. Another wrenched my arm up hard behind my back until my shoulder burned. My phone jumped from my hand and slid, face down, toward the drain. They pulled me deeper into the alley, away from the street and the chance that anyone's eyes might land on me at the right second. There were three. Maybe four. I did not see faces, only hoods, coats, the bulk of shoulders, the pale flash of knuckles. The smell of them was smoke and sweat and the sweet reek of cheap liquor. I didn't have to see more to know the word for them. Rogues. Men pushed out of the pines after the clear‑cut. Men who held onto anger like it could heat their hands. They could not touch the Alpha who ordered it. They could touch his wife. They slammed me into the wall. Brick bit through my coat. A forearm pressed across my throat. Fingers locked both my wrists high over my head. My heels slipped on wet concrete and scraped for purchase that wasn't there. The alley shrank to breath, weight, and the slow, mean patience of men who thought bodies were debts that could be collected in dim places. “Don't," I said when the hand at my mouth shifted for air. The word came out thin. I hated it the second I heard it. The arm at my throat pressed harder. Spots freckled my vision. A hand fumbled at my waistband, clumsy and fast. Panic climbed my ribs and tried to take my voice with it. I fought it the only ways left: I drove my knee into a shin. I stamped at boots I could not see. I slammed the back of my head at the space where heat grazed my cheek and felt the jolt of bone against bone. Someone hissed a curse. Another hand yanked my hair and snapped my head aside. Tears came without my permission. My wrists burned where fingers ground them into damp brick. I tried to count breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Keep your head, the self‑defense instructor had said on the mats at the packhouse. Use what you have. Knees. Feet. Head. Anything that moves. Words that had been clean in a bright room turned soft at the corners out here. Pain ripped low across my belly, not from a blow, but from inside—like fabric tearing. Heat flooded between my legs, sudden and slick. For a heartbeat I did not understand. Then I did. My body told me the truth in a voice without ornament: bleeding. “I'm pregnant," I said. The words tore out raw. “Stop." Everything held. One breath. Two. The forearm lifted from my throat. Fingers slipped from my wrists. Coats brushed mine as they backed away, steps quick and unsure now. A mutter about old laws. A spit‑out curse about curses. Then their shapes thinned into the dark and were gone, taking their smell with them, leaving rain and the thin, tin sound of my breathing. I slid down the wall. My knees hit cold concrete. The shock of it ran up my bones. I pressed both hands to my lower stomach and came away warm. It felt wrong that heat could still exist in a place like that. My phone lay by the drain, face down, blue case shining under a skin of water. I crawled to it, palms slipping. My legs shook like I had run for miles. I wiped the screen on my coat. A hairline crack spidered across the glass, but the screen woke anyway. Thank God. I called Jacob. It rang and rang. Voicemail. I hung up and called again. The call cut at once. I called a third time. “What," he said when the line opened. Not a question. A complaint. “Jacob," I whispered. It wasn't drama; it was the size of the air I had left. “I'm hurt. Cedar Alley. I'm bleeding. Please." “Not now," he said, lower, like he'd turned his head from someone near him. A door hissed and shut. Sound opened up around him the way it does in places with high ceilings and bright floors. “I'm busy." “Please," I said. “I need—" A woman's voice threaded through his line, warm and close, the kind that makes a man soften without meaning to. “Who is it, Jacob?" she asked. I knew that voice the way you know your own step on the stairs. I did not need to see her to see her. Camila. I held the phone, rain ticking on the screen, breath scraping my throat, hands still pressed to the place that hurt. The alley leaned. Somewhere, a car horn blew twice and moved on. Jacob said nothing. I said nothing. The call went silent. I do not remember the sirens, only that they must have come because I woke to beeping and a gray ceiling and the taste of metal in my mouth. But the important part of last night stops here, with a phone in my hand, a voice in my ear, and a name I recognized without hearing his answer. Time stretched to a thin wire. I could hear everything: water ticking from a bent gutter, a loose sign squealing on its nail, my own pulse drumming in my ears like a small, stubborn fist. I pressed harder on my belly, bargaining with a body that would not bargain back. Stay, I thought, though I didn't say it out loud, because speaking had become work and I had very little left for work. On the other end of the line I heard the soft wheel‑whirr of a trolley, a burst of laughter far away, the flat chime that tells strangers when to board. The sounds rose and fell around his breath. I imagined the angle of his jaw when he listens without wanting to listen, the way he looks past people when he has already decided what matters. I did not picture her face. I didn't need to. The voice was enough. “Who is it, Jacob?" she asked again, like a hand placed on his sleeve. I swallowed the copper taste in my mouth and waited for him to say my name.