Blood for Lover, Tears for Luna

Chapter 6: Night Drawn in Red

The hood fell. Cloth brushed my cheeks and turned my breath back at me—warm, damp, close. No warning. No words. The world went from pale hospital light to a dark bag that smelled like plastic and old flowers.

A strap kissed my wrist with teeth. Another bit down on my other wrist. Metal rails groaned. A belt hauled tight across my thighs. My ankles found cuffs and could not find air. I pulled once and the bed squealed; I pulled twice and the sound shrank to a whimper. I told myself not to waste breath. I told myself to count.

One. Two. Three.

The room kept its own small rhythm. Vent hush. A steady monitor peep from somewhere behind my head. A tray clink I could not place. The air tasted like antiseptic and something sweet that did not belong in a room for healing.

I turned my face to the side. The hood moved with me. Fabric kissed my lips. My mouth dried. My tongue stuck. I tried to speak and sounded like someone at the bottom of a stairwell.

Footsteps paused near my shoulder. Soft soles. No nurse chatter. No polite knock. A gloved thumb slid beneath my chin and pressed up, tilting my head. Another hand set a square of wet against the hood where it covered my nose. Fumes bled through the weave and found my lungs like hands that knew the map.

I held my breath until my ribs shook. I lost. The first sip of air tasted like wilted petals and tin. The second loosened my thoughts. The third took the edges off the bed, the straps, my own name.

Hold on, I told the small life under my palm in my mind, because my hands could not move. Hold on. I am here. I am counting.

The night slowed. It did not vanish. It dimmed at the corners as if someone turned the switch halfway and walked away. I floated in a narrow hall between waking and not. In that thin place I felt each thing that touched me: a tourniquet biting my upper arm; a thumb tapping the inside of my elbow; the small sting of a needle fishing a vein; tape sealing plastic to skin; a cool line entering; a warm line leaving.

“Vein," a man said somewhere near my wrist. His voice was flat. “Running."

No one asked me for consent. No one said my name. The hood hummed with the sound of my own breath and made me feel like a jar with the lid on too tight. I kept counting because it was the one thing still mine.

Four. Five. Six.

The voices moved like chairs scraping the floor. Paper rustled. A machine clicked. A bag was lifted. Another was set down. Somewhere near my feet a zipper won a small fight with itself.

Bootsteps came. The boots did not belong to hospital staff. They had a certain weight, the kind men wear when they think the ground should give way first. The boots stopped by the bed. The air changed temperature at the same time, as if someone had brought the cold night inside with him and asked it to sit.

I did not turn my head. The hood did not let me. But I knew the shape of that quiet. I had lived a long time inside it. I felt him even before he spoke, the way you feel thunder a breath ahead of the sound.

Leather brushed canvas. A palm hovered near my shoulder and did not touch. Then Alpha Evans breathed out, slow and careful, the way he does when he wants a room to believe he is calm.

Another breath that was not mine answered him. It was shallow and steady, warm with thin sugar. Eve.

They were close, close enough that the bed caught a whisper of their heat. The hood kept me blind. The drugs kept me heavy. I let my jaw go slack and made my breath even. If I had to be a tool in their hands, I would be a listening one.

“She did not stir," a stranger said from the foot of the bed. “Like you ordered."

Evans did not reply. He was not a man who wasted yes on small reports. Cloth slid. Someone adjusted the line at my arm. The bag brushed the side rail and thumped once, light as a heart knocking on wood.

Eve moved closer. Her voice was low, almost a hum. “You didn't take my side today."

Silence sat for a count of two. When Evans finally spoke, he kept his tone even. “I took the only side that keeps things stable."

“You looked at her first." No heat. Just a fact Eve laid on the sheet like a thermometer.

“I looked at the patient with the baby," he said. “Eyes on what keeps the chart moving."

“The chart," she repeated. A soft laugh landed and shattered into two dull pieces. “You and your lines on paper."

“The lines on paper keep you here," he said. “We are not past the dangerous part."

The bed rails cooled under my wrists. Sweat cooled on my neck. The hood touched the tip of my nose each time I inhaled. Beneath the straps the baby turned once, small as a fish in a glass bowl. I held to the turn with the only hand I still had—my mind—and said hello, silently, again and again.

“I bled," Eve said. I heard her raise her hand and shake once; a tiny wet sound fell to the floor. “She pushed me."

“I saw the cut," Evans said. “I also saw you shoulder her while she poured boiling water." Still even. Still quiet. No scold. No pity. Only that cool fact voice he uses when he needs men to obey because the weather will not.

“You could have asked them to take her away tonight," Eve said. “You could have shown me I matter more."

“The baby matters more," he said. “Until the date."

“Always the date," she murmured. “And then?"

His pause was the size of a blink. “Then we do the rest."

Eve shifted. I heard the soft rub of her sleeve against the blanket. She stood so close I could taste her soap through the mask's damp. The sweetness in the air thickened around my teeth and made my tongue numb.

“She's nothing like she was," Eve said. “She ran today. She looked colder. She held her mouth like a line someone cut with a knife."

“She is tired," Evans said. “She will settle."

“After you settle her." Not a question.

“After we get what you need," he said. “We keep the waters calm until the cord is in my hands."

A man cleared his throat by the drip stand. “Bag's at half," he said. “Do you want both tonight?"

“Both," Evans answered. “Slow the second."

Eve's tone stayed light. “You plan this like a patrol schedule."

“I plan it like a war I intend to win," he said.

At my arm the tape pulled a little. The line sighed. My blood moved in a slow, obedient thread. I kept my breath small. I kept my face blank under the hood. Neither of them said I was shaking. Neither of them said I was awake. In their story, I lay still, silent, solved. I let them live there a little longer, because their belief, for now, was a shield better than any blanket.

“You kissed me last night," Eve said. Soft. Almost playful. “You said you'd come back after rounds."

“I came," he said.

“You left," she said, and this time I heard the girl beneath the woman, the year of illness beneath the tidy hair. “You always leave."

“You're alive," he answered, as if that word could cash every bounced promise. “I do what keeps you breathing."

“What keeps me breathing is not watching you feed her lies until she swallows them whole," Eve said. “It's watching you tell me you chose correctly."

“I did choose correctly," he said. “I chose a path with results."

“And what am I," she asked, “if not your result?"

“The reason for the math," he said. The line was cold and he did not wrap it in a smile.

The man at my wrist finished the first bag. Plastic crackled. Metal clicked. Tape lifted and found skin again. A new weight settled on the hook. My arm felt both heavy and far away, as if my bones had been set on the tray to cool and someone forgot to put them back.

Eve lowered her voice. “Tell me something I can hold. Not a plan. Not a schedule. Tell me you hate her."

Another pause. He did not fill it with the easy lie she asked for. He built a wall out of numbers instead. “I do not spend words I cannot afford," he said. “I spend time and protection. Both are already too thin."

“You stood there and watched me bleed," she said, softer. “And you didn't even flinch."

“If I had touched you then," he said, “she would have seen more than I wanted her to see."

“So you saved the show for midnight." There was a smile in it, thin as a blade. “Draw her blood where no one can walk in with a mop."

He did not argue. His silence nodded for him.

“Bag's near done," the man near the stand announced. “Pressure stays steady."

“Finish," Evans said. “No marks she will notice in the morning."

“Tourniquet lines fade by noon," the man said. “She'll think the nurse did a poor job."

A chair scraped close to my pillow. Cotton whispered. Eve sat. I felt the shape of her lean in; even without sight I knew when a person set their face near yours. The hood's fabric trembled with her breath. It smelled like mint and fear dressed up as sugar.

“She's not trembling," Eve said after a minute, almost curious. “She was crying earlier. Now she's just…quiet."

“Good," Evans said. “Quiet is safe."

Safe. The word moved through me like a stone dropped in cold water. I kept the ripple inside. I did not try to lift my hands. I did not test a strap. I did not give them anything but the smallest breath I could make and still live.

Eve stood. The bed shifted that little bit you feel even through tight belts. “Look at me," she said to him. “I want to see your face when you remember what this is for."

The hood kept me blind, but sound has its own map. I heard his boots move. I heard fabric touch fabric. I heard the dull ring of a belt buckle as he turned. For a heartbeat I thought he would come back to the bed and check my pulse. He didn't.

He went to her instead.

Their bodies met with a small sound. A soft unbuttoning of breath. No words. No performance. The kiss was real enough that it reached me through cloth and chemicals—a change in the air pressure, a silence where their mouths used to be. He did not say her name. She did not say mine. In their world, there were only two people. In mine, there were three.

Heat gathered behind my eyes. It surprised me. I had spent the day stacking cold facts. I had thought there was no fire left. But even stacked ice can crack, and under the hood tears climbed without asking and slid down along the edge where fabric met skin. They were hot. They were angry. They belonged only to me.

I did not sob. I did not choke. I let those tears move like the first melt in spring: quiet, steady, honest. They traced my cheekbones and soaked into the cloth. They wet my lips and tasted like salt and something metallic from the air. The hood drank them and went heavier by a breath.

A gloved hand brushed the back of my wrist, checking the pulse the way men check fences—quickly, with a belief that the fence will hold. I did not flinch. The monitor kept its untroubled beat. The vent kept its calm weather. The men at the stand finished their work with soft metal clicks that sounded like beads counted by a careful hand.

Eve broke the kiss first. I heard it and knew it, the small sound that is not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh, the way a person sounds when they ends a thing they were not ready to stop. Evans's exhale followed. Even. Measured. The same man who held my wrist a hundred tender mornings ago. The same man who hired a stranger to put a night in my body that did not belong to me.

“Enough," he said. Not unkind. Not kind. A line drawn on a table. “We're done here."

The hood would not let me see him turn. The straps would not let me rise. My body did not move. Only the tears did, last and last and last, until they ran out of road.

The room kept breathing. The bag on the hook sighed and settled. A zipper closed. Paper softened under a hand. Soft soles went to the door. Boots followed. The night did not end. It narrowed to a single point and waited there, bright and unbearable.

I did not make a sound. I did not call a name. I did not lift a finger.