Aloe's POV
The first thing I noticed was the smell—antiseptic and vanilla, too clean, too familiar. It pulled me from the fog of sleep like fingers dragging me to the surface of dark water. My eyelids felt heavy, weighted down with lead, but I forced them open anyway.
White ceiling. White walls. The faint beeping of machines I couldn't see.
This wasn't the hut.
Memory came back in fragments—Blake leaving to get firewood, the dying fire, the rain drumming against the roof. Then... nothing. A blank space where something important should be.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt disconnected, sluggish. My arms moved like they were underwater, and there was something wrong with my mouth. Cotton-dry, metallic aftertaste. Sedated. The realization hit me with crystal clarity even as my thought
