{ Avina }
I uncapped the bottle, and the sharp, acrid scent of peroxide filled the room. Elijah lay motionless, his chest barely rising with each shallow breath. The wounds gaped open, angry and raw, refusing to close. This was going to hurt. Even unconscious, his body would react.
“Hold him down,” I said quietly, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands.
The healers exchanged glances. Hesitation. Doubt. I could see it in their eyes—the question of whether they should take orders from this bloodstained woman who’d crashed into their world uninvited. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I froze for a fraction of a second, then pulled it out. The screen lit up with a cascade of notifications—five missed calls from Mom, and text messages stacked on top of each other, each one more frantic t
