Chapter 5

Elena POV:

Exhausted and numb, I sank into the back of the Maybach. Killian and Dallas sat in the front, their whispered conversation a dull hum I couldn't bring myself to process. I felt invisible, a ghost in the backseat of my own life.

I replayed every instance of Dallas's cruelty, every single torment Killian had dismissed as a misunderstanding or a harmless prank. He had never seen it. He had never wanted to see it.

The world outside was a blur of city lights until a sudden, blinding glare filled the car. A large truck, its horn blaring, slammed into the passenger side of the Maybach with a deafening shriek of twisting metal.

The car crumpled like a tin can. Airbags deployed with a violent hiss. My head snapped back against the headrest, and the side window shattered, showering my face in shards.

I felt a warm trickle of blood trace a path from a cut on my forehead.

Killian's first and only instinct was to protect Dallas. He threw his body over hers, shielding her from the impact, frantically checking her for injuries. He didn't so much as glance into the rearview mirror.

He wrenched his door open and pulled a whimpering Dallas from the wreckage, shouting for medics, his entire focus on her.

My vision blurred. My head was pounding, and a thick knot of shock and grief in my throat kept me from calling out his name.

Through the shattered window, I watched him carry Dallas toward the flashing lights of an ambulance without a single backward glance, without a single thought for me.

Before the darkness pulled me under, I remembered a promise he'd made on a starry night years ago, his lips against my ear.

"No matter what happens, Elena. I will always choose you."

I woke up in a sterile white hospital room. The air was thick with a cloyingly sweet scent. The room was filled with peonies, massive bouquets of them on every surface.

A flower I am violently allergic to.

A fact he once knew as well as he knew his own name.