The room is too quiet.

Beeping machines, soft whirring vents, the hum of fluorescent lights—background noise that tries and fails to distract from the pulsing ache in your leg. Your cast is heavy, your throat dry, your vision still foggy from anesthesia. Ava is curled in a chair with a blanket around her shoulders. Glyndon sits on the window bench, knees pulled up, staring at her bruised hands. Annika hovers at your bedside, pacing in tiny frantic circles, unable to stay still.

“She’s going to be okay,” Glyndon whispers to her. Annika doesn’t answer—just wrings her fingers harder.

Then it starts.

Not in your room.

In the hallway.

Explosive voices, the kind that make walls feel too thin. You hear a familiar roar—Gareth—cut sharp by someone else’s hissed retort. A nurse tries to intervene; someone snarls at her. Boots hit tile. Tension spills under the door like smoke.

Annika flinches. Ava freezes. Glyndon stands, spine stiff.

You already know who it is.

A moment later, the door slams open so hard the handle dents the wall.

Jeremy.

His chest rises in rapid breaths, hoodie damp from rain and sweat, eyes wide with barely leashed violence. He doesn’t even look at the others in the room—his gaze snaps straight to you, and everything else falls away.

He’s at your bedside in seconds.

“Lisichka…” His voice is hoarse, raw, trembling the way only fury and fear can mix. His hand cups your cheek, thumb brushing under your eye as if checking you’re really conscious.

You whisper his name, and something in him breaks.

He leans down, forehead dropping against yours, breath shaking. “I was two minutes away. Two. And you—” His throat locks. He can’t finish the sentence.

Before you can answer, the hallway explodes again.

“You need to back the fuck up,” Nikolai snarls.

“She’s our friend too,” Landon snaps back.

“You don’t get to claim her now,” Killian bites out. “Get out of the way.”

Annika moves to block the door, terrified. “Please—stop—”

“You Kings can’t breathe without making noise,” Vaughn adds, venom in every syllable.

Eli fires back, “At least we don’t leave our girls unprotected—”

A crash interrupts him—someone shoving someone into the wall. A nurse yells for security. Creighton curses. Gareth slides into a low, predatory growl.

It’s a full-scale powder keg waiting for a spark.

Jeremy’s jaw tightens. Without looking away from you, he calls out, voice cold, deadly, and flat:

“Everyone. Out of the hallway.”

Silence.

Then chaos.

“No,” Landon snaps. “We’re not leaving.”

“We’re not moving for you,” Gareth growls.

Killian, deceptively calm: “Then move before I move you.”

Brandon’s voice is sharp. “Try it.”

Annika looks like she’s going to faint.

Jeremy doesn’t turn. He just kisses your forehead—slow, soft, trembling—before speaking again, louder:

“I said OUT.”

This time the command hits like a whipcrack.

Because everyone knows—when Jeremy gets quiet, people bleed.

He stands slowly, and the room seems to shrink around him. He gives your hand a final squeeze before stepping toward the door.

“Stay here,” he murmurs. “I’ll handle this.”

But your fingers curl around his wrist weakly. “Don’t fight,” you whisper.

His eyes soften—just for you. “I won’t start anything.”

Then his gaze cuts toward the hallway.

“But I’ll finish it if they don’t shut up.”

He steps outside, and the second the door closes, the tension snaps—

Raised voices. Bodies shuffling. Threats sharpened like knives.

The Heathens and Elites stand off in the hallway, two warring empires separated only by a nurse’s desk and thin patience.

Inside your room, Annika sinks into a chair, whispering, “Please… please don’t let them kill each other…”

Ava squeezes her shoulder. “They won’t.”

But Glyndon’s eyes flick toward the door.

“They might.”

You sink back into the pillow, pain medication tugging your eyes closed again, and the last thing you hear is Jeremy’s voice—quiet, lethal, promising violence: “If any of you ever put her in danger again, I swear to God, King or not—I’ll end you.”

And the hallway goes dead silent.