It wasn’t just one shot. There were several, one after another in quick succession, and I couldn’t tell what was happening beyond the door. I didn’t want Sergio to get hurt because of me — but I couldn’t protect anyone, least of all myself. Every wave of pain that tore through me was worse than the last, each one arriving before I had recovered from the one before it, and I threw every last bit of strength I had into pushing. After a few attempts, there was nothing left. I was hollow, barely present in my own body.

It hurts so much. I’m so tired.

Something warm and sticky pooled beneath me, and I couldn’t tell anymore whether it was amniotic fluid or blood. The elderly woman had slipped away the moment the shooting started. I didn’t blame her — on this island, gunfire wasn’t unusual, and survival came before everything else. No one was going to risk their life for a stranger’s delivery. I understood it completely. And still, I felt my life thinning out with every second that passed, like something being slowly drawn from an open wound.

I can die. My children cannot.

If no one was coming, then I would do this myself. I reached down and gripped the edge of the bed frame until my knuckles went white, and I pushed — not because I had strength, because I had none, but because I thought of them, and that gave me something too raw and fierce to name.

I haven’t given up. So neither can you. Daddy is almost here. You have to live. You have to.

When I looked down, I saw bright red spreading beneath me across the sheets.

I was hemorrhaging. I recognized it with a cold, clinical clarity, and immediately pushed the knowledge aside. There was only one thing left in the world — get them out. Whatever it cost me.

"Elena, hold on! Two more minutes!" Lewis’s voice came through the communicator, raw and barely controlled, the panic bleeding through every word. I could feel his desperation even through the static — the helplessness of a man who would move the earth if he could but couldn’t close the distance fast enough, couldn’t make his body cover the ground between us any quicker than it already was. I wanted to answer him properly. Even forming words had become an enormous effort. My whole body was soaked through, hair plastered to my face, every muscle past the point of exhaustion.

I had nothing left. A part of me — quiet, distant, almost peaceful — wanted to stop.

"Elena! Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

His voice pulled me back from the edge of it. "I’m... not doing well," I whispered.

I kept pushing, summoning one last effort from somewhere I couldn’t locate or name, and even as I did, I began to prepare myself for the other possibility. The one I hadn’t let myself look at directly until now. "Carl — if something happens to me, and you can only save one of us... save them."

"No." His voice came back hard and immediate, no space in it for negotiation. "I can accept anything else. I would give up everything else. But I will not give up on you."

I gripped the bed frame and pushed again, sweat falling from me in waves. "Carl, please — just promise me. I only want the babies to live. That’s all I need."

Riley broke through, her voice thick with tears she wasn’t trying to hide. "Elena, stop it — you’re going to be fine, all three of you! You are not allowed to give up, do you hear me?"

"I’m only saying if... if I really can’t make it." My vision was blurring at the edges, the room going soft and uncertain. I couldn’t tell anymore whether it was sweat or tears on my face, only that the sheets beneath me were completely soaked and the warmth was spreading further. "Carl. I’ve tried my best. I want you to know that."

"I know, Elena. I know you have." A pause, and something shifted in his voice — desperate, searching. "Can you hear the rotors?"

I strained to listen through the noise and the pain and the blood rushing in my ears. Faint. Distant. Real or imagined, I couldn’t tell — but something in the sound of it reached through the haze and found me.

And then — without warning — it all came back.

Everything.

Ten years of memories broke open inside me at once, like a dam giving way all at once, unstoppable. Lewis. Our bond. Every moment I had lost came flooding home in a rush so overwhelming I couldn’t breathe through it — his face, his voice, the way he looked at me like I was the only fixed point in his world. Every piece of us that had been taken returned in a single, devastating wave.

How did I ever forget him?

"Carl." My voice was barely sound, barely air. "We finally have our babies. But I don’t think I can hold on. I’ve lost so much blood. I’m so tired. I feel like I’m—"

"Don’t sleep! Elena, I’m here. I’m right here. Just a little longer — please. Please."

His voice was shaking, the composure he always carried finally fracturing under the weight of it. "You promised me eight pups. If you leave now, what am I supposed to do without you? You and the babies are going to be fine. Don’t close your eyes."

Alright. I won’t close them. I’ll wait for you.

But I was so far gone, too emptied even to speak the words aloud. Through the haze and the dust and the pale morning light pouring in through the gaps in the walls, I thought I saw a shape moving toward me. A figure coming through the brightness, slow and deliberate.

Carl? Is that you?

I couldn’t blink. I was too afraid to miss him if it was.

The figure came closer. Dark clothes. A gun held at his side.

Not Lewis.

His eyes dropped to the space between my legs and went completely still — he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t expected to walk into a delivery, and for one moment his face held nothing but pure shock. But then his expression sharpened into something purposeful, and I understood immediately and completely why he was here.

My children.

Something rose in me — not strength, I had no strength left, but something older and more fundamental than strength, something that doesn’t require a body to function. A sound split the air — sharp, piercing, furious and alive.

They’re born. My babies are born.

I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t lift a hand or reach for anything. I could only lie there, completely emptied, as the man’s face lit with something terrible and he began moving toward them with quiet certainty.

"Don’t touch my children." The words came out as barely a whisper, thread-thin, but I meant them with everything I had ever been.

He didn’t even look at me. He kept walking.

A gunshot rang out — deafening, final, filling the small room completely.

The bullet took him clean through the back of the skull. He dropped, blood catching the morning light as it fell across the floor.

And behind him, running, chest heaving, eyes finding mine across the wreckage of everything —

"Elena!"