Fight With Me

Chapter 35

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Chapter — If You Hurt, I Bleed

Josie's POV

It starts with sound.

Not loud. Not sharp.

Just... wrong.

Hope is sitting beside me on the bed, back against the headboard, arm wrapped around my shoulders like she's been holding me there for hours. Maybe she has. Time doesn't feel reliable anymore.

The room smells like lavender and old books and her.

Safe.

Then I hear screaming.

I freeze.

My heart lurches, panic rising fast and irrational. "Hope?"

She looks down at me immediately. "What?"

"You don't hear that?"

Her brow furrows. "Hear what, love?"

The scream comes again, closer this time. Female. Raw. Terrified.

My hands start to shake.

I push up, chest tight. "Someone's hurt."

Hope's arm tightens instantly. "Josie. Look at me."

I try.

The walls ripple.

Blood smears across the floor in my peripheral vision, dark and wet and wrong, and my stomach drops violently.

"I can smell it," I whisper. "I can smell—"

The pain hits like a hammer.

Not mine.

Hers.

Hope gasps sharply, hand flying to her side like she's been stabbed.

I scream.

Because I feel it too, a deep, tearing ache under my ribs, sudden and vicious, stealing my breath.

We collapse together.

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Hope's POV

It feels like being split open from the inside.

One second I'm holding her, the next my vision goes white-hot and I'm choking on pain that doesn't belong to any wound I can see.

"Josie—" I rasp.

She's curled into me, nails digging into my arm, sobbing like she's breaking in half.

"I didn't do anything," she cries. "I swear, I didn't—"

"I know," I say immediately, fiercely, pulling her closer even as my body shakes. "I know."

The pain ebbs the second I touch her bare skin.

Not gone.

Muted.

Like the bond is saying closer.

My jaw tightens.

Freya appears in the doorway, eyes sharp and calculating. "What just happened?"

Josie doesn't answer. She's shaking too hard.

I look up slowly, eyes glowing faint gold. "You tell me."

Freya steps closer , too close.

Josie whimpers, fingers twisting in my shirt, and nausea rolls through me so hard I almost gag.

"No," I growl. "Back up."

Freya stops.

The pain surges again, sharper this time, echoing between us like feedback.