A smile almost manages to catch on my lips, but then I remember I have to actually take my cup out and the bleeding starts all over again. There are a few clots, but nothing unusual. If the hospital hadn’t told me my blood tests showed that I was pregnant, I might not realize this was a miscarriage at all.

Aaron comes back shortly, placing the pills on my tongue and sweeping some wet hair back from my face. He leaves a reusable menstrual cup and some fresh clothes on the counter, so that when I reluctantly drag myself out a few minutes later, I have something clean and blood-free to put on.

With my new cup in place—a much heavier duty one this time—and a thick pad on my panties, I mop up the water on the floor with my foot on a crumpled towel, fluff my red-tinged blond hair with my fingers, and ready myself for what I hope isn’t another fruitless search of the city.

I’m not two steps out of the door before someone is wrapping their hand across my lips, reeking of blood and smelling like wet copper.

A captive shout claws its way up my throat, but my instincts are even sharper, faster. I go to slam an elbow back into the gut of whoever this is and find myself surprised when they block my move. Underneath the metallic scent of pain, there’s the familiar murmur of fresh cotton sheets, hung on the line to dry on an easy summer afternoon. Talc. Aftershave. Callum.

“Please don’t scream,” he rasps against my ear, licking the shell of it with a hot tongue. “Help me come down first.” He removes his hand from my mouth as I whirl around to face him, filled with an odd mixture of relief and ire that smells an awful lot like fear.

He’s standing in the shadows of the upstairs landing, hood up, covered in blood. There’s something off about the pale line of his throat. That ire inside of me very quickly reveals itself for what it is: terror.

Cal glances down at his right hand and flexes bloodied fingers, like he’s surprised he’s still alive.

“Where the fuck have you been?!” I choke out, my own hands shaking at my sides. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

“I passed out,” he says, pauses, thinks for a minute. “Yeah, I passed out. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember where I was.” He touches his hand to his throat and then cringes slightly, pulling his hand away and staring at it like he isn’t sure where all the extra blood is coming from. “The city is crawling with cops; I barely made it back.”

“I was losing my fucking mind,” I whisper, wondering how long it might take the other boys to realize there’s an ‘intruder’ in the house.

The sound of a hammer being pulled back precedes the lights flicking on. Guess that answers my question.

Victor is standing at the top of the stairs. He takes note of the fact that our mystery newcomer is Callum, and then lowers the gun without apology.

“Glad to see you’re still alive,” Vic says, and even if the words themselves are placid and neutral, there’s a warmth in his tone that tells me definitively that Victor Channing loves his boys as much as I do. He might not want to fuck them—come on, no way that guy is into dick; he’s too basic—but he loves them just the same. “Want to tell me about it?”

“I need you to go,” Callum says, and there’s something in his tone that’s stretched out and terrifying. My body responds to that ice with an inappropriate level of heat. It fills me from head to toe, makes my breath hitch, my thighs clench. I curl my hands into fists, my nails ragged and digging painfully into my palms.

Just like Pamela used to do, leave bloody crescents in her wake.

I blink her away as I look between the two men. Both are my soul mates. I’ve recognized this recently, that the soul in all of its eternal beauty couldn’t possibly be so limited as to having only one perfect match. I have five of them. Five letters, one word, one desperate family that I’d do anything to keep.

Even give my own life.

A shudder ripples through me, and I close my eyes.

In all of this, in all the jokes and the foreshadowing and the fear … the one who has always been most likely to die is … me.

After all, nobody gets this lucky this often. Aaron, alive. Callum, alive. Somebody has to fucking pay for that good karma.

I open my eyes and step forward, putting my hand on Callum’s chest. His hoodie is wet with blood, almost soggy. I don’t like that, the way it feels cold when I touch it. When I look back, Victor is watching us with an inscrutable expression. Every time we meet, and every time we part, the universe shifts a little. I know, because I can feel it. We are all the centers of our own realities except … maybe Havoc is the center of mine.

Vic tucks the gun in his waistband and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Beautifully predictable. It takes nicotine to curtail his possessive urges toward me. I like that, knowing there’s nothing in the world but tobacco and my unyielding stare that can get him to turn away.

“You’re not going to hurt her?” he asks, which is an interesting question. It’s because Victor’s seen this side of Callum before that he even thinks to wonder that, and I’m not entirely certain that I have. When I glance back, Cal’s looking down at his hands again and a gasp is tearing from my lips.

It looks like somebody attempted to slit his throat.

“Do you really need to ask me that?” Cal asks, looking up from his bloodied hands and then cocking his head to one side. Like a dog. Like a wolf. His blue eyes are empty and endless, terrifying when they drop to me and I see every ounce of focus that he possesses plunged into me like a knife.

To get rid of Callum, I’d have to kill him. He’d sit still and let me do it, open his throat with a blade. But that would be the only way, to put him in an early grave.

“No,” Cal says finally, body sagging. He puts a hand out and catches himself against the wall as I cling to him and do my best to provide support. “I would never hurt Bernadette. You know that.”

Victor lights up his smoke, his eyes finding mine. And how is my body reacting to all of this stress? In the most inappropriate and ridiculous way possible. I exhale sharply and turn back to Callum, listening as Vic’s heavy footsteps carry him back down the stairs again.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” I say, but Callum is already shaking his head.

“No doctors. I won’t be separated from you right now.” He takes my hands in his, trembling so hard that I wonder if he isn’t going to pass out on me right here in the hallway. His blue eyes blaze with a desperate need to stay awake. “Go get Oscar’s medical kit, some orange juice, and the leftover saline bags from when Aaron was shot.”

Cal looks me so deeply in the face that I swear I can feel his soul brush up against me, like a cat marking its masters ankles. My fingers curl around his hands and I lift up on my tiptoes, pressing our foreheads together briefly before I turn and flee down the stairs as fast I can.

“Callum needs a doctor,” I say to the boys as soon as I hit the bottom floor and find Hael pacing, Vic smoking a joint, and Aaron watching me with a tenderness that my parched soul needs so badly that it seems to hurt. “Or Nurse Yes-Scott.”

“Nurse Yes-Scott is dead,” Oscar says, his voice a Lucullan feast for the ears. Whitney was shot? I wonder, thinking of the blood strewn linoleum and the metal lockers decorated with crimson. Where was she when the GMP stormed the building? Did she suffer? I shake my head to clear it. “How bad is he?”