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After spending the past half hour talking Aurora and the rest of the cult down from the edge of a downtown rooftop, Angela should have felt relief. The city had survived and those kids hadn’t jumped to their deaths. The missile alert had been false. She didn’t dare relax though with the anxiety settled deep in her stomach as she prayed Wesley was okay.
The shop roared through the streets of Los Angeles with its lights flashing red and blue against the darkened windows of abandoned storefronts. The city was a nightmare today. Some stores had clearly been broken into by the shattered glass and missing items from the window fronts. Traffic was still packed bumper to bumper from the panic evacuation, but now the flow had reversed. Everyone was trying to get back home at once, thousands of frightened people flooding the streets after believing for nearly forty minutes that they were about to die.
Car horns blared constantly around them. Drivers leaned out windows screaming curses as Angela forced her way through intersections, the siren wailing aggressively enough to rattle in her teeth. Neon signs reflected across the windshield in smeared streaks of color. Somewhere nearby, helicopters still circled overhead, the rhythmic chopping of blades blending into the chaos of the city.
Beside her, Jackson held tightly to the handle above the passenger door every time she cut around another stalled vehicle. Angela barely noticed when all she could think about was the courthouse and Wesley.
No one had heard from anybody inside since the missile alert started. Radios had gone dead and phone calls went unanswered. The courthouse had effectively become a black hole in the middle of the city, and every second of silence had wound tighter around her chest until breathing itself felt difficult.
Wesley had been there. The thought repeated over and over in her mind like a bruise she couldn’t stop pressing. He’d been there with Nolan. Sitting through some routine hearing only a few hours ago, probably annoyed about missing lunch again or teasing her afterward for forgetting to answer one of his texts. Something painfully normal. Something that now felt impossibly far away from this day. Then when the alert came through they had to rush to the bunker buried beneath the building.
They’d been together six months, and Angela still didn’t know. That was the worst part of soulmates. It wasn’t the pain itself. Angela had been tough since she was a kid and the pain didn’t bother her. Not to mention it had been normalized for most people. As children they learned to live with scraped knees that didn’t belong to them, headaches with no direct cause, stings in their wrists that disappeared before they even processed them. People joked about it growing up. Entire conversations revolved around mystery bruises and phantom soreness. Angela remembered turning the minor cuts and bruises that appeared on her and her friends from elementary school into a guessing game. They’d make up stories about what their soulmate did to cause it. It would always be silly things like spy school or saving a puppy.
Either way, most soulmate connections stayed background noise until something catastrophic happened. That’s how people knew. A serious injury like a broken bone or a car accident. The pain would be so intense and immediate that two people felt it simultaneously no matter what they were in the world. Sometimes this tragedy didn’t happen until one of them was on death’s door.
Angela had seen it happen before. A cadet she went to the academy withhad collapsed screaming during firearms training because somewhere across the city his soulmate had been stabbed in a robbery. Another officer she knew had realized her soulmate connection after taking a bullet to the shoulder. Her husband had gone down in a grocery store aisle three miles away clutching the exact same spot.
Soulmate stories always sounded romantic afterward. Nobody talked enough about the fear beforehand, because until that moment came, you never really knew. Angela herself didn’t quite understand yet.
She wanted Wesley to be hers. God, she wanted that more than she’d let herself admit out loud. Somewhere between late-night takeout in his apartment and the way he always reached for her hand without thinking, Wesley had become terrifyingly important to her. He made her softer in ways she hated and safer in ways she didn’t trust.
She knew better than to hope though. More often than not, people dated for years, got married, and made a family before turning out to not be soulmates at all. It was more common than you’d think.
“He’s okay,” Jackson said quietly as his voice cut through the pounding noise of the siren.
Angela was pulled from the spiraling in her mind. She tightened her grip on the wheel hard enough that her knuckles turned white. Her jaw flexed.
“You don’t know that,” she hissed.
Jackson glanced at her carefully, the usual easy confidence gone from his expression. Outside the window, another car laid on its horn as Angela swerved around it, missing the bumper by inches.
“I’m just saying-“
“No,” she snapped. “Don’t say it unless you know.”
The words came out harsher than she intended, sharpened by panic and exhaustion and the horrible images her mind kept creating every time she imagined the courthouse. She didn’t know what was wrong. In fact, everything could be perfectly fine and she could be freaking out over nothing, but every time she blinked she saw Wesley’s lifeless body laying there.
Accompanied by the horrid images was the idea of losing Wesley as her partner. If he died, would she know?
That question had haunted her for months now, lingering in quiet moments she never acknowledged aloud. It came every he touched her and placed gentle kisses along her neck. It ached when he smiled at her like she was someone worth loving long-term instead of someone difficult and complicated and permanently married to the job.
Angela wanted certainty so badly it scared her, but that kind of truth came with pain. Speeding through a city still trembling from panic, Angela wondered if she would rather spend the rest of her life questioning than feel whatever catastrophic thing would finally give her an answer.
Jackson shifted beside her like he wanted to say something else, probably another reassurance she didn’t believe anyway. Before either of them could speak, agony ripped through Angela’s body. It was in no way gradual. One second she was gripping the wheel hard enough to make her hands ache, and the next something sharp and brutal tore through her abdomen with enough force to steal the air straight from her lungs.
Angela gasped. The sound came out broken and strangled. Pain exploded low in her stomach like someone had driven a white-hot blade directly into her body and twisted. Not the dull ache of bruises or the familiar soreness soulmate bonds caused every day. This was a deep wet tearing sensation paired with sudden unbearable pressure beneath her ribs.
Her entire body folded instinctively. The cruiser swerved hard into the next lane.
“Whoa Angela!”
Jackson grabbed the dashboard as a horn screamed beside them. Tires shrieked against the pavement while Angela fought to keep control of the shop. Her right hand slipped off the wheel as pure instinct drove the other toward her abdomen.
It hurt worse than any injury she’d procured on the job. The pain radiated outward in nauseating waves, sharp at the center but burning everywhere else. It was like fire spreading beneath her skin. Her stomach clenched violently around nothing. For one horrifying second she genuinely thought she’d been stabbed herself somehow, that maybe adrenaline had hidden it until now.
Except there wasn’t any blood or a gaping hole in her stomach when she felt the sensation akin to a knife driving through her flesh. The only explanation was her soulmate. A choked sound escaped her throat before she could stop it.
“Oh my God.”
Her vision blurred. Streetlights smeared into long streaks across the windshield as another pulse of agony hit her hard enough to make her shoulders curl inward. It felt wrong inside her body, foreign and catastrophic, like something had punctured deep into soft tissue and left destruction behind.
Jackson stared at her. “Angela?”
She could barely hear him over the rushing in her ears. Her mind latched onto the realization instantly even while another part of her desperately tried to reject it. Her soulmate had been stabbed. Wesley’s name flashed through her mind with horrifying uncertainty.
Her breathing turned shallow and uneven as panic crashed over her harder than the pain itself. She could practically picture him underground in that bunker beneath the courthouse.
Another spike of pain lanced through her abdomen and Angela physically jerked with it. The cruiser drifted dangerously close to the concrete divider before she corrected hard.
“Jesus Christ, pull over!” Jackson shouted.
“I’m fine,” she bit out automatically, though the words sounded strained and breathless.
She absolutely was not fine. Her hands trembled violently on the wheel now. Cold sweat prickled down the back of her neck beneath her uniform collar. The pain hadn’t disappeared the way smaller soulmate injuries usually did. It lingered, throbbing deep in her core in sickening pulses that made her stomach churn.
Jackson looked alarmed now. “You’re white as a sheet.”
Angela swallowed against the nausea climbing her throat. It felt like something inside her body had been ripped open, every breath dragging against the phantom injury. She knew enough from years on the job to understand what abdominal stab wounds did. There was internal bleeding and the risk of organ damage.
Her chest tightened painfully. If this was Wesley… Except she couldn’t know that. That was the horrible thing about soulmate bonds. Pain could travel across any distance, but certainty still remained just out of reach unless the connection was undeniable. It could be Wesley. Or it could be some stranger she’d never met. Some soulmate she hadn’t found yet. The thought should’ve comforted her. Instead it made her throw up in her mouth.
“Angela,” Jackson said again, quieter this time. “Talk to me.”
She forced herself to inhale slowly despite the stabbing sensation that came with it. “I’m okay.”
“You almost sideswiped three cars.”
“I said I’m okay.” She insists, her voice cracking.
Jackson’s expression shifted immediately. Concern softened into something more frightened as he really looked at her curled posture and the hand pressed hard against her stomach. The understanding dawned slowly across his face.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Angela wished he hadn’t figured it out. The silence inside the cruiser suddenly felt deafening except for the siren screaming overhead and the sound of her uneven breathing. Jackson didn’t say soulmate out loud, but the word sat heavily between them anyway.
His eyes widened slightly. “You think it’s Wesley.”
Angela’s throat tightened hard enough to hurt.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
That was the honest truth. She didn’t know even if the agony tearing through her body had already planted the terror in her chest. Angela pressed harder against her stomach as though she could somehow stop the invisible wound herself while the city blurred around them in flashing lights and noise.
Please don’t let it be him. The thought repeated desperately in her mind.
Another wave of blinding pain crashed through her before she could even finish the prayer, and deep down, Angela thought she already had her answer.
By the time the courthouse finally came into view, Angela could barely breathe through the pain. The building stood in the middle of downtown and the emergency lights washed over the front.
Angela’s attention locked onto Nolan’s car that was still parked in the lot. Relief and terror collided so hard in her chest it made her dizzy. If the car was still here, then Nolan and Wesley had never left the bunker.
Jackson noticed it too. “That’s Nolan’s.”
“I know.” The words came out strained.
Angela jerked the cruiser into park, crooked enough that one tire hit the curb. Before the engine had even fully died, she shoved the door open and stepped out into the cold night air. Pain immediately folded through her abdomen again. A sharp gasp escaped her before she could stop it. Her knees nearly buckled on the pavement.
“Angela-”
“I’m fine,” she snapped automatically, though her voice sounded thin and shaky now.
The soulmate pain had settled into something deep and relentless, throbbing beneath her ribs with every heartbeat. Her hand stayed clamped against her stomach as she straightened with visible effort.
Jackson stared at her with open concern now. “You can barely stand.”
Angela was already moving. The courthouse steps blurred slightly as she pushed herself forward, boots striking concrete too fast despite the agony twisting through her middle. Every movement jarred the phantom wound. Her body instinctively wanted to curl inward and protect the nonexistent injury, but panic drove her harder.
If she felt this bad, Wesley had to be suffering infinitely worse. The thought made bile rise in her throat.
Inside the courthouse, it was nearly silent. Likely from all the staff being underground.
“The bunker,” she said sharply to Jackson. “It’s this way.”
As a rookie, she’d done emergency preparedness training down there once. Endless hours learning evacuation routes and missile protocols everyone had assumed they’d never actually need. Apparently the universe had decided otherwise.
She pushed through the security checkpoint and headed toward the restricted hallway near the back of the courthouse.
Another wave of pain hit her halfway there. Angela stumbled hard against the wall.
“Jesus,” Jackson muttered, grabbing her elbow before she could fall.
For one humiliating second, black spots flickered across her vision. A sickening pulling sensation deep in her gut that made her stomach churn violently.
She knew enough from years on patrol to recognize what severe internal injuries probably felt like.
“You need to sit down,” Jackson said firmly.
“No.” Angela shoved away from the wall before he could stop her. “I need Wesley.”
Jackson’s expression softened and she winced.
They rounded the final hallway corner at nearly a run before Angela spotted the bunker entrance below. She swung open the door and Nolan stood on the other side of the heavy reinforced door looking exhausted and disheveled, his shirt wrinkled and stained with sweat. Beside him, was Judge Steven’s in handcuffs protesting loudly.
“This is outrageous!” the judge snapped. “I was protecting judicial authority-”
“You threatened an officer with a firearm,” Nolan retorted.
Nolan looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. Relief flashed across his face at seeing them alive, but it vanished almost instantly the moment his eyes landed on Angela doubled slightly forward with one arm wrapped tightly around her abdomen.
“Was there no missile?” Nolan asked, still sounding disoriented from nearly an hour trapped underground believing the city was about to be wiped off the map.
“False alarm,” Jackson explained beside her. “There was a malfunction at the Air Force base because of the heat wave.”
Nolan blinked at that, exhaustion written all over his face, but Angela barely heard the exchange over the rushing sound in her ears. The pain in her abdomen had settled into something unbearable now. It was throbbing deep beneath her ribs in sickening pulses that made it difficult to stand fully upright.
“Where is he?” she demanded again. Her voice cracked badly on the last word.
Nolan looked at her with confusion at first, clearly thrown by the panic written all over her face. “Uh, he’s in the-”
Angela didn’t wait for him to finish. She shoved past him and into the bunker as people slowly began filtering out into the courthouse hallway. Court staff stood around looking pale and emotionally drained, some crying openly now that the fear had finally started catching up to them. Officers tried directing civilians toward the exits while emergency radios crackled overhead, but Angela barely registered any of it as she pushed deeper underground.
The fluorescent lights buzzed harshly overhead, washing the bunker in pale yellow light that made everything feel sterile and unreal. Metal filing cabinets lined the walls beside stacks of emergency water and overturned folding chairs left behind in the panic. The entire room smelled faintly of sweat, concrete, and fear.
Then she saw a brown leather shoe sticking out from behind one of the filing cabinets. It was Wesley’s shoe. Relief hit her so suddenly her knees nearly buckled beneath her. For one desperate second, all she could think was alive. He was alive. He had to be.
Angela stumbled forward, shoving around the edge of the cabinet and the world stopped. Wesley was sitting on the floor slumped against the metal cabinet, one hand pressed weakly over his abdomen while blood poured through his fingers in horrifying amounts. Dark red soaked through his dress shirt and suit jacket, spreading across the concrete beneath him in a pool far too large for Angela to process rationally. His skin had gone ghostly pale beneath the fluorescent lights, every trace of warmth drained from his face except for the feverish sheen of sweat clinging to his forehead.
His blue eyes lifted toward her at the sound of her footsteps, unfocused and glassy with pain. Angela physically felt something inside herself break.
“Wesley!” she shrieked.
The sound tore out of her throat raw and panicked as she dropped hard to her knees beside him. Pain immediately exploded through her own abdomen again, so sharp it nearly folded her over, but she barely noticed it now because this wasn’t uncertainty anymore. This wasn’t some faceless soulmate connection somewhere out in the world.
Every pulse of agony ripping through her body belonged to Wesley. Her soulmate.
“Oh my God,” she choked out as her hands grabbed for him instinctively.
One landed against his shoulder while the other tried covering the blood spreading beneath his trembling hand. Warmth coated her fingers instantly, slick and horrifyingly real. Wesley looked at her like he was trying to focus through a fog. Relief softened his expression the moment he recognized her, even through the pain hollowing out his face.
“Angela,” he breathed weakly.
“You’re okay,” she said frantically, even while tears immediately blurred her vision. “You’re okay, I’m here now. You’re okay.”
The words sounded desperate and unconvincing even to herself. Wesley tried to smile at her. The corner of his mouth twitched faintly before another wave of pain dragged through him and the expression collapsed into a grimace instead. His head tipped back against the cabinet with a dull metallic thud.
At the exact same moment, agony ripped through Angela’s abdomen hard enough to steal the air from her lungs. A broken gasp escaped her as she doubled slightly forward beside him. Nolan appeared next to them then, stopping short at the sight. Jackson came in right behind him, both of them freezing as they took in the amount of blood.
“Oh my God,” Nolan whispered.
“Oscar,” Wesley managed weakly, his breathing shallow and uneven now. “He had scissors…”
Angela barely heard him over the roaring panic in her own head. Her hands shook violently as she tried pressing against the wound, instinct overriding everything else. The second pressure touched the stab wound, blinding pain detonated through her body. Angela screamed.
The sound echoed through the bunker as she jerked violently forward, one hand flying to her own stomach. It felt like the scissors had been shoved into her instead, white-hot and invasive, tearing through muscle and soft tissue before twisting deeper. Nausea slammed into her immediately afterward so hard it made her vision flicker.
Nolan’s eyes snapped toward her in shock. Wesley let out another pained sound beneath her hands, and Angela felt every bit of it. Angela saw the realization spread across his face as his gaze moved from Wesley’s wound to the way she clutched the exact same spot on her own body.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
Jackson looked between them both with wide eyes. Angela didn’t care anymore. Not when Wesley was bleeding out in front of her.
“Help me,” she choked out to Nolan. “Please.”
Nolan immediately moved, replacing her trembling hands with his own to apply pressure properly. The moment he did, another unbearable surge of pain tore through Angela’s abdomen, deeper this time, enough to make her stomach violently revolt. She barely had enough warning to turn before she threw up onto the concrete beside her knees.
The humiliation didn’t even have time to register. Her whole body shook as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tears streaming freely down her face now from pain alone.
“Angela,” Wesley whispered weakly.
The sound of her name in his voice snapped her attention back to him instantly. He looked worse. His lips had lost nearly all their color and his eyelids kept fluttering dangerously, like staying conscious required effort he no longer had. Sweat dampened his hairline and his breathing had turned uneven in a way that terrified her more than the blood itself.
“Hey,” she said urgently, grabbing his face carefully between both hands. “Hey, look at me. Stay with me.”
His eyes found hers slowly.
“You felt it,” he murmured weakly.
Angela’s throat tightened painfully as tears spilled faster down her cheeks. All those months of wondering. Of hoping and doubting and trying not to care too much.
“Yes,” she whispered brokenly. “Yes, I felt it.”
Something soft and aching flickered across Wesley’s expression despite the agony he was clearly in. “Guess that answers that.”
A sob escaped her before she could stop it.
“Don’t joke right now,” she pleaded shakily. “Please don’t do that.”
The sound of approaching footsteps thundered through the hallway moments later as paramedics rushed into the bunker with a stretcher and trauma kits. The confined room erupted into movement immediately, medics kneeling beside Wesley while officers cleared space around them.
“Male, abdominal stab wound,” Nolan reported quickly. “Significant blood loss.”
The paramedics carefully lifted Wesley away from the cabinet, and the second they moved him, both he and Angela cried out simultaneously. The medic nearest her froze briefly in confusion before his eyes widened with sudden understanding.
“Oh,” he said quietly, looking between them.
Angela barely noticed. She stayed beside the stretcher as they loaded Wesley onto it, her blood-covered hand wrapped tightly around his cold fingers while oxygen was secured over his face.
“You stay awake,” she ordered through shaking breaths as they wheeled him toward the exit. “You hear me? You stay with me.”
Wesley’s eyes struggled to stay open, exhaustion and blood loss dragging at him harder every second, but his fingers tightened faintly around hers anyway.
An oxygen mask was fitted quickly over Wesley’s face as the paramedics rushed him through the courthouse hallway. The clear plastic fogged faintly with each shallow breath he managed to take, though even that looked like it required effort now. His eyes kept slipping shut only to force themselves open again whenever Angela spoke.
She stayed glued to the stretcher as they moved, one blood-covered hand wrapped tightly around his cold fingers while pain continued throbbing violently through her abdomen with every uneven breath he took. The courthouse blurred around her.
Officers moved out of the way as the paramedics pushed through the lobby doors and into the warm summer air where the ambulance waited with its back doors already open. Red and blue lights flashed across the pavement in dizzying pulses while the siren wailed somewhere overhead.
“BP is dropping,” one paramedic called as they lifted Wesley into the ambulance.
Angela physically felt the sharp sting in her own arm a split second later when they shoved an IV needle into Wesley’s vein. She flinched hard. Her free hand immediately rubbed at the inside of her elbow instinctively, fingers pressing against phantom soreness blooming beneath her skin. It was such a small thing compared to the agony in her abdomen, but it terrified her anyway.
Every prick just served as a reminder that Wesley was her soulmate. The thought should have felt beautiful. Instead it felt horrifying because all Angela could think was if he dies, what happens to me? What happened to people who found their soulmate only to lose them hours later? She couldn’t breathe around the thought.
The paramedics slid the stretcher fully into the ambulance and Angela immediately tried climbing in after them. A firm arm stopped her.
“You can’t come,” one of the paramedics said quickly, holding his arm across the doorway. “You can follow behind to the hospital.”
“No,” Angela choked out instantly. Panic surged so violently through her chest it nearly eclipsed the pain. “No, I need to-”
“Angela.”
Jackson’s voice cut through the spiraling panic as his hand wrapped carefully around hers. She turned toward him with tears already streaming down her face she hadn’t even realized were falling.
“I’ll drive,” he said gently. “We’ll meet them at the hospital.”
Behind the paramedic, Angela caught one final glimpse of Wesley lying against the stretcher straps with the oxygen mask covering half his face. His skin looked frighteningly pale beneath the ambulance lights, and his eyes were barely open now.
The doors slammed shut between them. Angela physically recoiled at the sound.
The ambulance pulled away seconds later with its siren screaming, disappearing into traffic while Angela stood frozen on the courthouse steps trying to breathe through the crushing panic lodged in her chest.
Jackson guided her carefully toward the shop before her knees could fully give out.
The drive to the hospital was torture. Every few minutes another sensation hit her out of nowhere, sharp and invasive enough to make her flinch violently in the passenger seat. The sting of another needle sliding into Wesley’s skin. Pressure against his wound. Something cold against his chest. Every sensation arrived dulled slightly by distance, but still real enough to make her body react automatically.
At one point a burning ache spread through the inside of her elbow again and Angela immediately grabbed at her arm.
Jackson glanced over at her briefly while navigating through traffic. “What happened?”
“They started another IV,” she whispered hoarsely.
The words sounded insane out loud. But she knew. God, she knew. Her entire body felt connected to him now in ways she didn’t understand yet. Invisible threads stretched painfully between them with every mile the ambulance got farther ahead.
Angela curled slightly forward in the passenger seat, one arm wrapped tightly around her abdomen while the other rubbed absently at the phantom soreness in her elbow. Her uniform still had Wesley’s blood smeared across it. Dark stains coated her hands and sleeves, already drying beneath the harsh dashboard lights.
She couldn’t stop staring at Wesley’s blood. The reality of that kept hitting her in brutal waves. Six months together and she’d spent all that time wondering if he was hers while he sat beside her at dinner tables and kissed her goodbye before court and looked at her like she mattered more than anything else in the room.
A broken sound escaped her throat before she could stop it. Jackson tightened his grip on the steering wheel but wisely didn’t say anything.
Outside the windows, Los Angeles still looked fractured from the missile scare. Traffic lights reflected off endless lines of stalled cars while helicopters continued circling overhead. Some people had abandoned vehicles entirely along the roadsides. Others stood outside gas stations or apartment buildings talking loudly with the frantic energy of people still processing how close they thought they’d come to death.
Angela barely saw any of it. Another sudden spike of pain lanced through her abdomen hard enough to force a gasp from her lips. Her hand flew instinctively to the wound that wasn’t there.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
It felt deeper now. Not sharp like the original stabbing pain. This was heavier with pressure building beneath her ribs alongside nauseating waves of heat. She knew enough from years around trauma victims to understand what that probably meant. Wesley had internal bleeding and the thought made fresh panic bloom viciously in her chest.
“What if he dies?” she whispered suddenly.
Jackson looked over at her immediately, “He’s not gonna die.”
“You don’t know that.” Her voice cracked violently. “Jackson, there was so much blood.”
Silence filled the shop after that except for the sound of the siren they’d finally shut off and Angela’s uneven breathing.
She whispered, “He’s my soulmate.”
Jackson’s expression softened immediately. “I know.”
Angela pressed the heel of her hand hard against her eyes, but it didn’t stop the tears. “I spent months wondering and this is how I find out?”
Her voice broke completely at the end. Jackson looked helpless beside her, clearly unsure what to say to that. Honestly, Angela wasn’t sure there was anything to say. Soulmate stories were supposed to be happy. People always told them like fairy tales afterward. Two people finding each other against impossible odds.
Nobody talked about sitting in traffic covered in your soulmate’s blood while phantom pain tore through your body and terror hollowed out your chest because the person you loved might be dying somewhere ahead of you in an ambulance.
By the time they reached the hospital, Angela felt half sick from pain and adrenaline alone. The ambulance was already there outside the emergency entrance when Jackson pulled up hard against the curb. Angela was out of the vehicle before it fully stopped, stumbling after the gurney as paramedics rushed Wesley through the sliding glass doors.
“Abdominal stab wound,” one medic reported rapidly while pushing him deeper into the ER. “Significant blood loss, hypotensive en route.”
Angela tried following immediately.
A nurse intercepted her near the doors. “Ma’am, you can’t go back there.”
“He’s my-“ Her voice failed completely. Soulmate. The word caught painfully in her throat.
The nurse’s expression softened slightly but remained firm. “The doctors need room to work. You’ll have to wait in the lobby.”
Angela stared helplessly down the hallway as Wesley disappeared behind a set of swinging double doors surrounded by doctors and trauma nurses.
The adrenaline keeping her upright finally started giving out beneath her all at once. Pain still pulsed through her abdomen in awful waves as Jackson guided her carefully toward the waiting room chairs. The hospital lobby was harshly bright and unbearably normal compared to the nightmare unfolding inside her chest. A television mounted in the corner quietly replayed coverage about the missile alert while exhausted families crowded the waiting area clutching phones and paper coffee cups.
Angela sank numbly into one of the chairs, blood still drying on her hands.
Every few seconds she caught another flicker of Wesley’s pain through the bond
while they waited.
The waiting room had settled into an uneasy quiet by the time Nolan arrived.
The chaos from the missile alert still lingered throughout the hospital. there were exhausted families crowding the lobby chairs, nurses hurried through the hallways faster than usual, and every television mounted near the ceiling continued replaying footage of panicked Los Angeles traffic.
Angela sat rigidly in one of the plastic chairs near the corner of the room, elbows braced on her knees while she stared blankly at the floor tiles beneath her boots. Wesley’s blood had dried dark against her sleeves and hands, stiffening the fabric of her uniform. She hadn’t bothered cleaning it off. Part of her couldn’t bear to.
Jackson sat beside her, leaning forward with his hands clasped tightly together, though his eyes kept flicking toward Angela every few seconds like he was worried she might fall apart if he looked away too long. Honestly, he wasn’t wrong.
The sliding doors at the entrance opened suddenly and Nolan came hurrying into the lobby still dressed in his wrinkled court clothes from earlier. His tie hung loosened around his neck and exhaustion lined his face, but the moment he spotted them, relief crossed his expression.
“There you guys are.”
Angela looked up slowly as Nolan approached. Every movement still felt strangely disconnected, like her body was lagging behind her brain. She could still feel faint traces of Wesley through the bond with dull aches, cold against skin, pressure from movement. As long as she could feel his pain, she knew he was alive.
Nolan stopped in front of her chair, concern immediately softening his features when he really looked at her. “How’re you doing?”
Angela swallowed hard before answering, “I’m fine.”
Jackson glanced at her sideways but didn’t call her out on it. Nolan looked unconvinced anyway. His eyes dropped briefly toward the dried blood covering her uniform before returning to her face.
“Have they said anything yet?”
“No.” Jackson rubbed tiredly at his jaw. “They took him into surgery about twenty minutes ago.”
The pain hit so suddenly that for one disoriented second she genuinely thought someone had attacked her. Angela gasped sharply as white-hot agony sliced through her abdomen. Her entire body jerked violently forward in the chair as another sensation followed immediately after. A sharp pressure dragging across her skin in one long horrifying line. It felt exactly like something cutting into her.
“Oh my God-”
The words shattered apart into a cry. Heat spread violently through her abdomen as the sensation deepened. Something peeling slowly through skin and tissue beneath her ribs while unbearable pressure followed in its wake. Angela folded over hard enough that her forehead nearly hit her knees.
“Angela?” Jackson grabbed her shoulder instantly.
She couldn’t answer.
Another movement tore through her body and suddenly she could feel it with horrifying clarity. It was the sensation of skin being pulled apart. Pressure stretching outward from the incision while deeper pain bloomed underneath, invasive and sickening and wrong.
Somewhere upstairs surgeons were cutting Wesley open, and Angela felt every second of it. She screamed. Several people in the waiting room startled violently at the sound. Jackson dropped fully to his knees beside her chair while Angela clutched at her abdomen hard enough to bruise.
Every precise movement translated directly into her own body. She could feel pressure against muscle. It was tugging beneath her ribs. Deep internal pain spreading outward in nauseating waves while her entire nervous system screamed at her that she was being cut apart alive. Tears spilled instantly down her face.
“It hurts,” she gasped brokenly.
Nolan stared at her in horror as another wave hit. Angela physically curled tighter into herself with a strangled cry when she felt something shift deeper inside the incision like fingers touching the wound.
“Oh my God,” Nolan whispered as his expression changed abruptly.
His eyes widened with realization as he looked toward Jackson. “Did they give her anything?”
Jackson looked confused. “What?”
“The soulmate pain meds,” Nolan said sharply. “Before surgery.”
Jackson went still and Angela saw the realization hit him all at once. The nurses had been too focused on Wesley crashing from blood loss and the chaos flooding the ER from the missile emergency. Angela hadn’t even technically been admitted as a patient. She’d just been left sitting in the waiting room while Wesley went upstairs.
Soulmate bonds and surgery were complicated. Everybody knew that. Hospitals had developed medications years ago specifically for soulmate-linked pain because anesthesia only affected the patient themselves. Their soulmate still experienced everything fully conscious unless preventative meds were administered beforehand.
Normally hospitals were careful about it, but tonight had been anything but normal. The entire city had spent the last several hours in chaos. Emergency rooms overflowed with injuries from panicked evacuations, car accidents, looting, and stampedes. Wesley had arrived bleeding out from a stab wound during the middle of a citywide crisis. Somewhere in all that confusion, nobody had thought about Angela.
Another burst of agony ripped through her abdomen, deeper this time, accompanied by the unmistakable sensation of flesh being pulled back. She cried out helplessly.
Jackson was on his feet immediately. “Angela-”
“She should’ve been medicated before they started,” Nolan snapped.
“I didn’t realize-”
“I know, just get a nurse!”
Jackson hurried toward the reception desk while Nolan crouched in front of Angela’s chair.
“Hey,” he said urgently, trying to keep his voice calm despite the alarm written all over his face. “Angela, look at me.”
She couldn’t. The surgery kept moving forward upstairs and her body felt every horrible second of it. There was more cutting and the pressure spread beneath her ribs. The deep invasive pain made her stomach churn violently. Her hands shook uncontrollably where they clutched her abdomen.
“How is he surviving this?” she whispered through tears.
Nolan’s expression tightened painfully because in reality, Wesley was under heavy anesthetics. Angela was the only one feeling it.
Jackson returned moments later with a nurse rushing behind him. The woman took one look at Angela folded forward in the chair sobbing from pain and immediately went pale.
“Oh no,” she breathed.
“She never got the suppressant meds,” Nolan said furiously.
The nurse swore under her breath before kneeling beside Angela. “Okay, ma’am, I need you to listen to me. We’re gonna fix this.”
Another sensation tore through Angela before she could answer. This time a sharp pressure followed by deep burning pain beneath her ribs like something inside Wesley’s body had been clamped or stitched. She screamed again.
The nurse’s face tightened with panic as she turned and called out to another nurse, “Get pharmacy on the line now. I need soulmate suppression medication immediately.”
The surgery upstairs continued relentlessly while every movement translated directly through the bond into her own nervous system. It felt horrifyingly physical. It was like her body genuinely believed it was lying open on an operating table instead of curled into a plastic waiting room chair.
Sweat dampened the back of her neck beneath her uniform collar. Tears blurred her vision so badly the fluorescent lights overhead smeared together painfully.
“Hurry up,” she choked out.
A second nurse came rushing through the waiting room doors carrying a medication tray and a syringe kit. “Move,” she ordered to Jackson quickly as she dropped to her knees beside the chair. The first nurse started preparing Angela’s arm while Nolan and Jackson stepped back enough to give them room.
“We’re gonna administer the suppressant intramuscularly,” the nurse explained quickly, though her voice sounded distant through the haze of pain consuming Angela. “You should start feeling relief within a minute or two.”
“A minute?” Angela repeated sharply.
Another unbearable wave hit her before she could say anything else and she doubled over with a broken cry. The pressure was dragging through her abdomen again, followed by deep internal pain that made nausea twist violently through her stomach.
The nurse didn’t answer, already scrubbing the side of Angela’s upper arm quickly with a sanitary wipe. The cold sting of alcohol against her skin barely even registered compared to everything else.
“Officer, I need you to hold still.”
Angela laughed harshly through gritted teeth. “I’m trying.”
Jackson crouched beside her again carefully. “Just breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to breathe,” she hissed immediately.
The words came out sharper than intended, but pain had stripped away every layer of patience she usually possessed. Another movement upstairs tore through her body and Angela physically recoiled in the chair with a gasp.
“Oh my God-”
The nurse uncapped the syringe quickly. “Okay, little pinch.”
Angela barely felt the needle sliding into her arm. Compared to the agony ripping through her abdomen, it was nothing.
For several horrible seconds afterward, nothing changed. Angela stayed curled forward in the chair shaking violently while another pulse of surgical pain rolled through her body. She could still feel pressure inside the incision. Then mercifully, the sensations began dulling.
The sharpness faded first, followed by the overwhelming feeling of being physically cut open alive. The pain receded into something distant and muted, like hearing screaming through several closed walls instead of directly beside her ear.
Angela sagged back against the chair abruptly. A shaky breath escaped her lips.
“Oh thank God,” Jackson whispered.
Her whole body still trembled violently from the aftermath. Sweat clung damply to her skin and her abdomen ached hard enough to leave her nauseous, but the unbearable surgical sensations were finally fading into the background.
The nurse beside her exhaled slowly too, clearly relieved the medication had worked. “There we go.”
Angela pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes hard for a second before looking back up at them. “You people seriously forgot to medicate the soulmate of a surgery patient?”
The nurse winced visibly. “Tonight’s been… chaotic.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Angela,” Nolan said carefully.
“No, actually, I’d love an explanation.” Her voice still shook from pain and adrenaline. “Because feeling somebody get cut open while fully conscious was not on my schedule tonight.”
Jackson rubbed a hand over his face, somewhere between concern and exhausted amusement despite the situation. “Okay, maybe don’t yell at the people trying to help you.”
Angela shot him a glare immediately. “I will absolutely yell at whoever I want right now.”
The nurses exchanged a brief look before the first one spoke again. “Given the severity of the bond response, we’re gonna need to monitor you while your partner’s in surgery.”
Angela blinked once. “Monitor me for what?”
“Soulmate sympathetic shock, elevated pain response, neurological stress-“
“I’m fine.”
All three of them stared at her. Angela scowled immediately. “Okay, mostly fine.”
“You nearly passed out in the waiting room,” Jackson reminded her.
“And you just felt Wesley being cut open,” Nolan added gently.
The nurse was already motioning toward another orderly approaching with a wheelchair. “We’re moving you to a room upstairs.”
“I can walk.”
The moment she tried standing, her knees almost buckled underneath her. Jackson caught her elbow automatically before she could hit the floor.
Angela closed her eyes briefly in frustration. The nurse positioned the wheelchair closer, and she just glared at it in return.
“I’m not getting in that.” Angela mutters.
“Officer-“
”I get shot at for a living. I’m a cop.” She argues.
“And currently you’re my patient,” the nurse interrupted firmly.
Angela looked like she wanted to argue more, but another lingering ache pulsed through her abdomen from the bond and visibly drained the fight out of her slightly.
“Fine,” she muttered bitterly.
Jackson helped her lower herself into the chair while the nurses continued talking around her about monitoring vitals and additional suppressant doses if needed. Angela barely listened. All she could think about was Wesley upstairs under bright operating lights while surgeons fought to keep him alive.
Now that the unbearable edge of the pain had dulled, exhaustion started crashing over her instead. Her body felt wrung out from the intensity of everything she’d just experienced.
As the nurse started wheeling her toward the elevators, Angela finally looked up at Nolan.
“Don’t let them tell me last,” she said quietly.
Nolan’s expression softened and he nodded. “You’ll know before anybody else.”
***
By the time a nurse finally returned to Angela’s room, the sky outside the hospital windows had started turning gray with early morning light. The worst of the soulmate pain had faded hours ago after the suppressant medication kicked in, but exhaustion had settled heavily into Angela’s body in its place. She sat propped against the hospital bed with a blanket draped loosely over her legs while heart monitors beeped steadily beside her. Somebody had convinced her to change out of her bloodstained uniform at some point during the night, though the thin hospital sweatpants and borrowed LAPD hoodie did little to make her feel more human.
Mostly she just felt hollowed out.
Jackson sat slouched in one chair near the wall nursing what had to be his third terrible vending machine coffee while Nolan leaned against the window half-awake himself. None of them had gotten much rest. Every time footsteps passed the room outside, Angela’s chest tightened instinctively waiting for somebody to walk in with bad news.
When the knock finally came at the door, all three of them straightened immediately.
The nurse who entered offered a small tired smile as she glanced toward the monitor beside Angela’s bed. “Good news,” she said gently. “We’re gonna take you off monitoring.”
She froze but the nurse must’ve seen the panic flash across her face because her expression softened further. “He’s okay, Officer.”
The words hit Angela so hard she physically sagged back against the bed.
“The surgery went well,” the nurse continued while stepping closer to disconnect some of the monitor wires attached to Angela’s chest. “The doctor expects him to make a full recovery.”
Something inside her chest finally loosened for the first time all night.
Jackson let out a long breath beside her. “Thank God.”
Nolan smiled tiredly from near the window, relief written all over his face too.
Angela swallowed hard against the sudden sting behind her eyes. She hadn’t realized until that exact moment how completely she’d been bracing herself for the opposite answer. For somebody to walk through that door and tell her Wesley was gone.
Instead he was alive.
The nurse carefully peeled another monitor lead away from Angela’s skin. “He’s still gonna be pretty miserable for a while,” she admitted sympathetically. “Abdominal surgeries are rough enough without the stab wound on top of it.”
Angela huffed a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “Yeah. I noticed.”
That earned the faintest smile from the nurse.
“We’re also sending a prescription home with you,” she added. “Soulmate pain suppressants. Strong ones.”
Angela blinked once. “For me?”
“For both of you technically, but mostly you,” the nurse explained while unplugging the last monitor wire. “The first few weeks of recovery are usually the hardest on bonded partners. Pain spikes, soreness, nerve healing, muscle trauma…”
She gave Angela an apologetic look. “You’re probably going to feel a good portion of it.”
Jackson grimaced immediately. “That sounds awful.”
“It can be,” the nurse admitted. “Especially after major surgery. The medication won’t completely sever the bond, but it’ll dull the sympathetic response enough that she can function normally.”
Angela leaned back against the pillows slowly, processing that. A few hours ago she’d felt Wesley being cut open alive from a chair in the waiting room. The thought of dealing with weeks of lingering recovery pain should’ve terrified her. It didn’t though because it meant Wesley survived.
The realization still felt fragile in her chest somehow. Maybe if she relaxed too much, the universe might snatch away her hope.
The nurse finished gathering the monitor wires before glancing back toward her. “They’re getting him settled into recovery now. You’ll be able to see him soon.”
Jackson stood immediately. “You want us to come with you?”
Angela shook her head before he even finished asking.
“No.” Her voice came out rougher than intended. She cleared her throat slightly. “I need a minute alone with him first.”
Nolan stepped away from the window with a small nod. “We’ll be nearby.”
The nurse handed Angela a small paper packet containing discharge instructions and the prescription information before moving toward the door.
“Somebody will come walk you over in a few minutes.”
Once the room fell quiet again, Angela sat there for a long moment staring down at the adhesive marks left behind on her skin from the monitors. Her body still ached faintly from the surgery. A dull soreness lingered low in her abdomen like an echo of Wesley’s injury, muted now beneath the suppressant medication but still there enough to remind her this was real.
Wesley was her soulmate. The truth of it settled differently now than it had in the courthouse bunker. It was less panic and more quietly overwhelming because of all those months she spent wondering. It made sense now. The instinctive pull she felt to him in the beginning that she’d pretend wasn’t terrifying. It had been real the whole time.
Jackson moved toward the door with Nolan lingering behind him. “You scared the hell out of me tonight, by the way.”
Angela glanced up at him tiredly. “You weren’t exactly thriving either.”
“Fair.” Jackson shoved his hands into his pockets before giving her a softer look. “He’s okay though.”
Angela nodded once, feeling emotion rise thickly into her throat again, “Yeah,” she whispered quietly. “He is.”
***
The walk to Wesley’s recovery room felt strangely nerve-wracking after everything they’d already survived. Angela moved slowly down the hospital hallway with the nurse guiding her there. One hand rested against her abdomen for whenever the soreness flared through the bond. The suppressant medication dulled most of it now, but traces still lingered. There was a deep ache low beneath her ribs and tightness when she moved too quickly. It was enough to remind her that Wesley was still hurting.
The nurse finally stopped outside a room near the end of the corridor and gave her a small smile. “He’s awake.”
Angela’s pulse immediately jumped. For one ridiculous second, she almost didn’t go inside. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to see him. She’d wanted to since the moment he’d disappeared into the hospital, but now that the crisis had passed, reality was catching up to her all at once.
Wesley was her soulmate.
The thought still felt too big to fully process. The nurse quietly stepped away, leaving Angela alone outside the partially open door. She took one slow breath before finally pushing it open.
The room was dimmer than the harsh hospital hallways, lit mostly by soft morning light spilling through the windows. Machines beeped steadily near the bed in a slow and steady beat eased something tight in Angela’s chest.
Wesley lay propped slightly upright against a stack of hospital pillows, pale beneath the blankets but unmistakably alive in a way that nearly made her knees weak with relief all over again. A clear oxygen cannula rested beneath his nose, tubing hooked around his ears while IV lines disappeared into the back of one bruised hand. More wires disappeared beneath his hospital gown toward the monitors beside the bed, their screens glowing softly with heart rate and vitals.
He looked exhausted.
There were dark shadows beneath his eyes and his skin still carried that washed-out post-surgery paleness, but compared to the image burned into Angela’s memory of him bleeding out underground, this felt miraculous. Wesley looked up at the sound of the door opening. The moment he saw her, emotion crossed his face so openly it made Angela’s chest ache.
“Hey,” he said softly.
His voice sounded rough. Angela swallowed hard around the sudden lump in her throat. “Hey.”
She moved farther into the room cautiously. The soulmate bond hummed faintly between them now that they were close again. Wesley’s eyes followed her the entire way to the bed.
“You’re moving carefully,” he noticed immediately.
Angela huffed a quiet breath that almost became a laugh. “Turns out getting stabbed sucks.”
Wesley winced visibly at that. Guilt flooded his expression so quickly it caught her off guard.
“Angela-”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not.” His voice cracked slightly. “I heard them talking after surgery. About the suppressant meds and-” He swallowed hard. “You felt all of it.”
Angela looked away briefly because yes. She had felt it. She’d felt every horrifying second of surgeons cutting him open while she sat helpless in a waiting room chair downstairs. The silence stretched too long.
When she looked back at Wesley again, his eyes had gone visibly red.
“Oh,” Angela said softly.
Wesley blinked hard like he was trying not to cry, which somehow felt more devastating than if he actually had. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m so sorry, Angela. I didn’t- I mean obviously I know it wasn’t exactly my choice to get stabbed, but you got dragged into all of this because of me and I just…” His voice wavered slightly. “God, you probably thought you were dying.”
Angela’s chest tightened painfully. Wesley looked genuinely wrecked over it. His eyes glistened faintly with tears he clearly hated showing, one hand shifting weakly against the blanket like he wanted to reach for her but didn’t have the strength.
“I kept thinking about you down there,” he admitted quietly. “When I realized that you’d feel it if we were soulmates.”
“Wesley.”
“And then Nolan told me they forgot the meds when I went into surgery and-“
“Wesley.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, tears finally slipping free despite himself. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
That broke something soft inside her. Angela crossed the remaining distance to the bed without another word and kissed him. The movement startled him enough that he made a soft sound of surprise against her mouth before immediately melting into it. One weak hand lifted instinctively to her wrist while Angela kissed him carefully, mindful of the tubes and wires attached everywhere.
Pure overwhelming relief flooded her nervous system when she knew he was alive enough to kiss back. When she finally pulled away, Wesley stared at her like she’d completely derailed his brain.
Angela rested her forehead gently against his for a second. “You idiot,” she murmured softly. “None of this was your fault.”
Wesley let out one shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to a laugh. “Oscar stabbed me.”
“Yeah, and somehow I still blame Oscar more than you.”
That pulled a small, exhausted smile from him. God, Angela loved that smile.
Her fingers brushed carefully through his hair, gentler than she normally allowed herself to be with anyone. Wesley’s eyes fluttered briefly at the touch before settling back on her again with something unbearably soft in them.
“You really felt it?” he asked quietly after a moment.
Angela considered lying. Instead she nodded once.
“All of it.”
Wesley’s face crumpled slightly with guilt again, but before he could apologize another time, Angela squeezed his hand carefully.
“Hey,” she said firmly. “You survived it. That’s the part I care about.”
Emotion flickered openly across his face then. Love, fear, and the relief crashing in. All of it sat raw between them now without either pretending otherwise anymore.
“I thought you were dead when I found you,” Angela admitted softly.
Wesley looked at her for a long moment before answering. “I thought I might be too.”
Her throat tightened immediately.
“But then you showed up,” he continued quietly. “And suddenly dying felt like a really inconvenient option.”
Angela laughed once through the sting of tears threatening again. “That’s the romantic line you’re going with?”
“I’m on painkillers. Lower your expectations.”
She smiled despite herself and leaned down carefully to kiss his forehead this time. The steady beeping of the monitors filled the room around them while Wesley’s thumb brushed slowly against the back of her hand. Outside the hospital windows, Los Angeles was finally calming after the chaos of the night before, but inside the room everything felt strangely still.
The universe had finally stopped moving long enough for them to breathe.
Wesley looked up at her quietly after a while. “So.”
Angela raised an eyebrow slightly. “So?”
“I’m your soulmate.”
The words still felt unreal somehow.
Angela looked down at him, lying tangled in hospital wires and IV tubing with tear-reddened eyes and messy hair from surgery recovery, and somehow she’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “You are.”
Wesley tugged her chin back down so their lips could meet once again. As they kissed, every part of her was quietly grateful that against all the odds, he was her forever.