“The bullet passed through,” the medic says finally. “You were lucky.”
“I know,” Sol replies.
He doesn’t look away from me.
When the medic leaves and the house empties again, the four of them close in without speaking.
Not crowding.
Containing.
Kai rests a hand against my lower back. Koa sits on the arm of the chair, close enough that his thigh brushes my shoulder. Finn leans against the counter, arms folded but gaze sharp.
The air thickens.
My body reacts in waves now. Heat pulses low in my abdomen, not frantic, not cyclical – triggered. My senses are heightened to the point of ache. Every shift of fabric, every inhale of their layered scents feels amplified.
“I don’t want to go back to being suppressed,” I say quietly.
No one interrupts.
“I don’t want to be cured. I don’t want to be fixed.”
Sol’s hand tightens slightly at the back of my neck.
“You won’t be,” he says.
Kai’s voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. “No one’s fixing you.”
Koa’s hand slides to my shoulder, grounding. “You’re not broken.”
Finn meets my gaze last. “You’re not a solution. You’re a choice.”
The word settles in my chest.
Choice.
I look at Sol.
At the blood still oozing through his fresh bandage and the way he seems to have aged ten years in one night.
At the feral edge he barely contained when he saw my father with that syringe.
At the way he refused to leave.
I look at Kai, who didn’t hesitate to move.
At Koa, who shielded me without being asked.
At Finn, who pulled the trigger and will carry that weight without flinching.
“I choose this,” I say with a certainty I didn’t feel before this moment.
The heat shifts the moment I speak.
It deepens.
Not chaotic.