Alina’s POV

Hospitals have a strange way of swallowing time.

Days blend into nights, minutes into hours, until all that’s left is the steady rhythm of machines and the quiet hum of fluorescent lights.

For a while, that rhythm was enough for me. As long as I heard the sound of Ares’s heart monitor beeping steadily beside me, I didn’t care what day it was.

He was alive.

And that was all that mattered.

But as the days passed, and his strength slowly returned, something else began to ...