Chapter 37 Scared
ALEXANDER POV
The silence in the room was heavier than the gunshots in the ballroom.
I stood frozen, my brow arched as I stared at the unmoving body on the marble. The crimson stars on my white shirt were cooling against my skin. It wasn't my blood. It was hers.
"Aurora?" I stepped forward, my boot clicking against the stone. "Get up. The theatrics are over."
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything. Just limp on the floor.
Shit.
She had actually fainted.
A cold jagged feeling like fear pressed against my chest. Something I hadn’t felt since the day Anastasia was announced dead. I hadn’t missed that feeling. Not even slightly.
I dropped to one knee beside her.
I didn’t want to touch her. I wanted to demand why she was failing when I had specifically told her she belonged to me. I pressed two fingers to her throat instead.
Her pulse was frantic and thready. Weak.
I took off my jacket and covered her exposed body with it. The sight of blood on her unsettled me far more than it should have. I had seen blood my entire life. I had caused blood my entire life. This was different and I didn’t have a clean explanation for why.
“Luke!”
My head of security appeared in seconds, his face tight as he took in the scene on the floor.
"Get the house doctor! Now!"
My voice was devoid of emotion. It was the only way to keep my hands from shaking. I scooped her up, her weight shifting against me. She was terrifyingly light, her head rolling against my shoulder. Every time I looked down, I saw Ana. The same jawline, the same pale skin. I hated it. I hated that even as she lay dying, I was looking for a ghost.
I hated that four years later this was still what happened when I looked at that face for too long. I hated that my dead wife kept showing up in the body of a woman I had bullied into marrying me. I hated that I couldn’t tell anymore where grief ended and something else entirely began.
I carried her to the medical wing, laying her on the stark white cot. Dr. Aris took over immediately, her face grim as she began the examination.
"What happened, Alexander?" she asked, her hands moving with clinical speed as she checked Rory's pupils.
“What happened?” she asked without looking up.
I was leaning against the wall. Traces of Aurora’s blood still on my chest where it had hit me.
“She refused to answer a question,” I said. “When she opened her mouth it was blood.”
Dr. Aris paused, her brow furrowing. She turned back to the bed, gently prying Rory's mouth open. "I need to run some tests. Please, excuse us while I check her."
I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stand there and demand she wake up, but I couldn't trust myself to watch. I turned and walked out.
Aurora was affecting my brain. I hadn't felt this much for a person who wasn't Anastasia in four years. I'd tried to convince myself she was playing me-that she'd cast some spell on my son. She barely knew me, yet she whispered she loved me. Only a crazy person would say that. When she spat that blood, I told myself it was a trick. A gimmick.
I was wrong.
I was in my office when Dr Aris found me.
I was standing at the window. I hadn’t sat down. Sitting felt like something people did when they weren’t waiting for news they were pretending not to care about.
“Mr Miller.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked before she had fully entered the room.
Dr Aris stopped in front of me and folded her hands with the composure of someone who had delivered difficult information to difficult people before.
“Aurora has selective mutism,” she said. “It’s a condition tied to trauma and anxiety. Her vocal cords are already significantly compromised from years of strain. Tonight she attempted to force speech under extreme emotional pressure and it caused internal bleeding in the throat.”
I said nothing.
“This didn’t happen by accident Mr Miller,” she continued carefully. “Her body shut down speech as a protective response. When she was forced past that threshold the damage was physical. This is not the first time her body has done this and without proper care it won’t be the last.”
How did I missed that?
She knew sign language. She stammered. Her voice always sounded like it cost her something every time she used it.
No wonder she signed. No wonder Liam had talked to her so immediately — two people who understood what it meant to have a voice that didn’t always work the way the world expected it to.
“Will she be fine?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dr Aris said. “With proper rest she’ll recover in a day or two. But she needs complete vocal rest. No pressure to speak. No stressful situations. Proper care.” She looked at me steadily. “She needs to be looked after Mr Miller.”
“She will be,” I said.
Dr Aris nodded and left.
I stood in my office alone.
Relief moved through me quietly and I let it because there was nobody watching.
I knew she was a replica. I knew that. She was a doppelgänger, a copy, a face I had taken because I was not built for a world that didn’t have Anastasia in it and she had appeared on a street looking like the answer to something I hadn’t even known I was still asking.
But the thought of something happening to her had scared me.
Not because of Liam. Not because of some business deal or the brotherhood or any of the thousand reasons I had told myself I needed her.
Just scared.
I put that information somewhere I wasn’t ready to look at yet and walked back to the bedroom.
She was still pale against the pillow. Breathing steadily now. The blood cleaned from her lips. My jacket folded neatly on the chair beside the bed where Dr Aris had moved it.
I sat down.
Looked at her face.
“Only a crazy person says I love you in three weeks,” I said quietly. “You understand that.”
She didn’t answer.
“Completely insane,” I said.
I leaned back in the chair and watched her all night.