Chapter 29: Damion

"AMRI!"

I run down the hallway toward her room, tears streaming down my face as I slide around a corner and book it toward the last turn.

Finding Jyl like that in the security room…I thought that was my worst nightmare. And then I looked up at the screens…and saw Royce lunging for a naked and beat up Amri…and that's when I really broke.

I guess Royce made me answer his question. "I wonder which one you care about more, Damion, your whore of a girl, or your whore of a sister."

Amri. It's always Amri.

Maybe in the future guilt will hit me, maybe I'll wonder if I should have stayed to see if I could somehow help my sister. But then reality will hit. My sister is dead, and by the time I got there, I couldn't save her.

I went to bring her some coffee for her late shift, but I knew before I even walked in that something was wrong. I could smell the blood from the hallway. The iron filled my nose as I entered the room .

Jyl was…broken. Her arm, her neck, and I think her ankle. Blood covered her face and her body, her eyes and mouth till open in a silent scream.

How long was she screaming for help…how long was she screaming for me...?

I never even got to say goodbye like I promised…

It was chance that I even looked up at the screens, but when I did, the tears I was somehow holding back broke loose.

Amri was completely naked, blood running down her body, and I couldn't even tell what was hurt. Royce was lunging at her, and it looked like the struggle had been going on for a while now already. Who knows what already happened, or what's happened since I left the security room.

Finally, I see her door ahead of me. I hear footsteps running down the hallway after me, and I hope to God some of the guards are on their way to help.

I slam open her bedroom door, hands up and ready to fight Royce off of my mate, but it looks like I don't need to. Royce is on the ground, dead, his cock laying limp outside of his pants; and it looks like…my God. She bit some of it off.

My eyes go from him, to Amri propped up against her bed.

"Amri, what the hell – Fuck."

It doesn't look like she's breathing either. I rush toward her, falling onto the floor and putting my ear to her mouth.

There it is.

Breathing.

She's alive – and freezing.

I reach onto her bed, grabbing her sheet and throwing it over her body before I sit next to her to offer whatever body heat I can.

I look at her, the drying blood covering her face, the bruises lining her jaw, her busted eyebrow, and lip; but the thing that bothers me the most is the large bloodstain under her head. If her head is bleeding that would explain why she passed out.

I hear guards rush into the room, their heavy footsteps followed by gasps of surprise.

"What the hell happened in here?"

I turn to find Thomas, the head guard, staring straight at me.

"Fuck if I know. I saw it on the cameras and ran straight here."

"And your sister?"

I stare at him, fury filling my eyes as I recognize what he's trying to do.

"Are you saying this is somehow my fault, Thomas? Instead of the psycho dead on the floor!"

He opens his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. "You know what, I don't give a flying fuck what you think." I point to Amri. "She's badly hurt but she's alive. Get a nurse in here and call a fucking ambulance."

He looks like he wants to say more to me, him and the guards behind him all hesitating for a moment before springing into action. Thomas gets on the phone with the closest hospital, sending one man to go get Marissa and another to go get the nurse.

A few minutes later, Marissa walks in, heels clicking against the blood-stained tile in Amri's room as she walks over to Royce.

"Girl really did a number on him." I hear her mutter under her breath, but I can't help responding.

"And he deserved it."

Marissa hums, looking over to me sitting next to Amri, my fingers on her wrist to make sure I can continuously feel her pulse.

"You need to come with me."

I knew this was coming. Amri and I are obviously close, and after what happened with Jyl, Marissa would be dumb not to see the connection.

"I can't leave her."

Marissa sighs, looking up to the ceiling and shaking her head. "Fine. You can make sure she gets into the ambulance okay, and then you need to come to my office with me. I need to stick around and talk to the paramedics anyway."

I nod, accepting whatever time with Amri I can get. I'll go talk to Marissa, and then I'll go to the hospital with Amri. After all the overtime I've been working to spend time with her, I know I have plenty of vacation saved up that I can cash out to be with her now, too.

The ambulance shows up not too long after, the red and blue lights shining through Amri's window and up onto the ceiling of her room.

Guards show the paramedics to the room, and Marissa talks to them in low voices as their eyes scan the bloody scene I'm currently sitting in the middle of.

The paramedics eyes find Amri more than once, and I find myself staring back. About the third time the older man looks at her funny, I snap, growling at him and sitting up straighter.

"Mr. Blide! That is quite enough! Come with me." I hear Marissa apologize to the two medics for my behavior, but I smile at them.

Getting up to follow Marissa out the door, I stop beside the pair of men responsible for taking Amri to the hospital.

"You drive like your life depends on it, because I swear to whatever god you find yourself believing in, if she does not make it there in time, I will hold you two personally accountable." I begin to walk out but turn back around at the last minute. "And if either of you even think of looking at her like she's a piece of meat again, I would reconsider. Look what she did to that poor man's cock."

Marissa fired me.

Well, I'm suspended, without pay, pending further investigation.

Again, I'm not surprised. I knew this would happen sooner or later considering what I've been doing with both Amri and Callyx is well…immoral. And illegal.

What worries me the most, though, is not being able to be there for Amri when she gets out of the hospital. She's still got a few months of treatment left, and we never figured out what happened with Zain.

What if she defeated Royce, but now has to worry about her own mate?

No.

I refuse to think like that.

Something had to have happened to Zain. The day was too crazy for what happened this morning between Amri and Zain to be a coincidence. No. The two events have to be connected.

I just need to figure out how.

It's been almost twenty-four hours since Amri was attacked in her own bedroom. Which means it's been almost forty-eight hours since I've had any sleep, and the drowsiness is starting to catch up with me.

I went to the hospital as soon as I left Marissa's office, and I've been sitting here all day waiting for her to wake up, my clothes still covered in a mix of her and Royce's blood.

The nurses have asked me a few times if I wanted them to bring me a new pair of scrubs but having that comfort while Amri sat in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and wrapped in bandages, didn't feel right.

The doctors say she should wake up anytime now, but that the concussion she had was more of a major case than they're used to, so they can't be a hundred percent sure.

She's had CAT scans and X-rays done all day, every image showing a fracture in the bottom of her skull. Her nose is also broken, and I'm glad she wasn't awake when they examined that. I've had my nose broken before and I know how painful that particular injury is.

Besides that, she's covered in cuts and bruises. Her neck that already looked horrible from Zain, barely looks like skin anymore. Her eyebrow and lip are busted, along with her cheek. All things that will definitely scar. I've seen the scars on her wrist, though, and she has never shied away from them. I hope these new scars won't bother her either.

I lean over to her bed, grabbing her hand and laying my head down next to her on the bed.

"I need you to be okay, Amri. I'm so, so proud of you for being the protector you needed, and I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me to be. I don't know how the hell you did it, but you killed the son of a bitch." My voice trails off with a laugh as I think of my mate. My strong, independent, wonderful mate.

I thought her training was a load of bullshit when they first started, but over time I got to witness Amri coming out of her shell. The small woman who didn't believe in herself slowly became this larger than life badass, and I couldn't be prouder.

I wish I could see how she took that fucker down.

Wait.

I sit up, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I hope they haven't deactivated my account yet. I tap on my work app and type in my login.

"Login successful"

Yes.

Clicking on the camera feature, I find the one to Amri's room and find it completely empty. Royce's body is nowhere to be found, just his blood mixing with Amri's all over the room.

I rewind it, seeing the paramedics carrying Amri out, me talking to Marissa, and finally, the fight. I keep rewinding it until I see Royce walking into Amri's bedroom whilst she peacefully sleeps, probably in the dreamscape talking to one of our other mates.

He shuts the door behind him, sneaking up to her and slowly moving the covers back from her body. I feel my blood heating up for a few long moments as I watch him staring at her. And then she springs up, lashing out at him with her fists. The struggle goes on, him getting a knee to the dick while my angel fights back, showing her dark side .

My fist clenches, and I dig my nails into my hand chanting, "You can't do anything, now."

I've never felt as worthless, as weak, as I do as I watch him beat her, stripping her down and then tying up her ankle. I see them talking for a brief moment, and then he approaches the head of the bed. I know from the way I found him, that this is probably the time he took his dick out.

I swear, even from the distance of the camera, I can see when she decides to stop being the victim and to really fight back. To give pain instead of receiving it. She attacks, biting his dick and then untying herself before bringing him to the ground.

She hits him over and over again, and I can see her lips moving as she hits him.

My eyes widen as I watch her eyes begin to glow as she talks, and right when the glow is getting so bright that it begins to blind the camera, it disappears.

When I look at Royce, he's not breathing, and Amri is sitting on top of him in all her naked glory, with a smile on her face.

My shoulder's slump as I watch her move off of him and to where I found her at the side of her bed. Where her movements were strong and full of energy as she attacked him, now I can see how exhausted she is. How much the attack, and whatever she did to Royce, took out of her.

What did she do to him?

"Fuck." Marissa is going to see this video. She's going to see that something is different about Amri. I can't let that happen.

I logout of the app, and then quickly log back in with Jyl's credentials instead of mine. I don't have access to delete footage, but my sister does.

Did.

I feel the tears start to fall again as I think of my sister, but I wipe my face and finish what I started. I can't help Jyl, but I can help Amri. I navigate back to Amri's bedroom footage, and I delete it all.

Now there's no chance they'll see the video of her killing Royce, or of anyone ever in her room. Not that I don't trust Jyl's skills, but better safe than sorry.

The door opening makes me jump, quickly sliding my phone in my pocket and looking over at the doorway, but it's not a nurse like I expected.

It's a man. Light brown hair and brown hooded eyes. He's attractive, but not nearly as attractive as the rest of my mates. He walks in holding a bouquet of flowers, and his eyes immediately find Amri.

His eyes find mine. "Hello there, who are you?"

I stand up, looking him up and down as he regards me in the same way.

"I'm Damion. And you are?"

His head nods, "Ohh, you're the nurse that found her. Thank God you were there. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't there to save her."

"Actually, she saved herself. The guy was dead before I even walked in. Again, who are you?"

He smiles and holds out his hand. "I'm Timothy, Amri's fiancé. I'm surprised she held her own if I'm being honest."

I don't shake his hand, and I watch as it falls along with his smile. "Your ex-fiancée is stronger than you know. But I guess you never knew that because you were too busy bringing her down."

His eyes fill with anger as he tosses the flowers into my empty chair. "Do you have a problem with me?"

I chuckle, "The only thing I have a problem with is you waltzing in here acting like you're worried, when we both know damn well you couldn't care less when you kicked her out onto the street."

"So that whore is just out here telling everyone our business now?"

I walk over to him, grabbing his shirt in my fist and pulling his face to mine. "Watch how you're fucking talk about her!"

His eyes widen before he breaks out into a laugh. I let him go as he doubles over, laughing so hard it causes him to lose his breath.

I hear movement behind me, and turn around to find Amri sitting up and staring wide-eyed at her ex.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Amri!" I rush over to the door, yelling at the nurses that she's awake before I run back to her and wrap my arms around her as gently as I can. "Oh, baby, I was so fucking scared."

She sniffles underneath me. "I'm okay, but what is he doing here?"

Timothy scoffs behind me. "I'm still your emergency contact, Amri. But it looks like you replaced me pretty easily. Fucking the help is below even you."

She opens her mouth to yell, but it's too late. I'm already springing at him, hitting him in the jaw and smiling as his body sails backward onto the floor.

"What the fuck!" He grabs his jaw, rubbing it, and shaking his head. "You're going to pay for that."

He stands up, walking to me with his fists clenched, but I don't even let him get close enough before I punch him again, once more sending him to the floor. He spits blood onto the floor, but as soon as he starts to get up, the door opens and a nurse walks in.

"Oh my." She looks around the room, eyes finding an awake Amri lying in bed, me with my fists clenched up, and Timothy lying on the floor.

As soon as he sees her, he lays back down, holding his jaw. "It hurts! It hurts so bad. That man attacked me!" He points to me. "I was only trying to see my fiancée."

"She doesn't want you here!"

I turn toward the nurse, ready to explain myself, but she's already in the doorway motioning for the hospital guards.

"That's not necessary. They aren't even engaged anymore."

"No, we're not! You can have that whore!"

I lunge for him again, but before I can get close, guards grab me by both of my arms and start hauling me out of the door.

"Damion!"

I hear Amri yelling for me and my body droops down at the sound.

"You'll be paying for this!" Timothy yells after me, and I see the nurse bent over him inspecting his face.

The guards carry me all the way outside before letting me go.

I motion back toward the doors. "They aren't engaged anymore; he doesn't need to be here."

"We'll deal with him, but you are not allowed back on hospital premises."

"But – "

The one on the left shakes his head. "No buts. If you are seen on hospital grounds, you will be taken straight to jail for trespassing."

I sigh. "Will you at least tell her I love her?"

The guard stares at me for a moment before nodding. "That I can do."