Chapter 239: You’re alive

By the time they got to the safehouse, a private medical facility that Marco had arranged, staffed by people who asked no questions and were paid very well for their discretion.....James was being treated as a body, not as a patient.

Medical examiner documentation would later classify his cause of death as "viral hemorrhagic fever, origin unknown."

Which was technically accurate.

Just not the whole story.

Dimitri sat in the back room of the safehouse while doctors worked on his wounds....minor cuts from debris, some burns from the blast heat, but nothing serious.

Mike was waiting for him when the medical work was done.

"How many?" Mike asked.

"Everyone inside," Dimitri said. "The facility is destroyed. The samples are destroyed. The research is destroyed."

"And the people running it?"

"Dead," Dimitri said simply.

Mike nodded once. No judgment. Just understanding of what had been necessary.

"Eve?" Dimitri asked.

"Waiting," Mike said. "Nonna is with her. We told them you’d made it out. That you were coming home."

Home.

The word felt strange.

Dimitri had just destroyed an entire facility. Had killed dozens of people. Had watched a man die in his arms despite saving his life.

And now he was going home.

***

By afternoon, Dimitri was driving back to the penthouse.

The news was already reporting the "tragic industrial accident" a pharmaceutical facility. Investigators were treating it as an isolated incident. The building was a total loss. The cause was presumed to be a gas line rupture that had cascaded into structural failure.

No mention of the virus.

No mention of the test subjects.

No mention of The Covenant.

The world would move on, unaware of how close it had come to destruction. Unaware of the weaponized pathogen that could have killed tens of millions.

When he arrived at the penthouse, Eve was waiting at the elevator.

She took one look at him, at the cuts on his face, at the burn marks on his arms, at the haunted expression in his eyes....and she didn’t ask questions.

She just pulled him into her arms and held him.

"You’re alive," she whispered.

"I’m alive," he confirmed.

"You came back."

"I promised," Dimitri said.

And he held her while the weight of what he’d done settled over him like a physical thing. The destruction was complete. The threat was eliminated. The Covenant was ash.

But James was dead.

And Dimitri would carry that weight for the rest of his life.

***

Consciousness came slowly.

Not the jarring alarm-woken awareness of the past four days, but the natural drift upward from deep sleep into the soft morning light filtering through the penthouse windows.

For a moment, Dimitri didn’t know where he was.

His body tensed instinctively, muscles coiling for fight or flight, his mind cycling through facility layouts and extraction routes and....

Then he felt her.

Eve.

Warm and solid and real beside him. Her body curved against his, her breathing soft and steady, her presence the only anchor he needed to remember that he was home.

He was safe.

The Covenant was ash.

Dimitri opened his eyes.

Eve was watching him.

She was propped on one elbow, her dark hair falling over her shoulder, her hazel eyes tracking his face with an intensity that made his chest tighten. She looked exhausted. the kind of exhaustion that came from days of not sleeping, days of waiting and worrying and wondering if he would come back.

But she was smiling.

"Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," Dimitri replied, his voice rough from sleep.

"How long have you been staring at me?" he asked, and despite everything, despite the weight of James’s death, despite the bodies buried in the wreckage of the facility, despite the knowledge of what he’d done....he found himself smiling.

"About an hour," Eve said, and her hand came up to trace the line of his jaw. Her fingers were gentle, like she was confirming he was real. "Maybe longer. I lost track."

"You should have woken me."

"No," Eve said simply. "You needed the sleep. You looked... peaceful. I wanted you to stay peaceful as long as possible."

Dimitri reached for her and pulled her close, positioning her so that her head was resting on his chest, right over his heart where she could feel the steady rhythm of it beating.

For a long moment, they just lay like that.

His hand moved through her hair slowly, the repetitive motion grounding him.

Reminding him that this was real. That he’d made it back. That despite everything that had gone wrong, this one thing had gone right.

"You came back," Eve whispered against his chest.

Dimitri’s hand paused, then resumed its gentle movement through her hair.

"Yes," he said. "I did. I promised you that I’d come back to you."

He felt her breath hitch. Felt the slight tremor that ran through her body as the relief finally hit her fully. She’d been holding herself together for days, staying strong because that’s what he needed. But now that he was here, safe and whole, the control was starting to crack.

"I know," she said. "I knew you would. But I was still terrified."

"I know, baby. I know."

They lay in silence for another minute.

Then Dimitri felt her hand begin to move.

Down his chest.

Over his stomach.

Slipping beneath the covers.

Slipping beneath the waistband of the pajama pants he’d barely managed to put on before collapsing into bed last night.

Her fingers closed around his dick.

Dimitri growled.

The sound came from somewhere deep in his chest...not controlled, not planned, just pure visceral reaction to her touch after days of being surrounded by death and destruction.

"Jesus," he said, his voice tight. "Fuck, Eve..."

Her hand started moving.

Slow strokes. Deliberate. Her palm warm and soft and absolutely perfect.

Dimitri closed his eyes, his breath coming faster, his body responding immediately despite the exhaustion still clinging to him.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

Knew exactly how to touch him.

Knew exactly how to make him lose his mind.

After a minute of her skilled hand working him into full hardness, Dimitri managed to speak through the haze of arousal.

"Don’t tempt me this morning, Eve," he said, though his body was already betraying his words. "I just want to hold you in my arms this morning. Don’t make me change my mind."