The moment the smell of her blood hit his nose, something inside Rohan ruptured so violently that the world around him simply... dropped away. The cannons, the gunfire, the cracking bones, everything vanished as if someone had torn sound itself from the air.
The battlefield kept moving, mouths open in shouts he could no longer hear, bodies falling in dust he could no longer sense. His ears rang with a single, fierce pulse that wasn't sound at all but the thunder of his own heart pounding through him.
Belle's weight sagged heavier in his arms, and her breath hitched against his chest.
The small body of their newborn was squeezed between them, whimpering faintly, yet even that sound did not reach him. She had been shot...
It was only her blood that he felt. Only her. The chaos was still happening, but it might as well have been a dream a thousand miles away. His entire being narrowed to the warmth seeping through his fingers, until she moaned out his name and whispered,
