Chapter 22 · Invoice

"Sign here." Cassian dropped a folder on the steel tray, right next to the suture kit, close enough that blood from my gloves smeared the corner of it.

"I'm elbow-deep in your rival's chest cavity." I didn't look up. Ethan's heart monitor beeped steady under my hand, which was the only good news in the room. "Whatever this is, it waits."

"It's an invoice." He said it flat, like that word wasn't a grenade. "Clinic debt. Paid in full. Twenty minutes ago."

My hands stopped moving over the incision. Just for a second. Long enough that he noticed — he always noticed — and his mouth did that thing where it wasn't a smile but wanted to be.

"You didn't ask me."

"You were busy." He nodded at Ethan, unconscious, chest taped, my scalpel still warm on the tray. "Saving the guy who threw you away in front of forty wolves. Didn't seem like the moment for paperwork."

"There's never going to be a moment, Cassian, that's the point." I peeled a glove off, snapped it into the bin.