Chapter 200: Warmth From Somewhere Else

Damian ended the call with a vicious jab of his thumb, tossing the phone back onto the wood.

The room plunged back into heavy silence. Damian let out a harsh, shuddering breath and pulled Ana back flush against his chest, tucking the duvet securely around her trembling shoulders.

He stared down at her pale, sunken features, his thumb brushing slowly over the delicate curve of her cheekbone.

"Why can’t you just accept me the way I am?" Damian whispered against her burning temple, his voice cracking into a raw, ragged plea he would never dare utter if she were awake. "Why can’t you just compromise... just a little, Ana?"

Damian lay in the stillness of the dimly lit room, the silence pressing down on them with the weight of lead.

Ana hadn’t opened her eyes. She remained trapped in the heavy, suffocating fog of fever and sedatives, her head nestled deep into the hollow of his shoulder. But in that fragile borderland between delirium and deep sleep, her subconscious refused to be silenced.

Her dry lips parted, releasing a trembling, paper-thin breath against his bare skin.

"I want to be happy, Damian..." she murmured, her voice slurred, faint as a dying ember, yet slicing through the quiet with brutal precision. Her brow twitched in distress, her cheek shifting restlessly against his chest. "Do I not... deserve it?"

Damian’s chest stopped moving. He held his breath, every nerve in his body drawn taut as wire.

A weak, involuntary tremor ran through her fingers where they lay curled against his collarbone, clutching faintly at the fabric before going limp once more.

"If you can’t give me what I want..." Ana exhaled, a ragged, broken whimper slipping out as her head rolled slightly to the side, sinking back into unconsciousness. "...I’ll have to look for it... somewhere else..."

Her voice trailed off entirely. Her breathing leveled back into the shallow, steady rhythm of deep sleep, leaving behind a silence so absolute it made his ears ring.

Damian sat frozen in the dark.

The words echoed violently against the hollow walls of his skull. She hadn’t thrown them at him out of spite or calculated cruelty—she had spoken them from the unguarded depths of her sleep, which made them infinitely more devastating.

Somewhere else.

The thought seized him like a physical blow to the ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. He looked down at her pale, sunken features, the delicate line of her jaw bathed in the amber glow of the bedside lamp. He knew with brutal clarity what she wanted. She wanted sunlight. She wanted gentleness, warmth, and peace—all the soft, untainted things that had been beaten out of him the day his father hung from a beam in an empty office.

He was cold stone and calculated vengeance. He couldn’t offer her poetry or soft confessions; he only knew how to protect through control, how to claim through ironclad contracts and towering walls.

And if he ever opened this gilded cage, if he ever let her walk out that door, she wouldn’t look back. She would run straight toward the light, toward a life untouched by the Sterling curse. She would find another man to hold her like this, another man to give her the family she dreamed of, another life where Damian Vance Sterling was nothing more than a dark, half-forgotten scar from her past.

The sheer, sickening agony of that image clawed at his chest, hot and suffocating.

Damian’s jaw locked so hard the bone ached. The vulnerability that had cracked open inside him slammed shut, replaced by a possessive, territorial fury that burned away the doubt.

Slowly, deliberately, he shifted closer, gathering her limp, feverish frame against him until there was no daylight between them. His large hand slid around the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in the silk of her hair as he buried his face against her temple. His heartbeat hammered against her trapped hands—wild, unyielding, and absolute.

"You won’t look anywhere else, Anastasia," Damian whispered into her hair, his voice a low, lethal vow spoken only to the ghosts in the room. "If there is any happiness left for you in this world, you will find it under my roof. In my arms. Nowhere else."

A soft knock sounded at the bedroom door, breaking the heavy stillness of the late afternoon.

Victoria stepped in, carrying a small lacquer tray with a steaming bowl of clear ginger-chicken broth and a carafe of water. She didn’t announce herself, but her sharp eyes took in the scene instantly: Damian, bare-chested under the heavy duvet, holding Anastasia firmly against his side, his arm banded around her waist as if anchoring her to the bed.

Victoria set the tray quietly on the bedside table. She looked at her son—not with judgment, but with a quiet, knowing sorrow that made Damian’s jaw tighten.

"The fever has lowered slightly," Victoria said under her breath. "Eat with her. Do not let her stomach sit empty."

"Leave it," Damian murmured, keeping his voice low so as not to startle Ana.

Victoria lingered for only a heartbeat, searching his dark, guarded face, before she turned and slipped out, letting the door latch shut behind her.

A few minutes later, the stirrings in his arms grew more distinct. Ana’s eyelashes fluttered against her pale cheeks. She let out a long, trembling breath and slowly blinked open her hazel eyes, squinting against the soft amber light of the bedside lamp. The fever had receded enough to clear the heavy fog from her mind, leaving behind a profound, hollow exhaustion.

When she realized she was lying flush against Damian’s bare chest, trapped in the circle of his arm, she tensed instantly. Her knuckles dug weakly into the mattress as she tried to pull away.

"Stop moving," Damian said, his voice deep, gravelly, and unyielding.

He didn’t let her scramble out of bed. Instead, he shifted upright, propping the heavy pillows behind her back and helping her sit up against the headboard before pulling the duvet securely over her lap.

He reached for the lacquer tray, picking up the small porcelain spoon and the warm bowl of broth.

"I don’t want anything," Ana whispered, turning her face away from him, her voice frail but brittle with stubborn pride.

"You haven’t kept food down since yesterday," Damian replied, completely ignoring her protest. He stirred the broth, lifted a spoonful, and blew gently across the steam until it cooled. Then, with steady, unhurried precision, he held the spoon directly in front of her lips. "Open your mouth, Anastasia."

"Damian—"

"Eat. Or I swear to God I will hold you down and call a medical team to insert a feeding line through your nose. Do not test me on this."

Ana glared at him, her eyes glistening with raw frustration. The utter absence of cruelty in his hands made the threat bizarrely terrifying; he wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t bruising her wrists—he was blowing on a spoon to keep from burning her tongue. Unable to fight the hollow ache in her ribs, she parted her dry lips and took the broth.

It was warm, light, and soothing against her raw throat.

Neither of them spoke. The cavernous bedroom was filled only with the quiet clink of the porcelain spoon against the bowl. Damian fed her methodically, one measured spoonful at a time, wiping away a stray drop from her bottom lip with his thumb—a touch so instinctively tender it made Ana’s breath catch in her throat. She stared down at his scarred hands, terrified by the suffocating intimacy of it all, wondering when the man who had cast her into the mud had learned how to nurse a wounded bird.

By ten that night, the fragile silence shattered.

The chime of the private elevator echoed through the penthouse foyer, followed by the firm, hurried clip of dress shoes against marble.

Dr. Vance arrived flanked by Henry and two private security guards. The middle-aged physician looked visibly strained, her coat half-buttoned and her hair hastily pinned back, carrying a heavy, brushed-steel medical case and a portable centrifuge unit. Damian’s scorched-earth ultimatum had left no room for hesitation.

Victoria met them in the hall, ushering the doctor directly into the master bedroom where Damian stood waiting at the foot of the bed. He had put on a fresh, dark shirt, the sleeves rolled up, his stance rigid as an iron bar.

Ana sat upright against the pillows, clutching the duvet to her chest, looking smaller and paler under the clinical glare of the overhead lights.

"Mr. Sterling," Dr. Vance said, her voice tight with professional neutrality, though her eyes darted nervously between Damian’s lethal expression and Victoria’s quiet presence. "Your assistant made it abundantly clear that waiting for morning was not an option."

"You took your time getting from Westchester," Damian countered, his tone flat, razor-sharp, and stripped of courtesy. "Examine her. Now."

"Damian, let the woman breathe," Victoria warned softly from the doorway.

Dr. Vance set her heavy equipment on the vanity table, snapping the latches open with practiced, clinical precision. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and walked over to the bed, offering Ana a gentle, reassuring nod.

"Good evening, Anastasia. Let’s see what’s going on," Dr. Vance said, pulling out a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff.