Jamie was doing chest compressions. The rest of the forest started to move around him again, and Aaron realized he needed to do something, anything, now. If there was a way to keep from losing her, or bring her back if she was already gone, they needed to find it. Running a hand through his hair, he stepped forward out of his memories and dropped to the ground next to her, ignoring the fact that his knees were instantly coated in her sticky, crimson blood. “Breathe for her,” Jamie said as he reached thirty, and Aaron’s instincts took over. He knew how to do CPR. Tilting her head back to open her airways, he breathed into her still-warm lips twice and then waited for Jamie as he pumped her heart for her. The doctor may as well have been counting in slow motion. It seemed like it took forever for him to reach thirty again. When he did, Aaron dutifully gave her two more breaths, willing her to start breathing again on her own. She didn’t.
A crowd had gathered at Cadence’s feet, spectators stacking up between the trees. Hannah was doing her best to keep them all calm, he could feel it now, but the sounds of quiet sobs still broke through the consistency of Jamie’s counting. Aaron couldn’t pull his eyes away to look at any of them but knew Cassidy was standing to Jamie’s right, Brandon’s arms around her, tears streaking her face. Elliott was near Cadence’s boots—her favorite pair, the ones Aaron had gotten for her just a few weeks ago, a birthday present. A “because I know you’d love them” present. He could hear their mutual best friend muttering under his breath, some sort of prayer mixed with every curse word he’d ever heard. Jamie reached thirty. Aaron breathed. Cadence didn’t.
Her IAC hadn’t stopped working until she was already on the ground. He could’ve fallen with her, seen what she was seeing, if he’d wanted to. He hadn’t. Now, it was off, completely black, not a message of goodbye, though he’d seen her mouth moving as she fell and knew in his heart she was apologizing. She had nothing to be sorry about; she’d been doing her job. He was the one who had failed her, the one who wasn’t there when she needed him.... Maybe he would’ve had time to say something to her while she was plummeting through the air if he’d been able to function, but he hadn’t sent her a message either. Maybe acknowledging that she was untethered might mean their connection was broken, too.
“Thirty.”
Breathe. Breathe. “Cadence, breathe!” Sending her messages did no good when the light wasn’t on. “Come on, Cadence. Please, breathe! I can’t do this without you. I can’t do anything without you. Breathe! Damn it! Breathe!”
“Cass, you got anything? Anything at all?” Elliott asked, the desperation in his voice mirroring the emotion Aaron felt seeping into his pores.
He glanced up then, tore his eyes away from that beautiful face to look at her sister, praying she’d have something to say. She swiped at her tears. “No,” she said, shaking her head, but there was more. He could feel it. “It’s only... something... else.”
“What do you mean?” Elliott asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassidy admitted. “I can’t describe it. I’ve never sensed it before. It’s like... a conscious mind with no thoughts.”
Aaron felt hopeful for a moment. Was it possible Cadence was still with them but wasn’t fully capable of thinking yet?
“It ain’t her, though,” Heather said from behind Elliott. “I can feel it, too. But whoever it is, it ain’t Cadence.”
“No, you’re right, it’s not. But it is weird....”
His hopes shattered, Aaron dropped his eyes back to Cadence’s face, no longer interested in whatever it was the two Hybrids were picking up, until Jamie’s “thirty” came out even more remorseful than the last one. Aaron breathed for his broken wife and then looked at his friend. Even if he wasn’t an emotional empath, he might’ve been able to detect Jamie’s shift in disposition. His sorrow wasn’t just for Cadence, all of a sudden. It was for... someone else.
Reality hit him hard, hard enough to knock him backward onto the forest floor, a stunned silence taking over his countenance again. He stared at Jamie in disbelief, waiting for some sort of an acknowledgment. But the doctor was too busy counting, too busy making Cadence’s heart beat—keeping Aaron’s baby alive. Cadence was pregnant—with his baby—a baby that would only stay alive as long as its mother’s heart was beating, as long as there was oxygen in her blood....
“Breathe, Aaron,” Jamie demanded, and then he remembered that he had a job to do and sat back up to do it, although Jamie might as well have been reminding him that he also needed oxygen to function. He did as he was told, blowing two breaths into the body that housed the two most important souls in the universe and then stared at the doctor, willing him to answer the unanswerable, willing him to say something so that he didn’t lose his mind.
It took a moment for Jamie to acknowledge that Aaron knew who it was Cassidy and Heather were sensing. Whether it was because he was tied up or because he didn’t know what to say, Aaron couldn’t be sure, but when he finally spoke, continuing to pound on Cadence’s chest as he did so, his explanation was guarded. “She just found out. Right before we came here.”
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
The Healer nodded. “Twenty-nine, thirty.”
Aaron breathed twice. Then waited.
Jamie got to fifteen before he could speak again. His voice broke when he did. “She didn’t... think you’d let her come if you knew.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
There wasn’t anything else for Jamie to say, so he didn’t, except for the counting, the counting that started over twice a minute and never stopped. He reached thirty, and as heartache from two centuries ago welled up inside of him, Aaron pressed his lips to Cadence’s mouth and breathed twice. Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to let them fall because acknowledging their presence meant giving up. And he couldn’t do that, not again. Not this time. He couldn’t do any of it again. He said as much, a quick message to the doctor across from him. Jamie said aloud, “I know. Me neither,” because he loved Cadence, too. Not the same way, but he loved her.
They all did. All of these people crowding around, those who had known her for as long as she’d been a part of the team, those who’d met her in person for the first time earlier that day, they all loved her. Every single person in the ravine was praying to whatever power they believed in that the Hunter Leader would open her eyes. Across the globe, as messages were sent, as people watching the hunt realized what had happened, prayers and well-wishes, hopeful thoughts and crossed fingers, every positive vibration in the universe was coming their way on the wings of thousands of Hunters and Guardians who wanted nothing else in the world but for Cadence Findley McReynolds to take a breath and open her eyes.
She didn’t. It had been six minutes. Jamie’s desperation was starting to fade into despair. He said thirty. Aaron breathed twice. Cadence Findley McReynolds lay on the ground completely still, a beautiful tragedy.
