Chapter 2 - The Fire in the Veins
The cold coming off the babies was not just the chill of winter air; it was the icy numbness of encroaching clinical death.
Elias reached down with broad, calloused hands, his long fingers—marked by ink and old scar tissue—sliding beneath the sodden pink gown. The woman let out a broken, animal shriek, her fingernails scraping desperately against the heavy wool of his sleeve as she tried to fight him off. Her strength was nonexistent, an echo of pure adrenaline, but the ferocity in her hollowed, dark eyes burned with terrifying intensity.
"Easy," Elias murmured. The tone was uncharacteristically gentle, though his jaw remained clamped tight enough to crack enamel. "I have them. Look at me. I have them."
He scooped the first infant into his left arm. She weighed almost nothing—fragile as a sparrow, her skin cold as river stones. He reached back in and drew out the second twin. Both girls were naked against the elements, wrapped only in the shred of their mother’s soaked nightgown. Their lips were violet, their tiny fingernails dark.
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Without a second of hesitation, Elias ripped the buttons of his wool coat free, tearing his white shirt open down to the waist. The icy wind slammed into his exposed torso, but he didn't flinch.
He pulled both newborn girls against his bare skin, crushing them gently against the heat of his broad chest. His body temperature, stoked by adrenaline and vitality, radiated against their freezing limbs. He wrapped the heavy wool flaps of his overcoat around them, sealing them into his own warmth, trapping their tiny forms in the dark shelter between his ribs and his heart. One of the infants
