He yanked me into his arms.

I panicked, struggling with everything I had. Kylian Gomez slammed two hard slaps against my face. My ears rang, the world blurring into a dizzying smear of light and shadow. He used the momentum to shove me to the ground, his weight crushing me instantly.

Then, the weight vanished.

A dull thud, a sharp cry, and suddenly, hands were grabbing my wrists, hauling me upright. Under the flicker of a dim streetlight, a man with a brow creased in concern stared down at me.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

I tried to nod, but my body felt like a lead weight. That was the last thing I knew.

...

Noise. Voices everywhere.

I opened my eyes, every muscle in my body screaming with soreness. I was lying in a hospital bed. A man was slumped in the chair beside me, his grip on my hand iron-tight.

I tried to pull away. "Who are you?"

The man jolted awake, his expression shifting from exhaustion to suspicion. "What did you say?"

"Who are you?"

He pulled the corner of his mouth into a cold, mocking smirk. "Serenity, that's a hell of a performance."

"My name is Serenity?"

I froze. My brain was a void, a blank slate of static. The man's face shifted, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his eyes.

They rushed me through a battery of tests. The man wouldn't stop pestering the doctor. Finally, the doctor stopped, dropping his chart with an impatient sigh.

"With this condition, genetics are just a footnote. The real catalyst is extreme emotional stress or severe trauma. She clearly hit a breaking point before this started."

The man didn't back down. "We ran a CT scan. It came back clear."

"This is autoimmune encephalitis. A standard CT scan won't catch it."

The man turned to look at me, and the light in his eyes slowly bled out. The composure he’d been faking shattered completely.

I smiled up at the doctor, whose name tag read Dr. Elias Duncan, Neurology.

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Duncan. Thank you for saving me last night."

Dr. Duncan looked stunned. "You remember me?"

I nodded. "Of course. From last night."

Beside me, the man’s face went dark with sudden, suffocating fury.