as'

y control over it. My wolf dropped back i

t through my pants, sharp enou

and against my own chest and felt something hollow sit

nning down into the flask below her wasn't red. It caught the l

voice didn't sound lik

under the velvet lining of her tray and palmed a second vial, smaller than the first, the liquid inside da

ed her arm hard enough to

he said, her shoul

mbled back and caught a cart, metal

her and pressed my ear flat against her chest, hold

ing

whole life was fading into something closer to memory,

r what was happening in that room.

udden and complete, the way a limb disappears in one cut

something back to me that felt like my own regret. It pulle

mouth still hanging open. Something in

ed her there. Because I needed to feel something, anything,

ed with myself for needing that. My hands

t it wasn't. "Wipe every phone in this building. If one

e for the first time. "Her pulse is thready. She will survi

around Ivy's wrist and felt h

d? She is a corpse in e

y's eyes, but nothing spilled o

rising or falling anymore. "She was supposed to survive. The heir was su

ious she was already several steps ahead of the rest of us. Alpha Lucas. The blood is extr

nt exchange passing between them that shut off before I could ca

ached from how hard I'd be

king with every step. She weighed almost nothing, less than nothi

a pack," Ivy said behind me, quie

nna's

emembered before. Underneath it sat a smell I recognized and hated just as fast, antisep

rth at an even pace. Someone pacing. Someone

h no windows. Machines blinking somewhere off to the side. Everything

n't left their territory. I was still trapped

extraction, then Lucas's face gone empty of everything, and I

deways beneath me. My hand shot out and caught the bedfra

feel like strength. It felt more like ice, cre

ugh the fog. I was still breath

le turned bef

here was real relief in his voice, an

ather's exile as a kind of punishment. Gray had crept further into his hair s

ble without touching me. "Your body is still recov

ce before he caught it, his eyes

eyes,

own clinging uncomfortably to my skin. "Here to finish his wo

reached for the gauze, then se

up, his fingers trembled slightly as he wrapped my wrist. "I could not stop the

re cheap

gaze fixed somewhere past my shoulde

my throat, dry, nothi

s toward me across the blanket. "Go to the mirror. If Luc

oor behind me. The click of it landed loud in the small tiled s

already gone the color of ash, flaking at the edges. Underneath my skin, the bond still pulse

at me. Not gray, not blue, but an actual metallic sil

sion, but it wasn't only my eyes that had changed. My hair had shifted to

came out barely aud

the one from the hidden photographs my father kept from me, images I was never

g's corner, holding perfectly still, turning over the same question again and aga