3

I came to strapped to a table. I turned my head only to find a man I had never seen before standing next to me. “Please donet bo hiss.” My words were garbled, and I shook my head to clear it before I tried again. The doctor turned to face me, and he was pale. After Shannon and Brandon’s cruel faces, this man's pale and sweaty face confused my already addled brain. But I had to save my pup. “Please don’t do this.” I forced the words slowly. The cuts on my face pulled with each movement of my mouth.

The doctor leaned over me. “I’m sorry. He commanded me, and I don’t know how to refuse it.” He shook as he straightened. He turned back to the tray beside the bed and started to shift things around. “I really don’t want to do this. But I promise to be as gentle as I can be.”

As gentle as he can be… The words bounced around in my mind, and I started to laugh. This entire fucking week had been the worst of my life, but this doctor was going to be as gentle as he could be while he did whatever he was being made to do. He turned to look at the hysterical woman on his table, and I saw something akin to fear shift under his eyes.

A door opened, and it barely registered. The laughter that was still pouring from me was half hysterical. But Shannon’s voice cut through it all. “You can laugh at a time like this?” The soft click of her heels bounced off the white walls. Her face appeared on my right side. She leaned down and grabbed my face. “You are going to die on this table.” Her voice was soft, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear her. It went against the image she was trying to portray to my mate.

Not my mate anymore. The laughter kept going. The absurdity of this entire fucking week kept hitting me in waves. My father…My mother. Cass. They are all gone. The laughter died down, and I screamed. The doctor jolted and whirled to look at me, but Shannon jolted back. The scream that poured out of me was all my pain and anger from these past days.

I felt my wolf press closer to me, another life I lost. “I’m sorry.” The words fell from my lips. “I’m sorry you got stuck with such a weak human.” I wanted to smack the grin off Shannon’s face, but there was no use.

Nix huffed out a breath. You have been the very best human I could have been paired with. I love you. I felt an overwhelming flood of love and sorrow. Our pup was too good for this pack, anyway. Nix’s parting words were soft, and then she faded away. Her mournful howl was the last thing I heard from her.

“Doctor, begin.” Shannon came back to the table side to watch. The grin on her face widened as the Doctor turned with a scalpel in his hand. He came to my side, and I could see that he didn’t want to do this.

“Do what I tasked you with, Doctor.” Brandon’s voice rang out, and I felt the command in his words.

The man standing over me closed his eyes, and when he opened them, there was no life left in them. It was like he shut off his humanity. His wolf’s eyes reflected the light as he sliced towards my stomach, but Shannon’s hand snapped out, stopping him. His face snapped to hers, and his voice was a deep rumble. “What are you doing?”

Shannon tilted her head and sighed. “You grabbed the wrong scalpel, Doc.” She nodded at the tray. “Grab the silver one.”

The doctor’s eyes flashed again. Then he let out a growl and threw the scalpel in his hand down to the ground, before snatching the silver-bladed one from the table. “Happy?”

Shannon’s eyes tightened at the disrespect in his voice, but she chose to ignore it. “Very.” She turned back to me and leaned down to my ear. “Do you want to know something?”

My eyes met hers, and I saw the cruel words forming in her mind. “What?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

“When your dad was dying…and he saw it was us attacking. He asked, why.” She pulled back and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Brandon told him it was because you told him too.” A gasp left me, but she wasn’t finished. “I can see that you are thinking he wouldn’t believe it. And you are right; he didn’t. Not until Brandon told him you blamed your mom's death on him. If he hadn’t betrayed her, then you all would have been together, and she wouldn’t have died bearing a pup for a man she wasn’t mated to.” I knew my father would have believed that, because he had even blamed himself for over twenty years for betraying her.

I thrashed against the bindings. Nix surged to the surface. “You’re lying.”

Shannon frowned, mocking my tears. “I wish I were.” Her smile came back even more vicious than before. “Your father died thinking you hated him enough to wipe out his pack. He thought you were there, wiping out that pathetic friend of yours…what was her name? Cass?”