Chapter 15

The wolfsbane moved through me like slow fire.

Every heartbeat pushed the burn farther—up my neck, into my jaw, behind my eyes. My legs no longer felt entirely mine. Isaac’s arm was the only solid thing keeping me upright. I could feel the tremor running through him, the effort of holding both me and the fury that wanted to tear the greenhouse apart.

Jackson McCall did not raise his voice. He never needed to.

“Isaac,” he said again, patient as a man explaining something to a child. “Release the girl and step aside. We are leaving.”

Isaac’s answer was quiet and absolute. “No.”

One of the men in dark coats shifted his weight. The other kept his eyes on the broken door, watching the rain-slick path. Lydia remained near the wall, hands folded, expression politely interested, as if she were attending a performance she had already seen rehearsed.

Jackson’s gaze moved over me the way a doctor might examine a wound that had already turned septic. “She is contaminated. The longer you keep her close, the more the poison spreads through the bond. You feel it already, don’t you? That drag in your own blood.”

I felt Isaac flinch. He had been trying to hide it, but the healing he had poured into me earlier had cost him. The same fire that burned under my skin now flickered faintly under his.

“I can still take it,” he said. “I can pull more.”

“You will pull enough to collapse,” Jackson replied. “And then I will still have to clean up both of you. Be reasonable for once in your life.”

The words landed harder than a shout. Isaac’s jaw locked. I wanted to speak, to tell him to let go, to run, to do anything except stand between his father and me while the poison turned my thoughts slow and thick. My tongue felt heavy. Only a thin sound escaped.

Jackson sighed, almost regretful. “Bring the car to the side path. We will handle the rest off campus.”

The first man turned toward the door. Isaac moved faster. He shifted me against his left side and placed himself fully in the exit, body coiled.

“Touch her and I will make sure every pack in three territories hears how the McCall heir was forced to choose between his father and his mate in front of witnesses.”

Jackson’s expression did not change, but something colder settled behind his eyes. “There are no witnesses that matter. The girl on the floor earlier is already being collected. The nurse will be delayed. The headmaster has been informed that a private family matter is being resolved. You have no leverage left, Isaac.”

Lydia spoke for the first time since his arrival, her voice soft and precise. “I told you she would become a liability. You should have listened sooner.”

Isaac’s head snapped toward her. “Get out.”

She did not move. “Your father asked me to stay. Someone has to confirm the narrative once this is finished.”

Narrative. The word turned my stomach. I could already see the shape of it—scholarship girl collapses after confronting the McCall heir, tragic overdose of wolfsbane from an unknown source, unfortunate timing after a public argument. Clean. Contained. Forgotten by the end of the week.

The burn reached my lungs. Breathing turned shallow. Black spots drifted across the edges of my vision. Isaac felt it. I knew because his arm tightened and the bond between us flared with raw, panicked heat as he tried again to draw the poison into himself.

It was not enough.

Jackson watched the exchange with clinical interest. “You see? Even now the bond weakens you both. A true pairing would never have chosen someone this fragile. Your mother would have been disappointed.”

Something dangerous flickered across Isaac’s face at the mention of his mother. For a moment I thought he might attack. Instead he lowered his voice until it was almost a growl.

“You do not get to use her name. Not here. Not with what you’re planning.”

Jackson took one step closer. Rainwater dripped from the broken panes onto the floor between them, each drop loud in the silence.

“I am protecting the bloodline,” he said. “Something you seem determined to throw away for a girl who cannot even shift properly. Do you understand what happens if the other families learn the McCall heir is bound to a powerless wolf? The alliances collapse. The territory fractures. Everything your grandfather built ends because you could not control an impulse.”

“It is not an impulse.”

“It is a biological accident that can still be corrected.”

The second man moved then—quiet, professional. He circled wide, trying to come up on Isaac’s unguarded side. Isaac saw him and pivoted, keeping me shielded. The movement sent a fresh wave of nausea through me. My knees buckled completely. Only Isaac’s grip kept me from hitting the wet tiles.

Jackson’s voice hardened. “Enough. Take her.”

Both men closed in at once.

Isaac did not hesitate. He shoved me behind the nearest workbench and met the first man with a brutal shoulder check that sent the larger body crashing into a stack of empty pots. Clay shattered. The second man grabbed for my arm. I tried to twist away, but the poison had stolen most of my strength. His fingers closed around my wrist like iron.

Isaac’s roar shook the glass still left in the frames.

He was on the second man in a blur of motion, fist connecting once, twice, three times until the grip on my wrist released. Blood speckled the floor—none of it mine. The first man recovered and drove a fist into Isaac’s ribs hard enough to force the air from his lungs. Isaac staggered but did not go down. He caught the man’s coat, used the momentum, and slammed him face-first into the metal edge of a bench.

Lydia had backed toward the wall, eyes bright, recording every second on the phone she now held in one hand.

Jackson did not intervene. He simply watched his son fight two trained men while the girl he had ordered removed struggled to stay conscious three feet away.

The wolfsbane reached my heart.

Pain detonated outward in a single white flash. I folded, catching myself on the edge of the workbench. A broken sound tore from my throat. Isaac’s head snapped toward me instantly. The distraction cost him. The larger of the two men caught him across the temple with a heavy forearm. Isaac dropped to one knee, blood running from a cut above his eye.

“Stop,” I tried to say. The word came out ruined.

Jackson finally moved. He stepped over the debris and crouched in front of me, close enough that I could smell the expensive wool of his coat and the faint metallic scent of power that clung to pureblood wolves.

“This ends now,” he said, almost kindly. “You will come quietly. Isaac will recover. The bond will fade once the physical proximity is removed long enough. In time he will thank me.”

I forced my eyes up to his. Grey meeting green that held none of Isaac’s warmth.

“He will never forgive you.”

Jackson’s mouth curved a fraction. “Forgiveness is a luxury. Survival is not.”

He reached for me.

Isaac rose behind him like something unholy, blood streaking one side of his face, eyes fully shifted to the wolf’s gold-ringed green. The sound that left his chest was not human.

Jackson turned, but not fast enough.

Isaac hit him with the full force of every suppressed year of obedience and rage. Father and son crashed sideways into the remaining glass panes. The greenhouse screamed as more panels shattered. Rain poured through the new openings in heavy sheets.

The two men scrambled to pull Isaac off. For a moment the three of them were a single thrashing shape of fists and coats and wet hair. Lydia’s phone light trembled as she kept filming.

I tried to crawl toward the door. My arms would not hold me. The poison had turned my blood to lead. I collapsed onto my side, cheek pressed to the cold, wet tile, watching the fight blur in and out of focus.

A new set of footsteps pounded up the path outside—lighter, faster, more than one pair.

Kate’s voice cut through the rain, high with panic. “Charlotte! Isaac!”

Then another voice, older, sharp with authority. Ms. Weathers, the school nurse. And behind them the heavier tread of at least two prefects.

Jackson heard them too. He shoved Isaac hard enough to create space and straightened his coat with deliberate calm, as if the blood on his collar belonged to someone else.

“This is a family matter,” he said to the approaching figures, voice once again under perfect control. “You will leave.”

Ms. Weathers did not leave. She dropped to her knees beside me, medical bag already open, eyes narrowing at the red-black veins climbing my neck.

“Wolfsbane,” she said. “Concentrated. How long?”

I could not answer. My vision tunneled.

Isaac tore free of the two men and fell to his knees on my other side, hands framing my face again, forehead pressed to mine. The bond flared one last desperate time as he poured everything he had left into me.

Jackson’s voice drifted above us, calm and final.

“Take the girl to the car. The rest of you will forget what you saw here tonight. That is not a request.”

The two men started forward once more.

Isaac lifted his head. Blood ran into his eye. His voice, when it came, was raw and absolute.

“Anyone who touches her dies.”

The words hung in the ruined greenhouse like a vow that could not be taken back.

Outside, more footsteps approached—heavier this time, multiple sets, the distinct rhythm of campus security responding to a call. Or something worse.

Jackson McCall looked down at his son and the poisoned girl in his arms, and for the first time that night something like uncertainty crossed his face.

Then the first of the new arrivals stepped through the broken doorway, and everything changed.