Four

No.

Mate. MATE. MATE.

No. No, no, no, no—

"Assessment," Axel says flatly. His hand touches my wrist, checking my pulse, and it's like lightning through my veins.

Every nerve ending I thought was dead roars back to life. Pain floods back, but so does sensation. My wolf surges forward with a strength I haven't felt in months.

He's healing us, Maya sobs. *He's healing us just by being near.*

My eyes fly open.

I can't help it. I can't control it. The bond snaps into place with such violent force that my back arches off the stretcher, and the sound that tears from my throat isn't human.

And there he is.

Tall. Broad-shouldered, moving with that majestic grace Lycans have. Black hair slicked back, trimmed beard, and a jagged scar running along his jaw that somehow makes him more attractive instead of less.

But it's his eyes that stop my heart.

Silver. Like moonlight given form. And they're looking right at me with absolutely no recognition. No surprise. No warmth.

Nothing but cold assessment, like I'm a puzzle he needs to solve before moving on to more important things.

The sacred mate bond which is supposed to be the universe's greatest gift, floods through me like poison. My wolf is howling, pressing against my skin, begging to get closer to him. My body is betraying me, responding to his presence with a hunger that makes me want to vomit.

Because he's the one. The one the Moon Goddess chose for me.

The man who ordered my parents' deaths.

The monster who burned my world.

And he feels nothing.

I can see it in his face. He knows. He absolutely knows. Lycans sense the mate bond instantly, stronger than werewolves ever do. He felt it the second he walked in.

And he doesn't care.

My body convulses. Bones crack and reform as the bond tries to force a partial shift. Crystal screams, grabbing my shoulders, trying to hold me down.

"Eve! EVE! Stay with me!"

But I'm not leaving. I'm being reborn, and it's the most agonizing thing I've ever experienced.

My wolf is chanting in my head: Ours, ours, ours, he's OURS—

He killed our parents, I snarl back at her.

HE'S OUR MATE.

"You need to sedate her," Axel says calmly, like I'm not writhing on the stretcher, like my entire existence isn't being rewritten. "She's going into shock."

"What's happening to her?" Crystal's voice is pure panic.

"Withdrawal, probably. Mixed with whatever poison is in her system." He's already moving to the next task, pulling on gloves. "Get me a full blood panel. I want to know what we're dealing with."

He's lying. He knows exactly what this is.

And he's going to pretend he doesn't.

The betrayal of it—the joke of it—crashes over me. I'm laughing and crying at the same time, and the sounds coming out of me are fractured and wrong.

"Sedate her. Now."

A needle slides into my arm. The world gets fuzzy around the edges. But even through the medication, even as consciousness slips away, I feel it:

The bond. Pulling. Demanding. Insisting that this man—this monster—is mine.

And knowing that he's going to reject me.

Knowing that somehow, that will hurt worse than dying ever could.

________

I wake up to Crystal's hand in mine and the certainty that I've crossed into some new circle of hell where the universe just keeps finding creative ways to break me.

The room is different now. They've moved me somewhere private—which either means I'm too important to let die in the hallway or too expensive to waste the bed on. Given where we are, I'm guessing the latter.

Crystal's head is bowed, her thumb stroking circles on the back of my hand. She looks like she's aged five years in the past few hours. Dark circles under her eyes, red hair falling out of its normally perfect bun, mascara smeared down her cheeks.

My wolf is quieter now, but she's there. Waiting. Hoping. Like a dog who thinks her owner is coming back even though he abandoned her on the side of the road.

The world feels different. 

Not better. Just different. Like someone's turned up the contrast on everything. The colors are sharper, sounds clearer, even the antiseptic hospital smell has layers I never noticed before.

My body doesn't hurt the way it did. The constant ache that's been my companion for weeks has dulled to something manageable. I can breathe without feeling like my lungs are filled with glass.

My wolf stirs, and that's when everything comes rushing back.

The ambulance. The hallway. The cruel receptionist. And then—

Him.

The memory hits hard. Silver eyes. Cedar and rain. That moment when my entire world turned upside down and my wolf screamed a word I didn't want to hear.

Mate.

No. No, that's impossible. It has to be. Some medication-induced hallucination. Some dying brain's last desperate attempt to make sense of chaos.

Except my wolf is humming now. She's content in a way she hasn't been in months. And my body feels stronger, more alive, like someone's plugged me into a power source I didn't know existed.

The door opens. I tense, but it's just a nurse—the older one, Margaret, who actually seemed to care whether I lived or died.

"You're awake," she says, keeping her voice low so she doesn't disturb Crystal. "How are you feeling?"

I don't respond. 

She comes closer, starts checking the monitors. "Your vitals have been improving steadily. Whatever the King did, it's working."

She makes some notes on her tablet. "You're lucky. Most werewolves don't respond this well to the king's special detox."

"The King will be back this afternoon to check on you," she continues. "Until then, try to rest. Your body's been through trauma."

She leaves before I can ask what time "afternoon" means. Before I can prepare myself for seeing him again.

Crystal stirs in her chair, blinks awake. For a moment she looks lost, disoriented. Then her eyes find me and she's up, crossing the distance between us in two strides.

"Eve. Oh my friend." Her hands frame my face, searching. "How do you feel? Are you in pain? Do you need—"

"I'm okay." I catch her hands, squeeze them. "I'm okay, Crystal."

She sinks onto the edge of the bed, and I see how exhausted she is. How scared she's been. There are tear tracks on her cheeks she hasn't bothered to wipe away.

"You scared the hell out of me," she whispers. "When they sedated you, I thought—" Her voice breaks. "I thought maybe bringing you here was a mistake. That you wouldn't wake up."

 She laughs, but it sounds slightly unhinged. "It's a fucking miracle that you're still alive."

Is it though? Or is it something else entirely? 

Crystal wouldn't stop talking or smiling like a lunatic.

"By the goddess, thank fuck we came here," she kept repeating. "If we hadn't, you'd be fucking dead, Eve. I still can't believe it, I don't even wanna think about it."

Her manic relief made me smile. She looked lighter, almost glowing, despite the dark circles under her eyes. For her, it was a miracle. For me, it was a knife to the gut.

"Tell me, Eve, how do you really feel?"

"Better," I said.

She gave a small laugh, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Eve, this is... fucking unbelievable."

I tried to smile for her. But inside, the irony burned. If only she knew why. My body wasn't just healing from treatment—it was reacting to Axel's power, to his touch, to that twisted bond fate had shoved on me without asking. Every time he came near, my wolf got stronger. Every examination left me more alive than before.

"Maybe I should thank that evil bastard," Crystal muttered. "Not that I want to, but damn... he saved you. I hate that he even exists, but fine, a little 'thank you' before I ruin his life sounds fair."

Her hand found mine and squeezed. "We did it, Eve. You're getting out of here, and everyone who thought you were dead will choke on their words. Especially that asshole Lance. He'll be destroyed. I'll make sure of it."

Her words twisted in my stomach. I wanted to share her rage, to picture Lance's downfall, but all I felt was this gnawing fear. Because she was celebrating a miracle I couldn't explain without breaking her heart. The truth would shatter something between us, something that wouldn't heal. 

She kept talking, already narrating our grand comeback, the shocked faces, the poetic revenge. But all I could see was blood.

In my head, I was making a stupid comparison between Axel and Lance. As if there was anything worth comparing. They were both bastards in their own way. Lance had broken me with lies and control games. Axel was destroying me with silence—with the fact that he could walk into my room, touch me, heal me, and feel absolutely nothing while my world tilted on its axis.

At least Lance looked at me like I existed, even if it was to hurt me. Axel didn't even bother to look long enough to hate me. His indifference cut deeper than any insult.

And still, my traitorous mind kept going back to him. To the way his fingers had found my pulse, to the warmth that had flooded through me when he touched my forehead. Would he have touched me like that if he'd known I wasn't just some nameless patient, but the ghost of a broken alliance? The daughter of the pack leaders whose deaths he'd ordered?

Part of me wanted to believe he wouldn't have changed a thing. That he wasn't the type to mix duty and emotion. The other part—the one I kept trying to shut up—whispered that maybe he would've let me die. Or worse, pitied me. And if there's one thing I hate more than pain, it's pity dressed up as kindness.

Crystal kept talking for a good ten minutes without stopping. She paced beside the bed.

"God, life's a joke. How can someone that cold and heartless have the gift of healing? Seriously, what kind of divine sense of humor is that?"

I stared at the ceiling while the antiseptic stung my nose. The air was too clean, like it wanted to scrub away what had happened here.

"And you know what's weird?" she went on. "I tested you for poison, and you were negative every time. Even when your vitals dropped. What kind of venom escapes trained senses? And I'm the doctor here, supposed to be competent."

My throat was dry, but I forced the words out. "It was probably some dark shit Lance used. The kind that's never found."

Crystal's head snapped up. "Well, that'd explain why Axel recognized it. Maybe he's used it before, on people."

The joke slipped out too fast. Then her eyes widened.

"Wait." She leaned closer. "Eve, you just... talked? A full sentence?"

I blinked, shrugged, a faint smile on my lips. "Looks like it."

"Holy shit." She was at my side in a heartbeat, close enough that I could smell her shampoo. "You're talking. You're actually talking."

A rough laugh escaped me. "You're overreacting."

She stared, half thrilled, half terrified. "No, you don't get it. Patients don't just start talking like that after brushing death. Sometimes right before they die, they get this burst of energy, and then... nothing. Are you sure you're not dying?"

That made me laugh harder, even though my voice cracked. She covered her mouth, eyebrows drawn, eyes wet. Tears of relief so fierce they hurt.

"Holy fucking hell," she breathed. "You're really okay." Then she leaned in and hugged me tight, hard enough to sting. I held her back, my arms weak but steady, her tears soaking through the hospital gown.

She cried because she thought I was healed.

I cried because I knew why I was.

And the secret was already poisoning what little peace I had left.