One

I lay in the ICU, waiting for my body to admit what my heart already knew. I was dying.

Maya, my wolf, thrashed inside me, her cries rattling through a body that could no longer answer. Twenty-six, once unstoppable; now I could barely lift my hand. The doctors and healers called it incurable. One pull of a plug, and I’d be gone.

But I didn’t want to die.

Lance stood by the window, his broad shoulders blocking the gray light. My husband since youth. We’d been married five years—joined a year after I was crowned Luna, because a she-wolf couldn’t lead without a mate.

He spoke to Crystal, my best friend, my doctor, in a low growl. “Pull the plug.”

Crystal’s voice cracked like glass. “Alpha, no,” she cried. “We haven’t exhausted every option. There’s still—”

“Hope?” He spat. “Eve is suffering. Look at her. All bones and sunken eyes.” His breath hitched. “She was a strong and agile leader all her life. I know it’s what she’d want. I won’t watch this anymore.”

I kept my eyes shut. My heart thudded weakly, protesting my body’s betrayal. I didn’t want to go. Not yet. This sickness had stolen my strength, but I still had a fight left. Didn’t I?

“Please, Alpha. Three days. I can feel I’m close,” Crystal begged.

“Three days?” he cut in. “You’ve been saying that for weeks. She’s not coming back. Look at her—suffering and trapped. Keeping her alive like this is cruel.”

“We can’t give up on her. I can’t pull the plug on my Luna and best friend!”

“Don’t twist this,” Lance snapped, though his voice wavered.

“Then let me help her,” Crystal shot back. “Give me seventy-two hours. If I fail, you can make your decision. But give her a chance.”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Lance—”

“Twenty-four.” His voice was final. “If there’s no improvement by then… we let her go.”

Through the fog of medication, I could sense Crystal’s pain. “That’s not enough time,” she whispered.

“It’s all I can give,” he said, sounding broken. “I can’t watch her suffer anymore.”

I didn’t hate him. I just didn’t understand him. Why the rush? I was the one trapped in this body, not him.

As Crystal’s footsteps faded, the room grew heavier. I lay there, waiting for Lance to break. To hold me and beg me to fight. But the only sound was the scrape of drawers.

Metal against wood. The impatient clatter of someone searching for something to take.

I kept my eyes closed, but every nerve was on alert. He moved around the room like someone with a deadline, not a husband sitting beside his dying wife.

“Where the fuck are they?” he muttered under his breath.

My stomach turned cold.

He was searching for the folder. It contained documents of my lands, my accounts, my assets: everything my parents had handed down to me. Everything I was already planning to leave to him.

The folder was under the mattress, inches from my hip. He’d have to reach across to me to find it.

A part of me wanted to open my eyes, to ask questions. I couldn’t.

So I lay there, pretending to sleep, listening to the man I once trusted tear through the last pieces of my life like they were scraps to be collected before the body cooled.

Then his phone buzzed, slicing through the quiet.

He hesitated before answering, his voice suddenly tender. “Hey, honey… yeah. Still here.”

He turned slightly toward the corner, back to me.

A woman’s voice floated through the speaker. “Is it done?”

Lance sighed. “Not yet. She’s still holding on.”

“Still?” The woman’s tone carried a hint of impatience beneath its softness. “You said she wouldn’t make it through the week.”

My chest tightened. I knew that voice. Alice—one of the divorced she-wolves I’d taken in.

“She’s too damn stubborn. But don’t worry. She’s out cold.”

The woman’s sigh crackled through the phone. “I don’t like waiting, Lance.”

“I know. And we will. Stay calm. Stress isn’t good for the baby.”

My heart clenched. Baby.

Alice was carrying Lance’s child.

Her innocent-looking face whispered through my memory. The pain in her voice when she’d thanked me for helping her start over after an abusive marriage.

“I’m just tired of hiding. I want you.”

“You have me,” he promised. “I’ll make sure this is over tonight.”

My breath slipped out. Something between a gasp and a whimper.

Lance froze. “Hold on,” he muttered into the phone. Alice’s voice barely made it through before the line went dead.

I forced my eyes shut as his finger jabbed my arm; hard enough to sting through the haze.

“Eve?” he whispered.

Tears slid down my temples, soaking the pillow. I didn’t move.

He breathed hard against my face. Then I heard him whisper under his breath, almost to himself: “Just die already.”

My trembling hand found the emergency button beside me. I pressed it. The beep pierced the walls of the room.

The door flew open, and Crystal burst in.

“Alpha Lance! What the hell are you doing?”

I forced my eyes open. Lance stood over the ventilator, his hand hovering near the plug like a thief.

He jerked back. “Nothing! I was just checking the power line; it looked loose.”

“Loose?” Crystal shrieked. “You think I’m blind? You were going to pull it!”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he snapped. “I was making sure everything’s stable. You doctors panic over nothing.”

She moved to my side, eyes darting between the machines and me. Fury took over. “You almost unplugged her ventilator! She’s hanging by a thread, Lance. You don’t get to play God because you’re tired of waiting!”

I swallowed hard, forcing air through my throat. “He… h-he… did this,” I rasped, my voice tearing. “C-cheated. On me.”

Crystal’s eyes widened in horror. “Please tell me she’s wrong.”

Lance laughed. “She’s delirious. She’s barely conscious and you’re out of line, Doctor.”

“You fucking piece of—”

Lance’s eyes darkened. “Watch your tone.” His voice deepened, that Alpha command seeping through the air like poison. “You don’t talk to me like that in my pack.”

“This is my patient,” she hissed. “You lose the right to command me the second you try to kill her.”

The door banged open again. Two guards stormed in, their hesitation obvious when they saw who stood there.

“Alpha?” one asked carefully.

“Escort her out,” Lance ordered, pointing at Crystal. “She’s unfit to treat my wife.”

Crystal stepped in front of me, chin lifted. “Touch me,” she warned, “and I’ll make sure the Council hears how you tried to murder your Luna—and throw a doctor out of her father’s hospital.”

The guards froze.

“Get him out!” Crystal screamed. “He’s trying to kill her!”

Lance sneered. He jabbed a finger toward her. “You will regret this.”

His eyes locked with mine for one long second before he walked out, the door slamming behind him.

Crystal’s knees hit the floor beside me. Her sobs came hard and messy. She grabbed my hand, clutching it against her chest.

“Oh, Eve… my Luna, my friend,” she whispered, voice shaking. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve seen it; I should’ve stopped him.”

Her tears dripped onto my skin, warm against the chill crawling through my veins.

“Bastard,” she growled. “That fucking bastard. He’ll pay for this, Eve. I swear on my blood, he’ll pay. Even if I have to cut myself open and write his sins with it, I’ll make the world see what he did to you.”

Her voice trembled. “He thinks he can just walk out of here, go play happy family with his whore while you lie here dying? No. Not while I’m breathing.”

Tears slid down my temples; my voice barely a ghost. “It’s over. I can feel it.”

“Don’t you say that.” She cupped my face with trembling hands, her thumbs brushing away the tears that kept coming. “You don’t get to give up.”

Her tone shifted suddenly. “There’s hope,” she murmured, almost to herself at first. Then louder, steadier. “There’s someone who can help.”

Her gaze flicked away before she forced the name out. “Axel. The Lycan King of the South.”

My blood ran cold.

Axel. The name wasn’t just a memory; it was a wound that had never healed.

My fingers twitched weakly in hers. “I’d r... rather die.”

“Eve. He broke you. He broke us. But he’s the only one who can fix what’s happening inside you. Whatever this sickness is; it’s not natural. And he’s the only bastard alive who can heal it.”

Her eyes glistened. “Let him save you, and when you’re strong again… We’ll burn them both. Lance and Axel. Every man who ever thought your pain was convenient.”