Forty Three

Something more complicated than that. The specific feeling of finding out that the thing you talked yourself out of wanting was actually always yours.

It hurt almost as much as it helped.

"That voice you heard was real, it was the Alpha's wolf voice" Zara said simply.

The ground shifted under everything.

"Was that the mate bond?," I said quietly, and my voice came out strange even to me.

"Obviously."

"Then why didn't you—"

"Because you weren't ready." She uttered impatient, final, brooking absolutely nothing. “But, you are now. Barely." A pause that had something calculating running underneath it. "And more importantly — I had no leverage before. Over you or over him. But now, as wonderful things work themselves out—" her tone shifted into something that had too much satisfaction in it for my comfort— "my leverage appeared. Courtesy of that foolish werewolf who bit you."

I lay there in silence for a moment.

I had wanted a wolf my entire life desperately and shamefully. With the kind of wanting that sits in your chest for so long it starts to feel like a physical absence.

And this — *this* — was what had been in me the whole time.

I had dreamed of a wolf and gotten Zara.

The universe had a genuinely terrible sense of humor.

"So listen carefully, little April," she said, and her voice took on the tone of someone reading terms and conditions they have no intention of negotiating. "You are out of options. Here is what is going to happen — he is going to mark you as his mate, and I will use the bond to fight the venom. The bond is the only thing powerful enough to counter what is in your blood right now."

"And if he won't?"

The pause that followed had a texture to it. Thick and deliberate and deeply unpleasant.

"Then I go back to sleep," she said, and she said it pleasantly, which was somehow the worst version of how she could have said it. "And the venom finishes what it started." A heartbeat later she continued. "You have approximately fifteen minutes by my current estimate. Give or take." Another heartbeat passed. "I could speed up the process if I wanted. Just to be clear about how serious I am."

"Let me show you exactly how serious," she added.

“Zara—noo” I knew she wasn't bluffing but it was too late.

It wasn't an empty threat this time. I felt the shift before I understood it — something pulling back from the venom, something that had been holding it at arm's length suddenly releasing its grip, and the venom rushed in to fill the space like water through a broken dam.

My whole body shivered and then the pain intensified and focused.

It did no such thing as spreading across everything like before, rather it targeted deliberately at a certain point. The venom concentrated entirely in my hand like a magnifying glass held over one point until it burned.

“My hand—”

The cold hit me first inside my body. It came suddenly and absolute, spreading from my fingertips inward, and I tried to move my fingers and they didn't respond. I tried again. Nothing. The pain was extraordinary — not sharp, something worse than sharp, something deep and crushing and immovable.

“I can't — my hand — I can't move it—”

"ARGH—" The sound that came out of me wasn't a scream exactly. It was the sound of someone discovering that the thing threatening them is completely real.

"Now," Zara said, completely calm, while I was falling apart, "do we have a deal? Or would you like me to move on to the other hand?"