Thirty One

Bloody hell!! I didn't understand what was happening.

What was Aiden doing?

We had agreed on my hand. That was where we had agreed. That was the plan. But now the trajectory of the blade had shifted completely and the sharp silver edge was no longer aimed at my hand — it was pointed directly at the spot where my heart sat behind my ribs, and my brain couldn't process it fast enough to make sense of it.

I wanted to scream and at the same time ask him if he was crazy but he had already acted.

But only the loud sound of my voice echoed, the words didn’t come out.

He pressed the silver blade slowly into my chest.

And he didn't stop there he pierced into my sink and stabbed me deeper.

The pain hit immediately and it was unlike anything before it — not the burning from the venom, not the ache from the claw wounds, not anything my body had a category for. It felt like my insides were being set on fire with something acidic and hot that spread with every millimeter the blade went further in.

I screamed loud and despirate, completely without dignity, begging him to stop.

Silver burned differently than normal wounds. It felt like being branded from the inside out, like the metal itself was rejecting my existence, like my body and the blade were at war with each other and I was the battlefield.

Blood ran down my stomach in a warm steady stream as he kept pressing deeper, slow and deliberate, and I could feel the tip of the sword getting dangerously close to something vital. Something that couldn't be repaired if it was touched.

"Aiden." Nathan's voice came out strained, his hands pressing harder on my shoulders to keep me still. "Any deeper and she will actually die."

"I know," Aiden said. Just like that. He appeared calm and composed with that immovable aura around him as he continued speaking . "She either dies anyway or her wolf comes forward. Those are still the only two options you have April."

He wasn't backing down.

Not even slightly. And he made it crystal clea.

"*Argh — stop, STOP—*" I screamed, trying to twist free, trying to create any distance at all between the blade and my chest, but Marcus and Nathan had shifted into their wolf forms, eyes glowing bright in the dim room, and their grip on me was absolute.

"It's not working, Aiden!" Nathan said, urgency cracking through his voice now. "She is going to die!"

"So be it." Aiden's voice didn't waver. "She's useless to me without a wolf. I'll end her miserable life now and save us both the time."

The words hit somewhere the blade hadn't reached yet.

Somewhere deeper.

I felt something break open in my chest that had nothing to do with the sword — a hurt that was older and rawer than the pain, the kind that comes from hearing out loud what you've always been afraid was true. Useless. Miserable. Not worth the effort.

The person who had saved me. Who had sat with me on that couch while I was dying. Who had run for that vampire blood like his feet were making the decision before his mind caught up.

He thought I was worthless.

The tears came fast and furious and I let them because I was already broken open anyway.

But underneath the hurt something else moved.

Something that had heard those words too.

Something ancient and enormous and absolutely, catastrophically *furious.*

*Not worth living?* it said, and the voice that came from inside me wasn't mine. *We'll see about that.*

"Wake up or die!" Aiden pulled the blade out in one swift motion, wrapped both hands around the hilt, and raised it above me — final, decisive, aimed to end it.

And something snapped open in me waking up just as Aiden stabbed down the sword aiming at my chest.