Thirty Seven

Zara still didn't acknowledge me.

Forget acknowledgment — I was being disrespected and threatened inside my own body, treated worse than a slave. Worse than a criminal. At least criminals got to speak in their own defense. I couldn't even get a response.

This is humiliating, I thought, and nobody cared.

"April." Aiden's voice cut through everything happening inside my head — low, direct, aimed precisely at whoever was currently occupying my face. He was trying to figure out who was still in charge. I had gone quiet and completely still for long enough that he'd noticed. "Can you hear me?"

A pause.

"You must be April's wolf," he said, his voice shifting slightly, recalibrating. "Am I right?"

Hearing his voice did something unexpected — it gave me something to reach for, some kind of anchor outside the chaos in my head. I pushed forward harder than I had been, clawing for control with everything I had left.

It didn't work. But I kept trying.

"Hmm." Zara's lips curved — my lips, my face, my smile twisted into something that had never belonged to me. She looked at Aiden with open, unhurried appreciation. "Handsome and knowledgeable. Just how I like them."

Excuse me — what — is she — she is NOT flirting with him. Not with my face. Not with my mouth. Absolutely not—

I was screaming internally and she gave me nothing. Not even the satisfaction of being told to shut up.

"Where is April?" Aiden asked, ignoring the flirtation with visible effort, something flickering behind his eyes that wasn't quite steady. "What happened — why are you out and she's in? Is she okay?"

"Oh." Zara tilted my head slightly. "So now you suddenly care."

"I asked you a question."

"And I'm noting the irony," she said pleasantly, "of the man who just pressed a silver sword toward our heart asking if we're okay."

"It was necessary," Aiden said, his voice flat and direct. "You refused to come out willingly despite everything that was tried. I had no other option. I needed to force you forward so you could heal her."

Zara laughed.

Not my laugh. Not even close to my laugh. It was darker than that — fuller, older, carrying something in it that made the air in the room feel different. An almost maniacal sound that belonged to something that had lived long enough to find human urgency genuinely funny.

Aiden's expression hardened. "What's funny?"

"You," she said simply, the laughter settling into something colder and more dangerous. "You're funny. Because you actually believe you forced me out." She smiled again — my face doing something it had never done before. "And you think I'm going to heal April."

"Aren't you?"

She didn't answer. Just smiled.

I stayed quiet inside my own head, using the distraction of their conversation to keep pushing, keep trying, keep reaching for any crack in the wall between me and control.

Then from somewhere behind Aiden, Nathan's voice came sharp and urgent.

"Aiden." A pause. "Aiden, Marcus isn't going to make it. He's not breathing — I can't—"

Aiden's eyes snapped immediately to Zara.

"What did you do to him," he said. Not a question. "Stop it. Right now. You're going to kill him."

Zara turned her head toward Marcus with the casual, unhurried attention of someone glancing at something mildly interesting on the other side of a room. Marcus was on both knees now, Nathan's hands on his shoulders, his massive frame shaking with the effort of trying to do the one thing his body had forgotten how to do.

"He's dying," Zara said, and her voice was completely, genuinely unbothered. "But he should have stayed quiet when I told him to." Her eyes moved back to Aiden and her expression sharpened. "And why exactly should I listen to you?"

Aiden went very still.

The room went very still with him.

He looked at her for a long moment — calculating, reassessing, working out what angle was left — and when he spoke again his voice had dropped into something quieter and more deliberate.

"If April dies," he said carefully, "you die with her. Are you okay with that?"

Zara's expression didn't change.

"Wrong again," she said. "If April dies, yes I leave this body. But I've been born into miserable bodies before. I'll be born into another one after. There is nothing to lose on my end." She tilted her head. "So if you have another threat saved up somewhere, I'd suggest keeping it. It won't work."

Aiden said nothing.

And then Zara turned — not to him, not to Nathan, not to Marcus still choking on the floor — but inward. Toward me.

April, she said, and for the first time her voice addressing me directly wasn't threatening or dismissive. It was matter of fact in a way that was somehow worse. The longer you stay in here, the closer you get to dying. The venom is still moving. If you find a way to push through and take back control — which you won't, but if — you have minutes. Maybe less. A pause. So choose wisely.

GIVE ME MY BODY BACK, I screamed, and every wall I'd been carefully maintaining inside my head came down completely. I don't care about wisely, I don't care about any of it — GIVE IT BACK YOU—

I pushed.