Twenty Five

I finally heard them moving toward a solution. The previous one — whatever Aiden had refused so sharply — from the way he'd sounded, it hadn't seemed like a solution he was willing to consider at all.

"Tell me." My voice came out barely above a whisper. "Please, just tell me. I don't want to die, I don't want to." Tears rolled down my cheek as I pinched myself, trying to hold onto something real through the excruciating pain eating me alive.

Aiden and Nathan came back to the couch. He crouched down beside me and looked at me, something that might have been pity sitting in his eyes.

When he spoke his voice was low and careful, like he was choosing each word deliberately.

"There's a wolf inside you, and that wolf made your arm heal the way it did. It might be strong enough to fight this — if we can force it to the surface."

"You don't understand." The words cost me. "I've tried to shift a hundred times. Nothing ever—"

"I'm not talking about shifting," he replied, and Nathan took over, stepping in like he'd already formed the idea in his mind.

"For some reason your wolf has stayed dormant. What Aiden is suggesting is that we wake it up and force it forward. The only way to do that is through pain."

The understanding arrived slowly through the fog in my head.

"You want to hurt me," I said. "On purpose. With no guarantee I survive it."

"I want to save your life," Aiden said. "If that means pushing you to the edge to do it, then yes."

I lay there for a moment, turning it over in my mind, trying to think clearly through the pain and the fever and the exhaustion pulling at everything.

It was either extreme pain with a chance of surviving, or three hours of screaming that ended the same way regardless.

I didn't take long to decide.

"Do it," I said.

"April—" Nathan started.

"*Do it.*" I turned my head toward Aiden's voice even though I could barely see him.

I didn't survive my father stripping my title, Luke rejecting me in front of everyone, Maxwell hunting me through a forest, and going off a cliff just to die from a bite on a stranger's couch.

"Do it," I said again, and my voice was shaking, my whole body was shaking. "Do whatever you have to do. I'm not dying here."

A long pause, then Aiden stood. "Nathan, get the silver restraints." His voice shifted into something that was all command, all Alpha. "And call Marcus. We're going to need him."

As Nathan moved I reached out blindly and found Aiden's wrist. My grip was weak. Embarrassingly weak. But I held on.

"Please promise me something," I said.

He went still.

"If this doesn't work." I could barely push the words out. "If I start — if it gets like that other girl — don't let it drag on. Just end it fast." My eyes filled with tears again.

I was trying so hard to hold myself together but my body was filled with pain, and the thought of me desperately clinging to my life in a stranger's compound, trying to survive the very people who were supposed to be my enemies — it was so painfully sad that the tears finally came anyway, rolling down my cheeks before I could stop them.

Aiden looked directly into my eyes and for the first time I saw something in his — something small and quiet that didn't belong in a face that cold.

Something that looked a little like he cared.

The silence that followed felt enormous.

His free hand came over mine. Warm. Steadying. Completely at odds with everything else about him.

I expected *don't worry, you won't die* or *I won't let that happen.* Something reassuring. Something soft.

Instead I got the opposite.

"If it comes to that," he said quietly, "I'll make it quick."

It wasn't comfort.

But it was honest.

And right now, that was the best I had.