Twenty Three

I could feel the life draining out of me.

It was gradually draining me slowly in pain. It was leaving in waves, each one pulling more than the last, and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop any of it.

I was panting short in shallow breaths that weren't giving me enough air no matter how hard I pulled for them. My vision had gone completely — not darkness exactly, more like everything had dissolved into a white, humming nothing that I couldn't see through no matter how hard I tried to focus. My eyes were too heavy to keep open. My body was burning and freezing at the same time, fever and ice running through me simultaneously, and the blood — I could feel how much blood I'd lost. Too much. Far too much.

Am I going to die like this?

The thought arrived quietly, which was somehow worse than if it had been loud.

What was I saying, it is clear that I'm going to die.

"No." The word came out of me before I'd decided to say it in a hoarse barely audible tone. "I won't die."

"No, you won't." Nathan's voice, somewhere above me. Tight with something he was trying to hide. "Just hold on."

He was lying. I knew it. I could hear it in his voice — that specific careful tone people use when they're saying what you need to hear instead of what's true.

I tried to hold on anyway.

Time started doing strange things. Stretching and compressing. I lost minutes somewhere. Then I heard a sound cut through the haze — Joshua groaning, *ah* — and I understood distantly that Aiden had finally pulled his claws free from the back of Joshua's neck. Then a sound that was brief and terrible and final.

Crack

Aiden had instantly snapped Joshua’s neck and his body fell lifelessly.

I started hearing footsteps coming toward me.

I couldn't lift my head to see him. I just heard him stop beside the couch.

"It seems," Aiden said quietly, "like you're destined to die after all. Every odd is against you."

I couldn't tell if he was giving up on me. I couldn't tell anything clearly anymore. But something in those words — *destined to die* — hit somewhere deeper than the venom, somewhere that still had fight left in it.

What had he seen in Joshua’s memory to say such?

No.

"No." I tried to sit up.

My body refused. My arms shook and gave out immediately and I collapsed back, but I kept trying, kept struggling, because the alternative was lying there and accepting it and I wasn't ready for that.

“You need to stay still," Nathan said, pressing me back gently. "Moving makes it spread faster."

"I'm not—" I could barely get the words out. "I'm not going to die."

"Aiden." Nathan's voice shifted, urgent. "What did you find in Joshua's head? Was there anything important?"

A pause. Then Aiden spoke, and his voice had changed to a tone colder, harder, something dangerous running underneath it.

"Maxwell of the Black Shadow Pack." A beat. "My enemy. They're behind this, they want her dead."

"What?" Nathan's hand on my neck went still for just a second. "How does that involve Joshua?"

What the hell was happening, I was going crazy in my mind as I was dying.

When I thought I had escaped my pack that wanted me dead.

Aiden didn't answer Nathan immediately. Instead I heard him crouch down beside me, close, his presence cutting through the fog the way nothing else had. I felt him studying me with a precision that would have been unnerving if I'd had any energy left to be unnerved.

"We will speak about it later. How long since she got the bite?" he asked.

"Give or take about fifteen minutes." Nathan's voice was grim. "It's spreading faster than it should. She passed out once already. I just brought her back."

“I’ll take a look”

I felt Aiden pull the soaked bandage carefully away from my neck and the sting of air on the wound made me hiss through my teeth. Something warm oozed out immediately.

"Ah—" The sound came out before I could stop it.

A long silence.

Then, quietly, almost to himself: "*Fuck.*"

Just that one word. But the weight he said it with was a death sentence and I heard it.

"What—" I tried to pull myself up again but I couldn't. I was extremely weak.

"What does that mean? You have to cure me." My voice cracked completely down the middle.

"Nathan said if Aiden had something — you have to — cure me?*"

I hated how I sounded. I was begging and desperate. I hated it and I couldn't stop it because I was too far gone to pretend. I was clinging to my life with both hands and I didn't care anymore who was watching.

Aiden didn't answer immediately. I heard him stand. Heard him pace away.

"Aiden." I forced his name out harder this time. It cost me. "Can you cure it. Yes or no."

"I don't know. I don't want to"

"What the fuck did you mean you don't know and you don't to are you fucking crazy I'm dying—"

I couldn't fucking hold back a swear at this point. I was on the verge of death and I saw him deeply frown at me due to how I had cursed.

“One more curse word and I might as well leave you to die” Aiden said and I could tell he meant every word.

But my mouth wasn't going to keep shut or I'll die either way.