Chapter 1

Vanessa was dying.

That was what I heard while I lay on the operating table.

Silver fragments lodged in my chest had stopped my wolf’s healing. Every breath hurt, and taking a deeper one felt impossible.

Beneath the surgical lights, my mate suddenly stopped working.

A sharp clatter followed.

Adrian set his scalpel in the tray and pulled off his gloves.

“Get Mercer. I can’t finish this procedure.”

Twenty minutes had passed since someone told him Vanessa was in trouble.

My usually unflappable mate had finally lost his composure.

He turned his back to me and began rearranging the instruments. Metal struck metal. His hands shook enough that even I could see it.

“Dr. Vale, her heart rate is climbing.”

The nurse glanced at me.

“Are you certain you need to leave?”

I understood her hesitation.

A wolf injured by silver couldn’t heal like everyone else. Adrian wasn’t merely my surgeon. He was the man who had promised, three years earlier, that he would protect me.

Now he wanted to be somewhere else.

“It’s fine,” I told the nurse. “Someone else can do it.”

The room fell quiet.

I tried to smile.

When Vanessa returned to Briar Glen, I had known, somewhere beneath everything I refused to examine, that we would eventually reach this moment.

I didn’t want to beg him to stay.

And I didn’t want to put my life in the hands of a man whose mind was already with another woman.

The doors opened.

Owen Mercer entered, tall and broad-shouldered behind a pale blue surgical mask. He took the chart and checked the monitor.

Adrian paused as they passed each other.

“Clara’s surgery is yours.”

Owen didn’t answer. He went straight to my side.

Adrian rested a hand against the door.

“If I don’t go now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

A tear slipped from the corner of my eye into my hair.

Three years earlier, he had held my hands before our pack witnesses and promised that I would never face danger alone again.

Now I lay under surgical lights while he worried about missing another woman’s emergency.

Owen leaned over me.

Cold metal touched my chest.

“Why are you crying?”

His voice was almost impersonal behind the mask.

“You’re not dying on my watch.”

The operation lasted two hours.

By the time it ended, evening rain streaked the hospital windows. The forest beyond them had become a blurred, dark outline.

Owen waited until my condition stabilized before handing my chart to the nurse.

The silver was gone, but my healing didn’t return immediately.

Once the anesthetic wore off, even shifting against the pillow felt like tearing my chest open again.

I was reaching for the call button when Adrian phoned.

Vanessa’s voice came through first.

“Oh, Clara, I’m so sorry! I don’t know what Max told him. I barely scraped my knee, and Adrian came charging in like I was dying.”

She laughed.

“I already yelled at him.”

Something clinked against a table.

“Adrian, you’re in your thirties. How are you still this impulsive? You act like we’re back in college.”

Then, lightly, “Here. Take the rest of this milkshake to Clara as a peace offering.”

There was a rustle before Adrian took the phone.

He didn’t say my name.

“I told you not to move around if you don’t want the wound opening again.”

Then, to Vanessa, “She just had surgery for a silver injury. A milkshake isn’t appropriate.”

Vanessa made a small, offended sound.

Adrian’s tone softened.

“I bought those for you.”

Max complained in the background.

“I said she’d been in a car accident, and he hung up before I could explain. How was I supposed to know he’d react like that?”

“All right. You two can explain yourselves. Don’t blame me.”

There had been no silver.

No uncontrollable bleeding.

No life-threatening injury.

Only a scrape.

My chest tightened.

A moment earlier, I had wanted to ask Adrian for pain medication.

Now I couldn’t make myself speak.

I ended the call.

The nurse came in with pills and a glass of water.

“Dr. Mercer prescribed these.”

She adjusted my pillow.

“Let’s get the pain under control so you can rest. He said to call us if anything bothers you tonight.”

I accepted the glass.

The warmth against my palms was the first thing that evening that made me feel less cold.