Chapter 19

Electric Touch

Jace's POV

The pain of the silver claw being extracted felt like Dr. Martinez was carving out pieces of my soul with a rusty knife. Every twist of the embedded metal sent fire racing through my nervous system, and I had to bite down on a leather strap to keep from screaming and alerting the entire hospital to what was happening.

But none of that mattered the moment Grace's fingers intertwined with mine.

The instant our skin made contact, electricity shot up my arm like lightning finding ground. Not the mystical mate bond—that had been severed three years ago, the connection brutally cut by my own words of rejection. This was something else, something purely physical that made my nerve endings sing with recognition.

My wolf, weakened by days of silver poisoning, suddenly lifted his head with interest. *Touch,* he whispered in my mind. *She's touching us.*

I tried to focus on Dr. Martinez's careful work, on the necessity of staying still while he extracted the weapon that had been slowly killing me. But all my attention had narrowed to the point where Grace's palm pressed against mine, where her thumb unconsciously stroked across my knuckles in a soothing gesture that probably meant nothing to her and everything to me.

"Almost got it," Dr. Martinez muttered, his voice tight with concentration. "The angle is tricky—it's worked deeper than I initially thought."

Another twist of agony, and I couldn't suppress the hiss of pain that escaped through the leather. Grace's grip tightened immediately, her free hand moving to brush sweat-dampened hair away from my forehead.

"You're doing good," she said quietly, her Alpha voice steady and calming. "Just breathe through it."

Her touch was everything I remembered and nothing like it at the same time. Three years ago, Grace's hands had been soft, unmarked by training or hardship. Now her palms bore calluses from weapons practice, and there was a strength in her grip that spoke of muscles earned through discipline and determination.

But underneath the changes, she was still Grace. Still the woman whose touch could ground me when everything else in my world was falling apart.

The silver claw came free with a wet, sucking sound that made my stomach churn. Dr. Martinez immediately began flushing the wound with a silver-neutralizing solution that burned almost as much as the extraction had.

"Got it," he said with satisfaction, holding up the curved piece of metal that had been embedded in my back. "Nasty piece of work. Another few hours and this would have reached your spinal cord."

Grace's face went pale at the diagnosis, but she didn't let go of my hand. If anything, her grip tightened, as if she could anchor me to life through physical contact alone.

"How long until the silver poisoning clears his system?" she asked Dr. Martinez, her voice professionally controlled.

"With proper treatment? Forty-eight to seventy-two hours. He'll need IV fluids, silver chelation therapy, and complete rest." The doctor began cleaning and bandaging the extraction site. "No physical exertion, no stress, no—"

"No pack responsibilities," Grace finished firmly. "I'll make sure he complies."

The casual assumption of authority in her voice should have rankled. Three years ago, it would have sent my pride into overdrive, would have made me assert my dominance just to prove I could. Now, weakened by poison and overwhelmed by the simple fact that she was here—that she was helping me when she had every reason to let me die—I just felt grateful.

"Grace," I said quietly as Dr. Martinez packed up his supplies. My voice was hoarse from the procedure, but I needed to say this while I still had the courage. "Thank you. For everything. For staying, for finding the silver, for..." I gestured vaguely with my free hand. "For caring enough to help."

She studied my face for a long moment, those dark eyes that had once looked at me with adoration now showing only careful assessment. "Don't read more into this than what it is, Jace. I'm helping because your pack needs stability, and regional security depends on Storm pack remaining functional."

The clinical explanation was probably meant to hurt, to establish boundaries and remind me that her presence here was political rather than personal. But she was still holding my hand, still stroking her thumb across my knuckles in that unconscious gesture of comfort.

Her body was telling a different story than her words.

"Is that the only reason?" I asked, emboldened by the silver removal and the drugs Dr. Martinez had given me for the pain. "Because it feels like there might be more to it than regional politics."

Grace's jaw tightened, but she didn't pull her hand away. "What it feels like doesn't matter. What matters is that you recover quickly so you can take care of your responsibilities."

"My responsibilities," I repeated thoughtfully. "Like being the kind of Alpha this pack deserves? Like protecting the people who depend on me instead of letting them down?"

"Yes."

"Like admitting when I've made mistakes and trying to fix them?"

Her thumb stopped its soothing motion against my knuckles. "Some mistakes can't be fixed, Jace."

"Can't they?" I shifted carefully on the cot, turning to face her more fully despite the protest from my newly treated wound. "What if the person who made the mistake has spent three years learning to be better? What if he's finally understood what real strength looks like?"

"What if he has?" Grace's voice was carefully neutral, but I caught the slight hitch in her breathing. "That doesn't undo the damage that was done."

"No," I agreed. "But it might be a starting point for building something new."

Grace was quiet for a long moment, her gaze fixed on our joined hands. When she spoke, her voice was so soft I almost missed it.

"I watched you in those rank games. The way you fought—there was something different about it. Colder. More precise."

"I learned from the best," I said simply. "Your fighting style in that ring was like watching art. Every move calculated, every strike perfectly placed. You made it look effortless."

"It wasn't effortless. It was three years of hell distilled into technique." Her eyes met mine again. "Three years of learning that the only person you can depend on is yourself."

"And if someone wanted to prove they could be dependable? That they'd learned from their mistakes and grown into someone worthy of trust?"

"Then they'd have to prove it through actions, not words." Grace finally pulled her hand away, and the loss of contact was like losing warmth in winter. "Words are easy, Jace. I heard plenty of them three years ago, right before you chose to believe lies over truth."

The reminder of my failure hit like a physical blow, but I forced myself not to look away from her gaze. "You're right. I failed you in the worst possible way. I let my pride and my pack's expectations matter more than the truth, more than you."

"Yes, you did."

The simple acknowledgment was somehow better than anger would have been. Anger suggested emotion, investment, the possibility that what we'd lost still mattered to her. This calm statement of fact was more devastating because it suggested she'd moved so far beyond our shared history that it no longer had the power to hurt her.

"But people can change," I continued, even though my voice was getting weaker as the pain medication kicked in. "I've changed. Not because I want you back—though I do—but because you showed me what real strength looks like. What it means to rise from ashes and become something magnificent."

Grace stood up abruptly, moving to check on my father's monitors with brisk efficiency. "You should rest. The silver chelation therapy will make you drowsy, and your body needs time to heal."

She was deflecting, putting professional distance between us. But she hadn't left the room. She hadn't called for someone else to take over his care. Despite her claims of political motivation, despite her insistence that this was purely about pack stability, she was staying.

"Grace," I called softly as she adjusted Alpha Storm's IV line. "I know I don't deserve a second chance. I know I destroyed any right to your forgiveness when I rejected you. But I need you to know that losing you was the biggest mistake of my life, and not a day goes by that I don't regret it."

She didn't turn around, didn't acknowledge my words directly. But I saw the way her shoulders tensed, saw the careful deliberateness in her movements that suggested she was fighting to maintain control.

"Rest, Jace," she said finally. "We can discuss pack business when you're stronger."

Pack business. Not us, not our history, not the electricity that still sparked between us despite everything that had been broken. Pack business.

But as the medication pulled me toward unconsciousness, I couldn't shake the feeling that her careful neutrality was a mask, that underneath the Alpha she'd become, some part of the Grace I'd loved was still there.

Still reachable.

Still worth fighting for.

The tingles from her touch lingered on my skin as I drifted off, a reminder that some connections ran deeper than words or rejection or even time itself.

I had to fix this. Had to find a way to prove I'd become someone worthy of the woman she'd become.

Even if it took the rest of my life.