004

Rae’s POV

“With what is in her body, she shouldn’t still be breathing.”

A woman’s voice. Calm but tight underneath.

“How long has it been in her body?” Killian’s voice. Somewhere to my left.

“Months,” the woman said. “I can’t say but this didn’t start recently.”

I pushed my eyes open.

A woman sat beside me. Maybe fifty, maybe older. Silver hair pulled back tight. She had her hand against my wrist and her eyes had that faint, inward look people get when they’re reading something the rest of us can’t see.

She glanced up when she felt me looking.

“She’s back,” she said quietly.

Killian was standing against the far wall with his arms crossed. Something moved across his face when our eyes met. Gone fast, but it had been there.

“What is it,” I said. My voice was barely anything. “What’s wrong with me.”

The woman… Maya, I figured… didn’t look away from me when she answered.

“You have been taking poison,” she said. “Something called Ghost Root, mixed with a couple other things. It suppresses your wolf. Breaks down your system from the inside.” She paused. “If you’d taken it another month you wouldn’t have made it out.”

The room felt very still.

I thought about the vitamins Colt had handed me every morning for two years. The tea he made me drink when I said I was tired. How I’d thought I was just worn down from the stress of running the club’s books, managing the house, keeping everything held together.

I laughed. It came out thin and ugly.

“He was doing it the whole time,” I said.

“Is there a cure,” I said.

Maya looked at Killian briefly before she looked back at me. That look said something I didn’t catch.

“There’s a way to purge it,” she said carefully. “But it’s not simple.”

“Tell me.”

She hesitated.

“Tell me the cure,” I said again.

Killian pushed off the wall. He came and stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me the way he’d looked at me in the cell. Like he wasn’t going to dress it up.

“The poison’s been working on you so long it’s tangled into your system,” he said. “The only thing strong enough to pull it out is a mate bond with a dominant wolf. Someone with enough power to override what the Ghost Root’s done.”

I stared at him.

“That’s…” I stopped.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You,” I said.

“I’m not forcing anything,” he said. “It’s your choice.”

I looked at the ceiling. My mind was going in six directions at once and my body felt like wet paper.

“Is there any other way? What if we don’t do this?” I said.

“Then Maya manages the symptoms and buys you time,” he said. “But she already told you what the end of that road looks like.”

“And if I say yes,” I said.

He was quiet for a second.

“Then you’re bonded to me,” he said.

I looked at him. He looked back.

I opened my mouth to answer him.

And then something happened that had nothing to do with my answer.

It started in my chest. Not only pain. Something else underneath it, something that felt like a locked door being hit from the other side. My wolf went absolutely rigid and then launched herself at the bars like she’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

The air in the room changed.

My back came off the bed. I grabbed the sheets and my knuckles went white. Heat poured through me from somewhere inside, something hot and like something was being relit that had been out for a long time.

“Rae.” Killian’s voice was sharp.

I couldn’t answer. My heart slammed once, skipped, slammed again.

Killian went very still.

I looked at him and his expression had done something I had never seen it do before. The control was still there but there was something behind it now that hadn’t been there a second ago. Something that looked almost like shock.

“No,” he said quietly. Like he was arguing with something. “That’s not…”

I grabbed my chest with both hands. The heat was everywhere now, racing through every nerve, and it wasn’t hurting me exactly but it was enormous, too big for my body, pressing at the inside of my skin.

“What is happening,” I gasped. “Killian, what is this…”

He looked at me.

The steadiness he always wore like armor cracked just slightly down the middle.

“It’s not possible,” he said. Almost to himself.

The heat peaked. My wolf howled somewhere inside me, loud and certain and fully awake for the first time in years. The lamp on the nightstand flickered. The window rattled in its frame.

And then something clicked into place.

Like a gear catching and a frequency matching.

I felt it land in my chest like a stone dropping into still water.

And I saw the exact same moment hit Killian.

He reached out and grabbed the doorframe. His jaw went tight. His eyes found mine and stayed there.

The room was completely quiet.

“Rae,” he said slowly. “…Mate,” he said.