Chapter 7

Elara's POV

I crossed the room in two steps, lifted her into my arms, and started shouting.

I hammered on every door I passed down the guest wing, screaming for whoever was on night duty, demanding a car, a doctor, a medical kit—anything—right now.

I knew the estate had a medical team. I knew it.

Nobody came.

I called Orion.

Seven rings. Nothing.

I called again.

Busy signal.

Third time. Straight to voicemail. Phone off.

Mia's bleeding wasn't stopping. Her eyelids were getting heavy, her head falling toward my shoulder. Her voice came out barely there, like something heard through a wall.

"Mom… is this a lot of trouble…"

"Not even a little." I bit down on the shake in my voice and kept it level. "Mom's got you."

I kicked off my heels, shouldered through the back courtyard door, and ran barefoot across the cold stone toward the guest parking lot on the other side of the estate.

The road would be rough. Mia riding alone in the back seat, bleeding, in the dark—every bump felt like a gamble. But I had no other cards.

If I burst into the main hall, Margaret would find a way to make it about my behavior. Veronica would start an argument. Precious minutes would bleed away while they performed their outrage.

Mia needed a hospital. Now.

Then a white wolf came toward me at a run.

It stopped, and stood still, and the look in its eyes was unmistakable.

I caught Samuel's cologne on the night air.

With Mia's life on the line, there was no room for hesitation. I pulled my daughter close, grabbed a fistful of white fur, and swung onto his back.

The wind hit us like a wall. The trees blurred to dark streaks on either side, the road beneath us vanishing, the night splitting open ahead.

I bent down close to Mia's ear.

"Hey. We're going to the hospital, okay? It's okay."

Mia cracked one eye open, voice barely a thread.

"Is it… Daddy? Did Daddy come for me…?"

I didn't answer her.

As we came within range of the hospital, I called Dr. Landon. He picked up on the second ring, groggy but focused—and not for a second did he make me feel like the hour was wrong.

He told me the trauma bay would be ready when we arrived.

He was Mia's doctor. That was the whole of his obligation.

My husband—Orion—hadn't even answered his phone.

The hospital lights were brutal and white. When Mia disappeared through the trauma bay doors, I leaned back against the hallway wall, bare feet on cold tile, the chill working its way up through me until it reached my chest.

Before the doors swung shut, I caught Samuel's eye. However the night looked to him—whatever he made of all of it—his expression held something I couldn't quite name.

I thanked him anyway.

He was quiet for a long moment before he said, simply, "Any time."

"Whatever you need, whenever you need it. Call me."

He pressed a business card into my hand.

Black stock, gold lettering. Out of some automatic instinct of courtesy, I slipped it into my bag.

At the elevator bank, he paused and looked back once before the doors closed.

I let out a breath.

Orion had a friend who would run through the dark in wolf form for a woman he barely knew. And my own husband—where was he?

A nurse came out and asked if I'd been able to reach the child's father.

"If he came in now for compatibility testing—and if it were a match—Dr. Landon says Mia's recovery could be significantly better. Otherwise…"

She didn't finish the sentence.

I closed my eyes.

"I can't reach him." All the fight had gone out of my voice. I let it go—all of it, every last piece of hope I'd been holding on to for him. I told myself to accept the worst. To be ready for it. "What does 'otherwise' actually mean?"

The nurse's tone softened. "Mia is stable for now. But if another emergency happens and help doesn't come fast enough…" She paused. "You need to find her a compatible donor as soon as possible."

I nodded, telling her I understood.

The worst-case scenario wasn't off the table, but it wasn't our reality yet, either. And it certainly wasn't something Mia had to accept.

She was Orion's daughter—the heir to the White Moon Pack. Her father was the Alpha of the most powerful pack in the world. How could he just leave her like this?

I wasn't giving up. Not until there was nothing left to give.

I slid down the wall to the floor and kept calling Orion.

Again. Straight to voicemail.

Again.

And again.

He had an obligation to be here. Even if he couldn't stand the sight of me, even if he wanted out of every promise he'd ever made—he had told Mia he would make it up to her. He had said those exact words.

Nothing.

By the time the sky outside the window had gone from black to pale gray, Dr. Landon came out.

"Mia's past the critical window. We can move her to a regular room."

He looked around. "Still no word from her father?"

I shook my head. Said nothing else.

He nodded slowly, didn't push.

Once Mia was settled—unconscious, small and still against the hospital pillow—he turned to me one last time.

"I'll reach out to a few medical contacts. See if there's a compatible donor anywhere in the network."

He had stopped expecting the father to show up.

I thanked him.

I looked at my daughter in that bed, and somewhere in the quiet of that room, something in me finally woke up all the way.

I gathered the paperwork and went to handle the billing. When the elevator doors opened, two nurses wrapping up the night shift were already mid-conversation.

"Alpha Orion is something else—he showed up straight from the gala, still in his tux. Totally dropped everything."

"Right? And honestly, Lily had almost zero risk of rejection anyway. Her mom was just making a huge scene."

"That silver wolf of his, though—when he came racing in with Celeste on his back, I swear I thought I'd walked straight into a fairy tale."

I was still for a moment. Then I reached out and touched one of their arms before they could step out.

"The marrow. What marrow are you talking about? Who just had a transplant?"

Both women went still.

I didn't let go. I needed the answer.

Finally, the one with the softer face spoke.

"It was… Celeste Duval's daughter. Lily."

"The procedure was two days ago." She added it like a footnote.

My fingers locked up. My throat went dry. My heart stopped and then restarted too hard.

Two days ago. That was the day I'd run into Orion at the hospital.

He hadn't mentioned a transplant. Not a single word.

Was he deliberately keeping it from me?

Was the marrow that matched my daughter—the one that had been pulled—was it him? Had he been the one—

I couldn't follow the thought to the end.

I gripped the nurse's arm harder. My voice was shaking. "And where did the marrow come from?"

They were looking at me the way you look at someone who's come unglued.

I didn't care.

The softer one answered.

"It was… Mr. Whitemoon who arranged it."

"From what I heard, he used a hospital investment deal as leverage and basically pressured the director into redirecting a donor allocation that had already been assigned to another patient." A pause. "He really does love Celeste."

The sound cut out.

My heart was bleeding.

It was him.

It was actually him.

The world beneath me dropped away into nothing.

I have no memory of stepping off that elevator.

Maybe—maybe he didn't know. Maybe he hadn't understood what he was taking. Maybe—

No.

Orion had never been a cruel man, not at his core. He had his own code, his own loyalties, his own sense of responsibility. The problem was that none of it had ever been pointed at me, or at Mia. That wasn't malice. That was just how he'd chosen.

And now I had chosen too.

A voice broke through the quiet.

"Poor Lily—when did you get sick, sweetheart? Why didn't you say something sooner?"

Veronica. From a room just down the hall.

Then Margaret's voice. Concerned. Warm.

Celeste, crying.

Orion, holding them together.

To anyone listening, they sounded exactly like a family.

I knew what I had to do.