CH.4

MAYA

The heat of the car felt suffocating.

I pressed myself against the leather door, my vision swimming as blood soaked the thick coat draped over my shoulders.

Darkness tugged at the edges of my mind, promising a painless escape.

'No.' I dug my fingernails into my thighs. 'If I sleep, I die.'

I couldn't die yet. Harper's smug face burned behind my eyes, a toxic fuel keeping my heart beating.

I needed to see them suffer.

I pressed a shaking palm to my side and waited for the warmth. Even Omegas mend. I'd healed split lips by morning and bruises within the hour.

But nothing came.

I reached inward, past the pain, searching for my wolf. 'Please. I need you.'

Silence met me.

It felt like an empty room where someone had carried out every piece of furniture.

Terror crawled up my throat.

I forced my eyes open and gasped for air.

Alpha Dorian sat opposite me. He offered no comforting words and barely moved.

His sharp, fathomless eyes tracked the erratic pulse at my throat, watching my struggle in complete silence.

'Future wife.'

The words he'd murmured on the pavement echoed in my mind. Another Alpha who thought he could claim me before I'd even caught my breath.

“I'm not your anything.” My voice cracked. “Whatever game you think we're playing, I never agreed to it.”

His gaze dropped to my bloody fingers, then lifted to my face.

He said nothing.

My hand shot toward the handle. The lock clicked before I could pull, and a bitter laugh scraped out of me.

“Of course.” My hands trembled uncontrollably. “You all lock the door.”

Dorian tugged off one leather glove, finger by finger, and set it on the seat beside my knee.

I stared at it, unable to understand what it meant, and I didn't trust it.

The edges of my vision darkened again.

I bit down on my cheek until I tasted blood.

We passed through massive iron gates a few minutes later.

The moment the vehicle stopped, Dorian was out of his door and around the hood.

He wrenched mine open and hauled me out of the car.

My body hung limp in his arms.

I lacked the strength to fight as he carried me through a grand foyer and kicked open a set of double doors.

The sterile scent of antiseptic hit me like a physical blow.

A man in a white coat rushed forward, a stethoscope swinging around his neck.

He took one look at me and snapped on a pair of gloves.

“She's tachycardic and pale as paper. That's hypovolemic shock.” He dragged a tray of surgical tools closer. “Her pulse is thready, and the flank incision has dehisced. I need to explore it for internal bleeding. Get her on the table, Alpha. We need to stop the hemorrhage immediately.”

'Table.'

The room spun violently.

Cold metal. Leather straps. Kyle's dead, indifferent eyes watching through the glass while they carved my body apart.

“No,—” Terror swallowed me whole.

I thrashed wildly, tearing at Dorian's jacket.

My nails dragged across his throat and left red lines on his skin. “Don't touch me! Don't let him cut me! I'm awake, I can feel it, I can feel it—”

The doctor stepped back with both palms raised.

“Miss Maya, you're hyperventilating.” He snatched a syringe from the tray. “Her heart rate is spiking dangerously. Alpha, if she keeps thrashing, she'll continue to rupture the repair. The retroperitoneal space can fill with blood without any warning. I need her flat. Every minute counts.”

Dorian didn't look at him, his eyes remaining fixed on me.

He shifted his grip and pinned my flailing arms to his chest with terrifying ease.

His aura slammed down over me, a crushing weight that brought my frantic movements to a dead halt.

His eyes stayed black and steady on my face while I sobbed into his jacket.

“Look at me!” He kept his voice low, but the command cut straight through my panic. “Nothing is strapped.”

My breath hitched.

I searched his face for a lie, the way I should have searched Kyle's.

I found nothing but cold, immovable certainty.

Dorian turned his head toward the doctor. “Chair.”

“Alpha, the incision—”

Dorian held his gaze and offered no other words.

The doctor clamped his mouth shut and swallowed hard.

“A reclined exam chair.” He gestured to the nurse. “Fine. I can work with that.”

A nurse wheeled one over.

Dorian lowered me into it slowly, one hand braced behind my back until I was seated. Then he gripped the edge of the steel table and shoved it across the floor.

It screeched over the tile before slamming into the far wall.

Nobody dared to argue.

The doctor worked fast while the nurse hung a bag of fluids and slid a needle into my arm.

I barely felt it. My head kept lolling to one side, the room sliding out from under me.

“Pulse one-forty. Pressure's dropping.” He pressed two fingers under my jaw. “And there's no healing response at all. She should be knitting already. Even an Omega's wolf would have started clotting that wound by now.”

He flashed a penlight into my eyes.

I flinched and tried to turn away as the harsh glare bled into the memory of the operating room.

“Pupils sluggish. Skin clammy.” He turned to the nurse. “Run a rapid wolf-side assay. I want the wolfsbane levels, and I want them now.”

'Wolfsbane?'

The nurse returned in minutes with a vial. The doctor held it to the light, and his face drained of color.

“Triple the sedation threshold.” He lowered the vial with a trembling hand. “Even with the antidote I've been feeding into her drip every night, tonight's blood loss and the cold have overwhelmed it. Someone saturated her system with refined wolfsbane before that surgery. Her wolf has shut down completely. She can't regenerate, can't clot, can't even…”

He swallowed.

“She should have bled out on that table. Hanson had already walked out to his mate's side when they opened her up for the second kidney. If you hadn't walked into that operating room when you did, Alpha, she would have been dead within the hour. She wouldn't have lasted until—”

“Enough!” Dorian’s voice was icy.

He turned his head and fixed the doctor with a stare so cold the temperature in the room seemed to drop as his aura pressed down on every wolf present.

The doctor went rigid, sweat beading on his forehead.

“Forgive me, Alpha.” He bowed his head. “I'll finish the repair.”

His words swam through my mind like fish in dark water, slipping out of reach the moment I tried to grab one.

Wolfsbane. Walked into the operating room. Dead within the hour.

Something important was buried in there, but my thoughts wouldn't hold still.

Then the pressure of that aura shifted.

Beneath the sting of antiseptic and my own blood, his scent wrapped around me. It was grounding. Comforting.

A low hum stirred deep in me, the kind of pull I'd only ever read about in legends.

'A fated mate bond.'

My heart stuttered, and panic instantly replaced the warmth.

I reached inward for my wolf again, for any sign at all.

Still, nothing answered.

She couldn't confirm it, and she couldn't deny it.

'It's the blood loss,' I told myself. 'Or the wolfsbane. Or the fever.' Anything but that.

I was a broken, discarded Omega.

Believing Kyle wanted me had been a fairy tale built on a lie, and he was nothing compared to the lethal predator watching me from across the room.

Someone like Alpha Dorian couldn't be my fated mate.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved the sensation away.

I refused to be a fool again. I wouldn't let a desperate craving for affection drag me on another operating table.

My eyelids drooped, heavy as stone.

A warm, heavy dark crept in from the edges of the room, soft and inviting, like a hand pulling me under a blanket.

It would be so easy to let go. The pain would stop. The fear would stop.

But if I closed my eyes, I might never open them again.

I knew that with terrible clarity. I had already been asleep for a week. I had already been left for dead once tonight. If I slipped under now, no one would wake me.

And Kyle would win.

He'd stand on a stage with Harper's hand in his. He'd smile for the cameras, and my kidney would remain quietly inside her while the world forgot my name.

'No!'

I clamped my teeth on my tongue until blood filled my mouth.

The sharp, metallic taste dragged me back, and I forced my eyes wide open.

I wouldn't die. Not until I got my revenge.

The doctor reached for the needle but my hand shot out and seized a pair of surgical scissors from the tray.

“Back off!” The blades trembled in my fist. “Both of you.”

The doctor froze mid-motion. “Miss, I'm only closing the wound. You have to trust me.”

“That's what he said!” My voice cracked. “That's what they all said!”

Dorian's gaze darkened.

Dorian’s gaze darkened. He stepped in yet I refused to back down until the tip of the scissors touched his chest.

“I'll do it.” My whole arm shook. “I swear I will.”

He glanced down at the blade, then back at me.

The point pierced his shirt, and a dot of red spread across the white fabric.

I gasped and let go.

The scissors clattered across the floor.

Dorian looked at the blood like it was a smudge of dirt.

He picked up the scissors, tossing them onto the metal tray with a sharp clank. Then he dragged a stool beside the chair and sat with one ankle crossed over his knee.

I covered my face, crying in absolute despair.

“Now you decide to bare your teeth.” His voice cut through my broken haze, cold and dripping with mockery. “Where was this display of bravery when that charming husband was leading you to the slaughter?”

I flinched, a sob tearing from my throat.

It was the most he had said all night, and somehow it frightened me more than his silence had.

He leaned forward.

The utter lack of pity in his eyes felt like a physical blow. Yet his gaze flicked, just once, to the red stain spreading on his shirt, and his jaw locked.

“If you had shown even half of this stubbornness with him, you wouldn't be sitting here with wolfsbane rotting in your veins.” His tone sharpened. “Save the frantic act for someone who can be fooled by it. You will sit still while he finishes. Try my patience again, and I will toss you right back out into the rain and let Kyle's wolves finish feasting on what's left of you!"

The brutal threat snapped my fractured mind into line.

I swallowed my sobs, trembling violently, and lowered my hands to my lap.

The truth in his words cut deeper than any blade but it was the truth.

The doctor finished the stitches under a local anesthetic while Dorian watched.

I flinched at the first sting of the needle, then made myself hold still, my nails biting crescents into the armrest.

Every time I trembled, Dorian's gaze flicked to the man's hands, and the man's touch grew lighter.

By the time the last suture tied off, my tears had thinned to shuddering breaths.

Every muscle in my body felt like wet sand.

“Antibiotics and fluids for the next seventy-two hours.” The doctor peeled off his gloves. “The antidote continues nightly. Without her wolf's regeneration, the incision will heal like a human's, slowly and with a high risk of sepsis. No exertion for at least a month. If she spikes a fever, call me immediately.”

Dorian gave a single nod. “Leave us!”

“Yes, Alpha.” The doctor gathered his instruments and left without a backward glance, the door clicking shut behind him.