Lahat ng Kabanata ng CRAVING THE WRONG BLACKTHORNE BROTHER: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

Levi She was still pressing her hands together when the doctor came out.I’d been watching her do it for forty minutes without saying anything because there was nothing useful to say and she wasn’t the kind of person who needed you to fill silence, she needed you to sit in it with her, so I sat in it with her and watched her hands and the fluorescent light hummed and the television showed a man pointing at a wall and nobody said anything.The doctor was young and tired and moved through his update like a checklist. Stable. Allergic reaction. Treatment administered. Resting comfortably.“Are you the parents?”I looked at Ella.She looked at me.The question sat in the air between us with everything it didn’t know it was carrying and I held her gaze for one second, two, and then I said no, gave him the coordinator’s number, watched him write it down and go back through the doors.Ella let out a breath. Long and slightly unsteady. She pressed her hands together one final time and then o

The morning of the ball I woke up early.Not because of nerves, or not only that. I woke up the way you wake up when something you have worked toward for months is finally a day away and your body refuses to sleep through the waiting. I lay there in the grey morning light and went through everything in my head the way I’d been going through it for weeks. The flowers, confirmed Thursday. The music, the quartet arriving at four. The catering, the seating, the lighting along the east corridor that had taken three attempts to get right. The invitations that had gone to every unmated wolf between eighteen and thirty-five across the three main packs of the kingdom, two hundred and forty of them, and the particular weight of that number, what it meant, how many of them might find the thing tonight that changed everything.I had planned a ball where people would find their mates.Lying in the grey morning I thought about that, really thought about it, and felt something move through me that w

Everything became a blur of blood and shouting.Guards swarmed the garden. The pack doctor—a stern-faced woman named Dr. Hayes—appeared with a medical kit, barking orders. Two guards lifted Levi’s convulsing body onto a stretcher while Ella clutched his hand, refusing to let go.“Ma’am, you need to step back—”“NO!” Ella’s voice was raw. “I’m not leaving him!”“Mrs. Blackthorne, we need room to work—”“I SAID NO!”Dr. Hayes’ sharp eyes assessed Ella—dress soaked in blood, hands trembling, face streaked with tears and dirt—and made a decision.“Let her stay close,” she ordered the guards. “But keep her out of the way.”They rushed toward the estate, Ella running alongside the stretcher, her hand still locked with Levi’s. His grip was weakening. His skin had gone from gray to almost blue, his breathing shallow and ragged.“Stay with me,” Ella whispered desperately. “Please, Levi. Stay with me.”His eyes fluttered open for just a moment, unfocused and glazed with pain. His lips moved, fo

Nate went very still.It was the kind of stillness that came before violence. Before destruction. The air around him seemed to crackle with barely leashed rage.“The arrow was meant for you,” he repeated softly. “Someone tried to kill my wife.”“Yes.” Ella’s voice was small. “Levi—he saw it coming. He pushed me out of the way.”“And nearly died for it.” Nate’s jaw clenched so hard she could see the muscle jumping. “Where is he?”“In there.” Ella gestured to the medical wing doors. “Dr. Hayes says the poison is spreading. They can’t stop it.”Without a word, Nate strode to the doors and pushed through.Ella followed, her heart in her throat.Levi looked like a corpse.He lay on the medical bed, tubes and wires connecting him to various machines that beeped rhythmically. His skin was ashen, his lips tinged blue. Dark veins spider-webbed across his exposed shoulder and chest where the poison spread through his system like ink in water.Dr. Hayes stood over him, injecting something into h

The next morning, the estate had transformed into a fortress.Ella woke to find Nate already gone, his side of the bed cold. A note on his pillow: *Stay inside today. New security protocols in place.*She dressed quickly and ventured into the hallway to find guards posted every twenty feet. Not the usual casual patrol—these were armed, alert, watching every shadow with predatory focus.“Mrs. Blackthorne.” One of them nodded as she passed. “The Alpha requests you stay within the main residence today.”“I’m just going to check on Levi,” she said.“Of course, ma’am. I’ll escort you.”Everything had changed overnight. The casual freedom she’d had to move through the estate was gone, replaced by constant surveillance. Constant protection.Constant suspicion.-----Levi looked worse.Dr. Hayes had called in three specialists—healers from different territories, each with their own theories about the poison. They clustered around his bed, arguing in low voices about treatment protocols.“The