The ceiling of the clinic was stark white.
Every shallow breath felt like dragging rusted wire through my lungs. A steady drip echoed beside my ear, plastic tubing running down into the back of my left hand. Bandages wrapped my ribs so tight I could barely expand my chest.
"Drink," a nurse muttered, holding a cup of cold water to my cracked lips.
I swallowed a sip. Pain flared down my esophagus. "What time is it?"
"Nearly four in the afternoon. You’ve been unconscious since yesterday morning." She adjusted the flow valve on the IV stand. "You lost three pints of blood, Maeve. The wolfsbane blistered your bronchial tubes. If Alpha Mercer’s medics hadn't flushed your system on the transport, your heart would have quit before dusk."
"Mercer brought me in?"
"Carried you right through triage himself," she replied, taping down a loose bandage over my splinted shin. "Your Alpha was occupied."
The heavy oak door swung open before I could speak.
Kieran stepped into the room. He wore clean clothes—a fresh charcoal sweater, black tactical pants, no trace of the soot or grease from the collapse. His hair was damp from a recent shower. He looked rested. Healthy.
The nurse offered a quick, tense nod. "Alpha."
"Leave us, Brenda," Kieran said smoothly.
She hesitated, glancing at my monitor, then slipped past him into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her.
Kieran stood beside the bed, looking down at me with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. For three long seconds, he said nothing. He just studied my pale face, the splints, the yellow bruises spreading beneath my collarbone.
"You look terrible," he said. A small, familiar smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"I feel worse." My voice sounded like gravel grinding in a blender.
"Brenda said you woke up twenty minutes ago." He pulled the plastic chair closer and sat down, leaning his forearms on the edge of the mattress. "I came as soon as the council debrief wrapped."
"Serena?"
"Resting," he said instantly. "Her respiratory tract is sensitive. The smoke hit her hard, but the doctors say the rebreather saved her vocal cords. She's going to make a full recovery."
I stared at the ceiling tiles. "Good to know."
"Maeve." He reached out, his warm, heavy fingers wrapping around my wrist. "I knew you’d find a way out. You always do."
The words struck like an icicle plunged straight into my sternum.
*I knew you’d find a way out.*
Not *I'm sorry I left you.* Not *Forgive me for abandoning you under three tons of falling rock.*
Just that familiar, careless praise. The same easy pat on the head he had used on me for years.
A sudden, sharp memory flared in my mind—two years ago, the dead of winter. A sudden bout of silver-taint fever had spiked my temperature to a lethal hundred and four. My skin had burned so hot I couldn't focus my eyes, shivering on the floor of our private quarters while my wolf whined in agony.
Kieran had stood by the door, pulling on his winter coat.
*Serena got spooked by a rogue sighting near the north ridge,* he had told me back then. *She’s having panic attacks. She won't let the guards touch her. I have to go calm her down.*
*Kieran, please,* I had whispered, my fingernails digging into the carpet. *I can’t walk. My fever...*
*You’re strong, Maeve. You have warrior blood. You can handle a fever. Serena can’t.*
He had walked out into the blizzard. I had spent that night crawling on my elbows and knees through the freezing slush of the courtyard, clawing at the clinic’s bottom step until a sentry spotted me at dawn.
Two years. Nothing had changed. Not a single thing.
Kieran leaned closer, his dark eyes softening with something that looked like affection. He raised a hand toward my temple, leaning down to press his lips against my hairline.
I jerked my head away, burying my cheek into the flat pillow.
His lips caught empty air.
Kieran froze. His hand hovered an inch from my shoulder before slowly dropping to the bedrail. The warmth vanished from his expression, replaced by a flicker of irritation.
"What is that about?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
I kept my eyes fixed on the blank wall beside us. "Did you see my legs?"
He went still. "What?"
"When the tunnel came down," I rasped, turning my head back to look directly into his eyes. "You stood three feet away. You looked right at me. Did you see the concrete slab pinning my legs to the floor?"
A faint twitch pulled at Kieran’s jaw. "The ceiling was collapsing, Maeve. The entire structural frame was giving out."
"Answer the question."
"Yes," he snapped, his Alpha presence flaring in the small room like an invisible weight. "I saw it. And I saw the support rebar buckling above us. If I had stopped to move that slab without leverage, the cross-beam would have crushed all three of us."
"So you took Serena."
"Serena was dying!" His voice rose, sharp and impatient. "She doesn't have your endurance. She isn't trained for combat. You know her constitution—she goes into shock if she gets a scratch! If I hadn't carried her into the cold air within sixty seconds, her windpipe would have swelled shut."
"And me?" I asked quietly. "What was supposed to happen to me?"
"You're a Beta's daughter! You have higher regenerative limits than almost anyone in the pack." He leaned forward, gripping the metal rail of the bed until the joint creaked. "And I told you I would send someone back."
"You didn't send anyone."
"I was coordinating the medical transport—"
"Dax Mercer dug me out," I cut him off, watching the color drain from his cheekbones. "A rival Alpha. A man who owes our pack nothing. He used his bare hands and hydraulic spreaders while you were tucking blankets around Serena in the heated rig."
Kieran’s eyes hardened into flint. "Mercer had no business being in our operational zone. He’s looking for leverage against us."
"He saved my life."
"You didn't need saving! You would have survived until my squad cleared the perimeter!"
A ragged laugh scraped against my throat. It tasted like ash. "You really believe that, don't you?"
"I know what you're capable of, Maeve," he said, smoothing his expression back into that cool, reasonable mask he wore for the elders. "You're tough. You always have been. Serena isn't. And the pack cannot lose its future Luna. You understand how fragile the council's alliance is right now. If anything happened to Serena before the formal announcement—"
"The future Luna." I repeated the words slowly, letting them hang between us.
For three years, he had crept into my bed under the cover of night. For three years, he had told me we had to keep our bond hidden because the council demanded a pureblood union with Serena’s bloodline to secure the southern borders. *Just wait,* he had whispered against my neck a hundred times. *Once my position as Alpha is uncontested, I’ll claim you publicly. Just be patient. Play the loyal soldier.*
I looked down at the white plastic tube taped to the back of my hand.
With a swift, steady jerk, I tore the adhesive strip off my skin and yanked the IV catheter from my vein.
A sharp sting tore through my knuckle. Dark red blood welled up from the puncture, dripping onto the clean cotton sheets.
Kieran jerked back in his chair. "What the hell are you doing?"
I reached up, pulled the monitor clip off my index finger, and dropped it onto the metal side table. The machine began to blare a high-pitched alarm. I hit the mute button with the palm of my hand.
"Maeve, stop acting like a child," Kieran said, his tone turning severe. "Lie back down before you tear the stitches in your shoulder."
"Get out."
He blinked, stunned. "Excuse me?"
"Get out of my room, Kieran."
"I am your Alpha," he growled, standing up to his full height, using his frame to block out the light from the window. "You don't dismiss me."
"Then consider this a request from an injured soldier," I said, meeting his glare without blinking. "I need to rest. And looking at your face is making me sick."
His lips pressed into a bloodless line. He stared down at me, his chest rising and falling in sharp, controlled breaths, waiting for the apology that always came. Waiting for me to swallow my temper, lower my eyes, and tell him I understood his burden.
I didn't move. I didn't drop my gaze.
"You're exhausted," Kieran finally said, his voice clipped and bitter. "You're not in your right mind because of the smoke. I'll overlook this once."
"Leave."
He spun on his heel and wrenched the clinic door open, slamming it behind him with enough force to rattle the glass partition.
Through the narrow observation window in the door, I watched him stop in the hallway.
Brenda the nurse hurried past him, but Kieran didn't move. He stood frozen under the fluorescent lights, his broad back rigid, his jaw working violently as his hands curled into tight, shaking fists at his sides. He glanced back at my window once, his expression dark with irritation and wounded pride, before storming away down the corridor.
I leaned my head back against the pillow, watching the blood from my hand soak into the white linen.
Outside the window, the winter sky was bruising into a deep, stormy violet. Footsteps approached the door again—heavier, slower, and measured with a weight that didn't belong to any doctor in this pack.
