Chapter 12
Darius
Her scent hits me before I even open the door.
The sweet berry scent I’ve already started memorizing has curdled into something rank. Fruit left to rot in the heat. My gut tightens.
What the fuck.
“Blue? Dinner’s ready.”
Silence.
I push the door open. She’s sprawled on the floor, hair plastered to her forehead. Her chest rises and falls in shallow, rapid little breaths.
“Blue?” I step forward, half expecting her to spring up and go for my throat. Some kind of play. But up close, her skin is pale, and there’s no faking the tremor running through her body.
“Hey. Can you hear me?” I shake her shoulder, trying to be gentle about it. Her eyelids flutter but don’t open. I fumble with the chain, get it off her wrist, and toss it aside.
I scoop her off the floor and lay her on the bed. She weighs nothing.
“Blue, you can shift now. Shift and heal.”
Her mouth opens. A thin, weak sound comes out, barely more than air. A second of relief that she’s responsive, but it doesn’t last. Her breathing is getting worse, not better, and the trembling hasn’t stopped.
“Shift, Blue.” I let my alpha command bleed into my voice. I don’t want to, but I don’t see a choice. “You have to heal. Do it now.”
Her muscles tense. I can see her trying, the way her body strains and then just gives out. She slumps back, her head rolling to the side.
“Fuck!”
I should’ve let her shift when she asked.
She told me she needed it. Told me she had a condition.
And I said no because I was too proud and too paranoid, too sure it was a trick to escape.
And now she’s lying here with her eyes rolled back and her body shutting down because I was too fucking stubborn to listen.
I press my hand to her forehead. She’s burning up.
“Elias!” I shout, not taking my eyes off her. “Get Cassia. Now.”
Footsteps pound down the hall, and Elias skids into the doorway. “What happened? Is she—”
“Get her now.”
“She’s at the—”
“I don’t care if she’s delivering triplets to the Moon Goddess herself. Get. Her. Now.”
Elias doesn’t argue and runs out the door.
I turn back to Blue. The others file into the room behind me.
“What did you do to her?” Archer says.
“Nothing—she was like this when I came to bring her dinner.”
Silas moves past me into the bathroom. He comes back with a wet cloth, sits on the edge of the bed, and starts wiping the sweat from Blue’s forehead.
His hands are steady and careful, the way you’d handle something you were afraid of breaking.
Then he leans down and presses his lips to her forehead, soft and barely there, and I just stand there staring because I have never once in my life seen Silas do anything like that.
The door bangs open ten minutes later, and Cassia walks in. Dark hair loose around her shoulders, violet eyes already sharp and focused. She looks at me, looks at Blue, and points at the door.
“Move.”
Every instinct I have tells me to stand my ground, to protect what’s mine. I force it down and step aside.
Cassia’s hands move over Blue’s body. “How long has she been like this?”
“A few hours. Maybe more.” My jaw aches from clenching. “Can you help her?”
Cassia looks up at me. Her expression gives me nothing good. “Her body’s shutting down, Darius. Something is seriously wrong.”
She goes back to examining Blue, pressing along her torso and limbs, then stops. Her fingers hover over a spot on Blue’s hip, just above the pubic bone, and freeze.
“My cabin. Now.”
I pick up Blue, and we practically run to Cassia’s medical cabin.
I lay Blue down on the examination table in the center of the room. Cassia is already moving, checking the pulse and temperature, and pulling back the eyelids. She works fast and says nothing.
Her hands slow. Her fingers stop at Blue’s inner thighs. Something changes in her face. The professional calm cracks, and what comes through is something cold and furious.
“Everybody out,” she says.
“What—”
“Out. Now. Except you, Darius. I’ll need you to hold her.”
The others file out, and Archer shuts the door behind them.
Cassia pulls the boxers off and carefully pushes up the oversized shirt. Then she eases Blue’s legs apart, and I see it.
Wire. Thin, dark wire, stitched into the skin around her sex. Sewn in deliberately and threaded through her flesh as if someone was stitching a garment shut. Which is exactly what they were doing.
They sewed her closed.
“What the fuck.”
The room tilts. My wolf slams against the inside of my skull so hard my vision goes white. A sound comes out of me that I don’t recognize, low and animal and broken, and I have to grab the edge of the table to keep from going to my knees.
“Darius.” Cassia’s voice is sharp. “Stay with me. I need you to be functional.”
I nod, getting a grip.
Cassia’s jaw is clenched so hard I can see the tendons in her neck.
“Wolfsbane wire,” she continues. “Sewn into her body to prevent sexual contact. Whoever did this wanted to make sure she stayed sealed. The wire is laced with wolfsbane, so if she shifts, it won’t break.
It stays intact. And because it’s wolfsbane, it’s been slowly poisoning her the entire time it’s been in. ”
“That’s why she needs to shift every day?” I ask.
“Yes. The shifting won’t remove the wire, but it helps her body fight the poison.”
“When was the last time she shifted?”
“I don’t know. She asked me to shift this morning, but I refused. I thought it was a ploy to escape.”
“If you stopped her from shifting, the wolfsbane had nothing pushing back against it. Her body has started shutting down.”
I can’t speak. I can’t think. All I want to do is kill whoever did this to her. I want them dead.
“Darius.” Cassia’s voice cuts through the roar in my head. “I need you to hold her still. This is going to hurt.”
I nod. I grip Blue’s shoulders and brace her as Cassia begins cutting the first wire free.
The smell hits me a second later. Wolfsbane. Acrid, bitter, burning the inside of my nose. My stomach lurches, and I have to turn my head and breathe through my mouth to keep from retching.
Blue thrashes. Not strong, not the way she fights when she’s awake, but a weak, involuntary bucking, her body trying to get away from the pain. A sound comes from her throat that isn’t a word.
Just raw agony.
I hold her, and I watch Cassia work. She’s careful, precise, pulling each strand free with steady fingers while Blue’s body jerks and that sound keeps coming.
“How could anyone do this to her?” I say.
Cassia doesn’t look up. “Some alphas will go to any lengths to control their omegas, even if it means destroying them. It’s a practice some of the more brutal packs employ to ensure their omega remains faithful.
It can also be a buyer’s request if an omega is sold.
A way to ensure she hasn’t been used before he decides to break her in himself.
Guarantees the product is… intact.” She spits the last word.
Product. Intact. Used.
The words sit in my chest and won’t leave. Because she isn’t just talking about whoever installed the wires. She’s talking about control. Period. And I chained this girl to a wall. I refused to let her shift. I called her mine before she’d even told me her real name.
Different methods.
Same fucking logic.
“Almost done,” Cassia says. Her hands are steady, even on the last wire. “She’s strong. Stronger than she has any right to be, given how long these have been in her.”
I look at Blue’s face. Pale. Soaked with sweat. Her lips are moving, but nothing comes out.
“Come on, little wolf,” I say, low enough that only she can hear, assuming she can hear anything at all. “Don’t you give up. You’re too goddamn stubborn to let this beat you.”
Her eyelids move. Just barely.
Then Cassia drops the last piece of wire into a metal tray.
“Done,” she says. She straightens up and removes her medical gloves. “Now we wait.”
I let out a breath. “She’ll be okay?”
“With time. And care.” Cassia looks at me, and there’s nothing gentle about it. “She’ll need to shift to heal completely. The wolfsbane has been building in her system for years. Daily shifting was the only thing that kept it from killing her.”
I hear what she’s saying. All of it. The parts she’s spelling out and the parts she’s not.
“Whatever she needs,” I say.
Cassia nods and goes to clean up. The others come back in, and I can tell by their faces they heard most of it through the door.
Elias looks sick. Archer looks like he wants to put his fist through a wall.
Silas stands very still, staring at Blue on the table, both hands curled into fists at his sides.
Nobody says anything for a long time.
Eventually, they leave, one by one. Archer is last. He gives me a look on his way out that says everything he’s thinking without a single word.
And then it’s just Blue and me.
I pull a chair to the table and sit with her. After a long time, I reach for her hand. It’s small in mine. I can feel the calluses on her fingers, the ridge of a scar across her knuckles.
This girl has been through hell. And I chained her to the wall and prevented her from shifting.
I did this.
Not directly, I didn’t sew the wires, but I refused to let her shift. I kept her chained when she begged me.
I am no different from the males who hurt her.
I’ve spent ten years trying to be better than the alphas who killed my father. Trying to lead with strength tempered by mercy. And I’ve failed. I became exactly what I was trying to fight against.
I’m the reason she almost died.
“I’m sorry,” I say. So quiet I can barely hear my own voice. “I’ll do better.”
I sit there holding her hand, listening to her breathe, and I mean every word.