Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
MASON
She was dying.
Not quickly, not dramatically, but slowly, cell by cell, her body consuming itself in its desperate search for something we couldn't give her.
Eighteen hours since we'd found her in the snow.
Eighteen hours of skin contact, of scent saturation, of rotating shifts so she was never without at least two of us pressed against her.
It wasn't working.
I stood in the doorway of the nest room, watching my brothers try to save her.
Caleb had her cradled against his chest, his face buried in her hair, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself together.
Leo sat on her other side, her hand clasped in both of his, his sharp features drawn tight with fear he couldn't quite hide.
Ethan was checking her vitals again, the way he'd been doing every fifteen minutes since we'd brought her home, his gray eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands like the numbers might change if he stared hard enough.
They hadn't changed. Not enough. Her heart was still skipping. Her temperature kept fluctuating. And she hadn't opened her eyes in over six hours.
"Mason," Ethan said, his voice quiet, controlled, but I heard the crack beneath it, the fracture lines of exhaustion and terror that he was barely holding together.
He looked up from his tablet, his gray eyes red-rimmed behind his glasses, his face pale and drawn in the dim light of the nest room.
"Her cortisol levels are still spiking. The bond sickness isn't responding to proximity alone. "
I knew. I'd known since hour twelve, when her breathing had gone shallow and her skin had taken on that waxy pallor that made my Alpha howl with desperate fury. I'd known, and I'd been putting off the conversation we needed to have because I wasn't sure I could stomach it.
"We need to talk," I said, my voice rougher than I intended, scraping past the tightness in my throat like gravel over stone. I gripped the doorframe hard enough to feel the wood creak beneath my fingers, anchoring myself against the tide of fear threatening to pull me under. "All of us. Now."
"I'm not leaving her," Caleb said, his head coming up from where he'd buried it in her hair, his pale eyes red-rimmed and exhausted, dark circles carved beneath them like bruises.
His arms tightened around Ava's limp form, pulling her closer against his chest as if he could physically hold her to this world through sheer force of will.
"You don't have to. Just... listen." I moved into the room, my footsteps heavy on the wooden floor, each step feeling like I was walking toward my own execution.
I settled on the edge of the nest, close enough to touch her if I needed to, close enough to see the faint blue tinge around her lips that made my stomach clench with terror.
Her scent was wrong, sour with sickness, sharp with distress, nothing like the warm honey and wildflowers I'd grown addicted to over the past months.
My Alpha clawed at the inside of my chest, demanding I fix it, demanding I do something, anything.
I'd called David six hours ago. I knew what he'd said. I'd been trying to find another way ever since. There wasn't one.
"David suggested something," I started, my voice low and rough, each word dragged out of me like pulling teeth.
I watched Leo's eyes narrow with immediate suspicion, his jaw tightening in that familiar way that meant he was already preparing to argue.
"If the scent saturation didn't work. If she didn't improve. "
"What did he suggest?" Ethan asked, his voice carefully neutral, his fingers still moving across his tablet even as his attention fixed on me.
His gray eyes were sharp despite his exhaustion, analytical even now, already processing possibilities and outcomes like he always did when faced with a problem he couldn't solve.
I couldn't say it. Couldn't force the words past the tightness in my throat, past the guilt already clawing at my chest. So I just looked at them, at my brothers, and let them read it in my face.
Leo understood first. His jaw went tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek, his hand tightening around Ava's until his knuckles went white against the pallor of her skin. "No."
"Leo—"
"No," he repeated, his voice sharp as a blade, cutting through the heavy air of the room like a knife through silk.
He leaned forward, his pale eyes blazing with fury and fear in equal measure, his whole body vibrating with barely contained Alpha aggression.
"She's not conscious. She can't consent.
We're not— we're not doing that to her."
"She's dying," I said, and the words tasted like ash on my tongue, bitter and wrong and utterly inadequate for the horror of what I was suggesting.
I ran a hand through my hair, tugging at the strands hard enough to hurt, needing the pain to ground me.
"Her body is shutting down because it thinks we've abandoned her.
The bond needs more than proximity. It needs—"
"I know what it needs," Leo snarled, and for a moment his control slipped entirely, his Alpha flashing in his eyes like lightning, all protective fury and desperate fear.
He rose up on his knees, positioning himself between Ava and me like I was the threat, like I was the one trying to hurt her.
"I know exactly what David thinks we should do to her.
And I'm telling you, we're not fucking doing it. "
"Then what?" I demanded, my own control fraying at the edges, eighteen hours of terror and helplessness finally boiling over into something hot and ugly.
I surged forward, grabbing Leo by the collar of his shirt, pulling him close until we were nose to nose, both of us breathing hard.
"What do you suggest, Leo? Because I'm open to alternatives.
I am begging you to give me an alternative that doesn't end with her dead. "
Silence. Leo's mouth opened, closed. His eyes searched mine, looking for something — hope, maybe, or another way out. He found nothing. None of us had anything.
"Dr. Mercer is on his way," Ethan said quietly, his voice cutting through the tension like a scalpel, precise and careful.
He hadn't looked up from his tablet, his fingers still moving across the screen, but I could see the tremor in his hands, the way his shoulders had drawn up tight around his ears.
"I called him an hour ago. He's... he's dealt with severe bond sickness before. Maybe he'll have another option."
I released Leo, stepping back, latching onto that hope like a drowning man clutching driftwood. "When will he be here?"
"Twenty minutes," Ethan said, finally looking up, his gray eyes meeting mine with a desperation that matched my own. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and he pushed them back up with a trembling finger, a nervous habit I hadn't seen from him in years.
Twenty minutes. I could hold myself together for twenty more minutes.
"Mason," Caleb's voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but it cut through my spiraling thoughts like a knife.
He was looking at Ava's face, at the pale stillness of her features, at the faint blue tinge around her lips that seemed to have deepened in just the last few minutes.
His hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone with heartbreaking tenderness. "Her breathing is getting worse."
I moved without thinking, crossing the nest to press my hand to her chest, feeling the shallow, stuttering rise and fall of her ribs beneath my palm. Too fast. Too weak. Her heart fluttered against my hand like a trapped bird beating itself against the bars of its cage.
"Ava," I said, my voice cracking on her name, breaking apart like ice in spring. I leaned down, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing in her wrong, sour scent and trying to find her beneath it. "Avalon, can you hear me? I need you to wake up. Please. Please, sweetheart, just open your eyes."
Nothing. Not even a flicker of her eyelids, not even a twitch of her fingers.
She lay still and pale and barely breathing, slipping further away with every moment that passed.
My Alpha roared inside my chest, a sound of pure anguish that I barely managed to keep from escaping my throat.
She was right here, in my arms, surrounded by her pack, and she was still slipping away.
Twenty minutes passed like hours.
Dr. Mercer arrived with a black medical bag and the calm, professional demeanor of a man who'd seen worse.
He was in his fifties, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, his face lined with the kind of weathered experience that came from decades of practice.
He'd been on the Harper family payroll since before I was born. He knew how to keep secrets.
"How long has she been like this?" he asked, pulling out a stethoscope and pressing it to Ava's chest with practiced efficiency. We'd moved her to the center of the nest, all four of us arranged around her like sentinels, unwilling to give up even an inch of contact.
"Eighteen hours since we found her," Ethan answered, his voice tight with barely controlled anxiety, his words tumbling out faster than usual as he recited the facts like they might save her.
"She was hypothermic and bond-sick when we brought her in.
We've maintained constant skin contact, scent saturation, everything the literature recommends.
She woke briefly around hour four, said a few words, then lost consciousness again.
Her heart rate has been irregular, her temperature keeps fluctuating between ninety-six and ninety-nine degrees, and her cortisol levels are—"