Chapter 7

She told him the truth. She had a grave sickness. She would not die on his floor.

He smiled and pulled an old photo out of his jacket — a woman with kind eyes, standing in chrysanthemums. Rosalie, his Mate, gone three years. Brain bleed. He had learned, he said, that life and death were fixed points. A wolf made peace with them or died twice.

"I'd like to film you," he said. "I won a Territory prize years ago for this kind of work. I'd like to record your days. Your quiet. Your face when you watch the sky."

She almost said no. She had lost hair, lost teeth, lost color. She could not bear her own mirror. Something in his patience undid her. "All right." She smiled faintly. "Let me buy a wig first."

They started on her birthday. The camera on his stone table in the courtyard. She told it about her parents, dying in a rogue-wolf raid when she was eighteen. About a neighbor boy named Damon who had eaten dry bread with her through a winter of no heat. About eight years of building something small out of nothing, until the Healer handed her a death sentence.

Her eyes filled. "They loved me, my parents. He loved me, once." She wiped her cheek. "Fates run out."

Arlan let the tape keep rolling. "Whatever comes," he said, "this stays."

When Wren next came to, her body felt like it was underwater. She couldn't move her fingers. The bright sting of Pack Healer disinfectant filled her nose. She heard Arlan's voice, far off, asking the Highland Healer how she was.

"Final-stage Silver Blight," the Healer said. "Organs failing. We can only stabilize her here for now. I've reached her main Healer back in the capital — Elias Hartley. He's on his way. Any more delay and we'll lose her."

Arlan sighed quietly. Wren tried to say it was all right. She could not even flex a finger. Dark pulled her back under.

Very far away, in a gift shop in northern Norway, Damon Thorne was browsing wooden keepsakes with Selene on his arm when his phone rang. Elias Hartley, the screen said. Elias almost never called him directly. Damon stepped out into the cold street.

"Where is she."

Elias's voice was a whip. "Wren? She's back in the Pack, she was fine when I —"

"She collapsed yesterday at a guest house in Highland Territory. Organ failure. Days, maybe. You have no idea, do you, because you blocked me through two weeks of calls while you were honeymooning across the ocean with your mistress."

"That's —"

"Come now, Damon. Or come to bury her. Either way, come." The line went dead.

Damon stood holding the phone. Selene waved to him from the register with her arms full of snow globes and asked why he was so slow. He walked to her as if through water. "Put it down. We're leaving for Highland Territory now."

"What? Why —"

"Wren is dying."

Selene's face flickered — the little tender pity that did not fit her eyes. Then it firmed. She clutched her stomach. "Oh — I don't feel well. My stomach hurts. I can't fly today —"

"Selene." His voice was ice. "She's dying. You fly with me or I carry you onto the plane bound and tagged. Pick."

Selene went rigid. The pretty tearful mask fell away. She had held him this long. She would not let a dying Wren take him back now. "Think, Damon. She's dying anyway. Quick mercy for her. You really want me to risk surgery for a corpse?"

"She is not a corpse. Selene, I went and found you so you could save her. If she weren't dying, you and I would never have met."

The words tore the last pretty sheet off the bed. Selene laughed. The soft face went sharp. "You think I ever meant to save her?"

He went still.

"I took the donor spot for the money. I took you because you came with it. I have dragged the ceremony six times on purpose. Every time she almost had hope, I pulled the rug. Because the longer I stretched her out the more of you I could keep. Because she's old news and I'm new. Because every wolf in your Pack rushes to shield her and no one looks at me. Because she dies, and you're mine for good."

Damon could not find his voice.

"She's not pretty anymore, Damon. She's not young. Her body's broken. And still every Pack member chooses her. Why her? Why not me?"

Anger and guilt rose up and choked him. Everything he had told himself was a lie. Every time Selene had cried at the clinic door and he had held her and soothed her, she had been playing him like a reed. He had stood on the opposite side of his Mate while she hemorrhaged hope.

"You deserve to die."

"I don't think you dare." She lifted her chin. "My blood is still the only match. Her life is still in my hands."

He forced himself steady. "I'll have you charged with donor fraud. Your parents' half-million, the hundreds I've spent on you — the Council will claw it all back. You'll never Pack again."