I thought Dr. Robert was going to write another prescription for iron supplements or tell me to get more sleep.

Instead, he uncapped a red pen, clicked it against his clipboard, and wrote two words across the header of my chart in thick, jagged block letters:

*60 DAYS.*

He set the pen down, the plastic tapping sharply against the steel desk.

"I am not going to sugarcoat this, Elara," he said, his voice flat with clinical gravity. "Eighteen months of severe mate rejection have pushed your bond into terminal collapse."

My throat felt tight and dry. "It's just fatigue. I haven't been sleeping because of the pack shift transitions."

"Your wolf is dying," Dr. Robert cut in, not letting me hide behind excuses. "Look at the telemetry. Your resting heart rate shows progressive arrhythmia. Your natural scent markers have dropped by seventy percent over the last four weeks alone. Your body has begun rejecting its own cellular regeneration."

He turned the monitor toward me. The jagged lines of my vital signs looked brittle, like dry twigs waiting to snap under pressure.

"If this regression continues unchecked, your internal organs will fail one by one," he continued. "You will suffer catastrophic internal hemorrhaging within two months. Sixty days is the outer limit."

"There has to be a stabilizer," I said. "An injection. Something from the apothecary."

"There is only one medical treatment that can restart the dormant channels of a rejected bond," Dr. Robert said, handing me the printed diagnostic summary. "Full, voluntary mate consummation. If Alpha Cassian does not sleep with you, you will not survive the summer."

I stared at the black ink stamped across the bottom of the page: *Recommended Intervention: Immediate Sexual Consummation via Primary Mate Bond.*

I folded the paper once, stood up, and left the clinic without another word.

***

The Alpha suite on the third floor of the packhouse was dead silent when I walked in.

Cassian sat behind his dark walnut desk, a stack of territorial boundary reports spread before him. He was in a crisp black dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his jaw set in the usual hard, distant lines he reserved exclusively for me.

I shut the door behind me and turned the deadbolt until it clicked into place.

He didn't look up from his papers. "Whatever grievance you have with the household staff, talk to the steward. I'm busy."

"I don't care about the staff," I said.

My heart hammered violently against my ribs, irregular and weak, exactly as the monitor had shown. I walked across the Persian rug until I was standing directly in front of his desk.

"I need you to sleep with me," I said.

Cassian froze. The pen in his fingers stopped moving.

Slowly, he raised his head, his dark gray eyes scanning my face with cold disbelief. A cruel, incredulous smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me," I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "I need you in bed. Today."

I slapped the folded medical report down on top of his territorial maps.

Cassian looked at the paper for a long, silent second before picking it up with two fingers, as if it were contaminated. His eyes skimmed the bold header, drifting down the page until they hit the diagnosis and the recommended treatment.

He let out a dry, mocking laugh that felt like a blade dragged across my skin.

"Consummation?" He dropped the report onto the desk. "Is this your newest angle, Elara? You've moved on from subtle guilt trips to forging medical documents?"

"It's not forged," I said, stepping closer. "Dr. Robert signed it ten minutes ago. The rejection is killing my wolf. The bond is starving, Cassian. My organs are shutting down. If we don't complete the bond, I have less than two months."

"You really think I'm that stupid?"

He stood up, towering over me, his shadow swallowing the light from the desk lamp. His voice dropped to a low, venomous rasp.

"You spent the last six months dropping hints about starting a family," he said, leaning over the desk until I could smell the sharp cedar scent of his skin. "Three months ago, you sat at the dining table and cried because the Beta's mate had a pup. You told me our pack needed an heir."

"That was before—"

"And now you suddenly have a terminal illness that can only be cured by me putting a child in you?" He scoffed, his gaze hardening into pure contempt. "You don't want to live, Elara. You want a baby. You want an heir locked to your name so you can permanently secure your title as Luna before I find a way to sever this bond legally."

The accusation struck so hard my breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to tilt.

"I am trying to stay alive," I whispered. "That's all this is. Look at my vitals. Call Robert right now and ask him yourself."

"I am not playing your pathetic games," he said coldly. "Using the threat of death to force me into your bed is the most disgusting thing you've ever done. If you think I would ever touch you under coercion, you have severely underestimated me."

Before I could speak, the sharp chime of his personal phone shattered the air between us.

Cassian glanced down at the screen. The icy fury on his face vanished in an instant, replaced by immediate concern.

He didn't hesitate. He answered it right in front of me.

"Talia?" he said, his voice dropping into a gentle, soothing register I hadn't heard him use in over a year. "What's wrong?"

I stood frozen as I listened to the quiet, distressed murmurs coming through the speaker.

"Another nightmare?" Cassian asked softly, turning his back to me as he walked toward the window. "Take a deep breath. You're safe. I'll have someone bring chamomile tea to your room right now, and I'll be over in twenty minutes to check on you. Just stay in bed."

Every word felt like a physical blow. He spoke to her with the tenderness of a devoted mate, while looking at me like an intolerable burden.

He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket before turning around. The warmth in his expression vanished the moment his eyes landed back on me.

"Unlock the door and get out," he said flatly. "I have somewhere to be."

I looked at him—really looked at him. The man the Moon Goddess had chosen for me. The man who would rather watch me rot from the inside out than believe I was in pain.

I didn't yell. I didn't cry. The panic that had driven me into his office was suddenly replaced by a hollow, freezing clarity.

I reached across the dark wood, picked up my medical report, and folded it neatly in half.

"Fine," I said quietly. "Fifty-nine days, then."

Cassian rolled his eyes, shaking his head at what he clearly considered another melodramatic line in a scripted performance. "Don't embarrass yourself any further, Elara."

I didn't answer. I turned the lock, opened the heavy oak door, and walked out into the corridor.

I didn't stop until I reached my private bedroom at the far end of the west wing.

Inside, the silence was suffocating. I walked over to the desk by the window where a small paper calendar hung on the wall.

Taking a pen from the drawer, I drew a thick, black X over today's date.

One day down. Fifty-nine left.

My chest gave a sharp, violent spasm, and I pressed my sleeve against my mouth as a coughing fit tore through my lungs. When I pulled my hand away, a dark crimson smear stained the white fabric.

I turned toward the wastebasket beside the nightstand.

Sitting at the very bottom was the tissue from this morning, crusted with the exact same blood.

Cassian didn't believe I was dying.

And by the time he realized the truth, the countdown would already be over.

Pride was a luxury for people who were going to live to see autumn.

By Tuesday evening, three days had burned away from my countdown. Every morning brought a heavier weight in my chest, a dull, spreading ache that felt like dry cement hardening in my lungs. I had spent eighteen months protecting my dignity, sleeping in the guest wing, and pretending his indifference didn't shred me to pieces.

Dignity was not going to stop my organs from collapsing.

At eight o'clock, I walked down the stone stairs into the subterranean bathhouse beneath the pack's training pavilion. Cassian used the private spring every night after running drills with the border patrol. It was a fixed routine, as unyielding as the man himself.

I took off my robe at the entrance and hung it on the wooden peg.

Underneath, I wore a black two-piece swimsuit with thin string ties and a cut so low it left little to the imagination. It was nothing like the modest athletic suits I usually wore around the pack. I hated how exposed I felt, but desperate times demanded desperate measures.

I pushed open the frosted glass door.

Thick, mineral-heavy steam rolled across the tiled floor, smelling of warm pine and heated cedar. Cassian was already in the deep end, resting his arms along the smooth slate ledge. His eyes were closed, his wet dark hair pushed back from his forehead, droplets clinging to the hard planes of his shoulders and broad chest.

The soft click of the door latch gave me away.

Cassian opened his eyes. His gaze landed on me, trailing from my bare shoulders down to the curve of my waist and legs. For a fraction of a second, the dark gray in his irises dilated, sharp and reactive.

Then his jaw locked, and he forced his eyes toward the far stone wall.

"The bathhouse is reserved for command staff after seven," he said, his voice flat and dismissive.

"I am the Luna," I said, keeping my voice level as I walked across the slick flagstones toward the water. "Unless you've filed the paperwork with the council to strip my title, that makes me command staff."

"You don't train."

"My joints ache," I said. "The doctor said heat helps."

"Robert seems to have an opinion on everything these days." A cynical edge cut through his tone. "I thought you only needed one very specific cure."

I didn't answer. I stepped onto the submerged stone steps, letting the hot water rise over my knees, my hips, and finally my chest. The sudden heat sent a dizzying pulse through my skull. My wolf whined inside me, fragile and starved, reaching toward his proximity like a dying plant toward sunlight.

I waded deeper, moving toward the corner ledge just a foot away from where he sat.

He didn't move away, but every line of his body went rigid. Water dripped from his chin onto his chest, tracing the faint outline of an old training scar near his collarbone. I remembered the night he got that scar five years ago—how he had let me press a warm cloth against his bleeding skin while he held my other hand against his heart.

Back then, touching each other had been as natural as breathing.

Now, the gap between us felt like a minefield.

I shifted to step onto the raised stone bench beneath the water, but my weak leg buckled. The slick film of moss on the submerged rock offered zero grip.

My foot slid out from under me.

"Ah—"

A sharp gasp tore from my throat as my balance vanished, sending me crashing forward into the deep water.

Before my head went under, strong hands caught me.

Cassian's arm clamped around my waist, his grip iron-hard and unhesitating. He yanked me upward against his chest, breaking the surface in a rush of churning water.

My hands flew to his wet shoulders for support, my fingers digging into the firm muscle. The sudden collision knocked the air from my lungs, leaving me pressed flush against him from chest to thigh.

His fingers dug into the soft curve just above my left hip—the exact spot he used to grip whenever he pulled me into his lap, a habit so deeply ingrained his body had executed it before his mind could object.

The skin-to-skin contact struck me like an electric shock.

A sharp, searing warmth flooded through my chest, waking up the deadened channels of the mate bond for a single, blinding heartbeat. My ragged pulse leaped, fluttering rapidly against his bare skin.

He felt it too. I saw it in the sudden flare of his nostrils, the harsh intake of air through his teeth.

His chest rose and fell heavily against mine. His gray eyes stared down into mine, stripped of their usual cold armor, exposing raw, turbulent confusion.

"You're shaking," he murmured, his voice rough and low.

"My wolf is starving, Cassian," I whispered, our faces so close I could feel the heat of his breath against my lips. "Still think I'm faking this? Still think I'm doing all of this just to trap you with a baby?"

His fingers tightened on my hip, pulling me a fraction of an inch closer.

He looked at my mouth. The hostility in his expression fractured, replaced by an intense, suffocating pull that neither of us could control. The steam swirled around us, closing out the rest of the world.

He lowered his head. His mouth was less than an inch from mine, his dark lashes fluttering as his eyes began to close.

For the first time in eighteen months, he was going to kiss me.

*Click.*

The heavy brass latch on the main door turned.

"Cassian? Are you still down here?"

The soft, lilting voice echoed through the cavernous room, shattering the moment like glass.

Cassian froze. The warmth in his eyes vanished, replaced by an instant flash of guilt.

He released my waist so abruptly that I stumbled backward into the water, having to grab the stone wall to stay upright. The sudden loss of his heat made my skin feel bitterly cold despite the steaming pool.

Talia stepped out from behind the privacy screen at the top of the stone stairs.

She was wearing Cassian's charcoal-gray fleece robe. The sleeves were rolled up twice to fit her small wrists, and the hem dragged slightly on the wet floor. The scent of Cassian's cedar aftershave practically radiated off the fabric.

She stopped at the edge of the pool, her wide brown eyes blinking in apparent surprise as she looked between the two of us.

"Oh," Talia said, pressing a hand to her chest. "Elara... I'm so sorry. I didn't realize you were in here. Cassian told me earlier that I could use the private pool to soak my sore ankle from physical therapy."

She smiled softly, a timid, gentle expression that made me look like an aggressive intruder in my own home.

"You don't need to apologize," Cassian said immediately. His voice was steady again, though he kept his back turned to me as he waded toward the shallow steps. "We were just finishing."

"I don't want to interrupt," Talia murmured, taking a small step back toward the threshold. "I can come back later when you two are—"

She took a clumsy step backward. Her bare heel landed squarely against the exposed copper intake pipe that fed near-boiling water from the thermal vent into the pool.

"Ow!" Talia shrieked, stumbling sideways with a cry of pain. "It burns!"

Cassian didn't pause. He surged out of the water in a single, explosive movement, water spraying across the flagstones.

He crossed the distance between them in two strides, catching Talia before her knees hit the hard tile.

"Let me see," Cassian commanded, his voice thick with an urgent panic he had never once shown for me. He dropped to one knee, lifting her slender foot to inspect the red patch on her heel.

"It hurts, Cass," Talia whimpered, tears immediately spilling over her lashes as she looped her arms around his wet neck. "It really stings."

"I've got you. Don't put weight on it."

He stood up, scooping her into his arms and cradling her effortlessly against his chest. He held her close, shielding her with his body as if she were made of spun glass.

He walked toward the exit without glancing back into the steam. Not once.

"Hang on," he murmured to her softly as he pushed the door open. "I'm taking you to the infirmary right now."

The door swung shut behind them with a dull, heavy thud.

Silence settled over the bathhouse, thick and suffocating.

I stood alone in the pool, the mineral water lapping quietly against my ribs. The brief warmth from his touch was entirely gone, replaced by a deep, hollow ache that radiated straight to the center of my bones.

A sudden, sharp warmth trickled over my upper lip.

I raised a trembling hand and wiped under my nose. When I pulled my fingers back, a bright smear of crimson stained my pale skin.

A single drop of blood fell from my chin, hitting the surface of the spring and dissolving into the clear water until nothing remained.

Fifty-seven days.

And every second was slipping through my fingers.

The pain hit at two in the morning like a ruptured wire inside my chest.

I barely made it out of bed before my knees gave out, sending me hard against the cold bathroom tiles. I curled onto my side, clutching my ribs as violent convulsions tore through my lungs. Every gasp felt like breathing broken glass. The mate bond was eating itself alive, stripping away the lining of my chest cavity piece by piece.

I lay there for twenty minutes, shaking, pressed against the porcelain base of the sink, watching dark blood pool at the corner of my mouth.

*Fifty-six days.*

I was running out of time, and the panic finally snapped the last thread of my restraint.

When the spasms subsided enough for me to stand, I wiped my face and opened the locked bottom drawer of my vanity. Tucked beneath an old pack directory was a tiny, unmarked glass vial of low-dose root aphrodisiac I had purchased in a moment of sheer terror months ago and swore I would never use. It was meant to heighten natural pack pheromones, nothing more. A subtle spark.

*Just enough to lower his guard,* I told myself, my hands trembling as I slipped the vial into my pocket. *Just enough for him to take the initiative so my wolf doesn't die.*

It was a sick, desperate lie, and I hated myself the second the thought formed in my head. But fear makes a monster out of anyone.

I walked down the dark corridor to the second-floor study.

Cassian was down in the armory inspecting weapons, but his evening routine never changed. A crystal tumbler filled with two fingers of amber bourbon sat waiting on the silver tray beside his desk.

I stepped into the dim room, unscrewed the tiny dropper, and let two drops fall into the amber liquid. The clear oil vanished instantly without a trace.

My heart pounded so hard I could hear it ringing in my ears. I backed away and stood near the bookshelf, waiting in the shadows.

Ten minutes later, the heavy oak door opened.

Cassian walked in, unbuttoning his collar, the scent of crisp night air clinging to his dark jacket. He looked exhausted, the sharp angles of his jaw tight with tension. Without looking around, he walked straight to the bar tray, picked up the glass, and downed half of it in a single swallow.

He set the glass down with a soft click and exhaled.

"What are you doing in here, Elara?" he asked, not turning around. He had caught my scent the second he crossed the threshold.

"I wanted to talk," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He turned, but as he moved, a sudden shudder ran through his broad shoulders. He paused, gripping the edge of the mahogany desk.

His pupils dilated, swallowing the gray of his irises until his eyes looked almost black. A deep flush crept up his throat, heating his skin. His breathing thickened, his chest rising and falling in rapid, uneven surges. The subtle cedar scent he always carried flared into an overwhelming wave of heated musk and suppressed desire.

The drug had combined with the starving mate bond, hitting his system with terrifying speed.

Cassian stared at me, his gaze dropping to my lips, then down the curve of my throat. The cold distance he wore like armor shattered in an instant, stripped away by the chemical surge coursing through his veins.

He crossed the room in two strides.

Before I could breathe, his hand shot out and clamped around my waist, his grip bruisingly tight. He shoved me back against the edge of the large desk, trapping me between the solid wood and his towering frame.

"What is this?" he rasped, his voice raw, rough with a feverish intensity I hadn't heard in over a year.

His face dipped into the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply against my skin. His body was burning hot, radiating a fierce, suffocating heat that sent an electric jolt straight through the dormant channels of my bond. My dying wolf let out a desperate, joyful whine, trying to pull him closer.

His other hand slid up my thigh, his large fingers digging through the fabric of my robe.

"Cassian..." I gasped.

He pressed his hips hard against mine, pinning me down. His mouth brushed against my jawline, seeking the sensitive patch beneath my ear where the mating mark should have been.

In that blinding second, reality slammed into me like a wall of ice.

This wasn't him. This wasn't a man choosing to touch me, choosing to save my life, or choosing to look at me with real affection. It was a chemical reaction forced into his blood by a coward who was too terrified of dying to keep her hands clean.

If he touched me like this, I was no better than everything he accused me of being.

"Stop," I whispered, the word catching in my throat.

His mouth found the corner of my lips, his grip on my waist tightening until it hurt. He wasn't listening. The drug had taken the wheel.

"Cassian, stop!"

I slammed both palms against his chest and shoved him with every ounce of strength left in my body.

The sudden resistance broke his focus. He stumbled back a step, blinking hard, his chest heaving as he fought against the thick haze clouding his eyes.

"Don't touch me," I said, my voice shaking violently as I scrambled off the desk. "There was something in the bourbon."

Cassian froze.

The fever in his eyes didn't vanish, but a terrifying, razor-sharp clarity cut straight through the fog. He looked at the half-empty glass on the silver tray, then back at me.

"What did you say?" His voice dropped to a deadly, venomous register.

"I put root extract in the glass," I confessed, my voice breaking. The guilt was a physical weight crushing my ribs. "A low dose. I thought... I thought if you just started, if you touched me, you'd feel the bond and understand. But I was wrong. I can't do this to you."

Cassian's jaw worked as absolute fury replaced the chemical heat in his blood. He slammed his fist down onto the desk so hard the crystal glass rattled and tipped over, spilling amber liquid across his territorial maps.

"You drugged me," he said, the words vibrating with disgust.

"I panicked, Cassian. I was on the floor coughing blood twenty minutes ago—"

"Shut up!" he roared, stepping toward me with an intensity that made the air in the room turn thin.

He loomed over me, his hands curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides as he fought the remaining effects of the stimulant.

"You didn't panic," he snarled, his gaze tearing into me with pure contempt. "You planned this. You slipped a sedative or a heat-inducer into my drink so you could climb into my bed while I wasn't in control."

"I stopped it!" I cried, tears finally burning my eyes. "I pushed you away before anything happened!"

"Because you realized you couldn't control the outcome!" He stepped in closer, his voice dropping into a vicious, mocking whisper that cut straight to my marrow. "How badly do you need my child, Elara?"

My entire body went completely numb. "What?"

"How far are you willing to go?" he demanded, sneering down at me. "Were you planning to trap me while I was impaired? Conceive an heir in my office so you could wave a positive test in front of the council before I could file for an annulment?"

The accusation hit me so hard my vision blurred.

He didn't see a dying woman. He didn't see a mate in agony. He saw a calculating parasite trying to steal a pregnancy to protect a title.

Before I could find my voice, the study door swung open.

Talia stood in the hallway, wearing a pale silk nightgown, her hand resting gently against the doorframe. Her soft brown eyes took in the overturned glass, the spilled bourbon, and the heavy, charged air between Cassian and me.

"Cassian?" she said softly, her voice trembling with concern. "I heard shouting from down the hall... is everything alright?"

She walked in, glancing between us with an expression of pure, innocent sympathy.

"I smelled the root extract from the corridor," Talia murmured, looking at me with wide, pitying eyes. "Elara... please tell me you didn't."

I stared at her, my throat locked tight.

Talia turned to Cassian, placing a gentle hand on his tense forearm. "Don't be too hard on her, Cass. She... she must just be terrified of losing her Luna position. People do reckless things when they feel their status slipping away."

Every word was delivered with gentle perfection, sliding the knife directly into the wound and twisting it.

I looked at Cassian.

He didn't push her hand away. He didn't correct her. He stood there in stony, absolute silence, letting her words cement his conviction that I was nothing more than an ambitious schemer.

The last trace of hope inside me withered and died.

I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, pulled my robe tight around my trembling frame, and looked Cassian dead in the eyes.

"I stopped it," I said, my voice steady, hollow, and completely devoid of warmth. "Remember that part."

I turned my back on them both and walked out into the dark hallway, leaving the shattered remnants of our bond behind.