Chloe POV:

It felt like dragging a mountain. Every muscle in my body screamed in protest. By the time I heaved his torso onto a patch of damp grass, my vision was spotting with black. I collapsed beside him, my chest heaving, the 1% of life I had left feeling like it was about to flicker out.

For a long moment, I just lay there, listening to the rush of the stream and the frantic beat of my own weak heart.

Slowly, I pushed myself into a sitting position. The memories were still swirling, but they were beginning to settle, to organize themselves. The pain, the fear, the humiliation of the old Chloe was a raw, open wound inside me.

And at the center of it all was Cassidy's smiling face.

"Drink up, my dear cousin. This tea will make you thoroughly 'quiet'—just like your mother, so you'll never be an eyesore to anyone again."

Ice flowed through my veins, a cold fury that burned away the physical weakness. The hurt of the girl I used to be was no longer a passive sorrow. It was fuel. It was a promise.

I looked at my own trembling hands, at the ugly blotches the poison had left behind.

"Cassidy Hayes," I whispered to the empty forest, my voice a raw rasp. "You owe her. I'm going to make you pay for it. A thousand times over."

The vow settled in my soul, a solid piece of iron in the churning sea of my new reality. It gave me focus. It gave me a reason to fight.

My gaze fell upon the man lying beside me. I quiet down now, replaced by the cool, analytical thinking of a surgeon. I need to assess the situation.

I leaned over him and began to unbutton his soaked shirt. The fabric was fine linen, ridiculously impractical for the woods. Underneath, his chest was a landscape of hard muscle, but it was marred by something else. A network of black, vein-like markings spread across his skin, pulsing with a faint, dark energy. They looked like a curse made manifest.

My fingers, guided by a clinical curiosity, reached out and brushed against one of the black lines.A sharp, burning heat zapped my fingertips, and I flinched back. It was a familiar energy, a wilder, more ancient cousin to the poison that was slowly killing me.My System, the fragments of knowledge from The Surgeon, identified the source. Wolfsbane. But his was different. Not a poison ingested, but something woven into his very being. A curse.

His breathing was shallow, his lips tinged with blue. Hypothermia. The curse was probably fighting it, but the cold was winning. If I didn't do something, he would die.

I scanned the woods. No shelter. No tools. Nothing.

I tried to draw on my own energy, to stand, but my body refused. The weakness was absolute.

I looked back at the dying man. An idea, insane and desperate, began to form. He was burning with the curse's fever, while I was freezing to death.

With tremendous effort, I crawled closer to him. I tore a strip from the dry underside of his shirt and used it to wipe some of the water from his chest. It was a pathetic gesture, but it was all I could do.

Then, I lay down beside him.

I pressed my freezing body against his. His skin was scorching hot, a stark contrast to my own icy flesh. I wrapped my arms around his torso, pulling myself as close as I could get. My teeth chattered, my body shaking uncontrollably. I was trying to leech his heat, a human parasite trying to steal a few more moments of life.

The moment my skin made full contact with his, something shifted.

A tiny, almost imperceptible thread of warmth trickled from his body into mine. It wasn't just heat. It was energy. It flowed into my veins, a minuscule current in a dried-up riverbed, pushing back against the encroaching cold. The shivering eased slightly.

My eyes widened in surprise.

The system's voice returned, its tone still flat and mechanical.

I stared at the man's unconscious face. His features, even slack and pale, were aristocratic and severe. He looked like a king. A very dangerous, cursed king who was now, apparently, my personal life support machine.

"Stabilizer?" I muttered, a dry, humorless laugh escaping my chapped lips. "Hammer, my ass. You feel more like a ticking time bomb."

Chloe POV:

I clung to him like a lifeline, greedily soaking up the thin trickle of warmth. But it was like trying to fill an ocean with a teaspoon. The cold in my bones was a deep, persistent ache that the fragile current of energy couldn't erase.

Suddenly, a transparent screen flickered into existence in my mind's eye. It was a clean, minimalist interface, courtesy of the Psychic Imprint. A long, horizontal bar dominated the display. It was glowing a weak, angry red.

Above it, a label read: Life Force: 1%.

A klaxon, silent but mentally deafening, blared through my head.

"Warning: Vitality is below critical threshold. Organ failure will begin in approximately one hour. Urgent energy replenishment is required."

My heart, which was already beating sluggishly, seemed to stutter and fall. One hour. I could feel my body shutting down, the coldness creeping from my fingers and toes towards my core.

"How?" I projected the thought at the system, my voice a desperate plea in my own mind. "How do I supplement?"

On the screen, the image of the man beside me was highlighted with a pulsing red circle. Text appeared next to it.

"Target: Energy anchor. Recommendation: Initiate deep physical contact to establish efficient energy conduction."

I frowned. "Deep physical contact? I'm already hugging him." The absurdity of the situation was almost laughable.

"Current contact efficiency: 0.1% per minute. Projected vitality after one hour: 1.6%. Insufficient to prevent organ failure. A more efficient contact method is required."

The system, ever helpful, then displayed a series of small, clinical diagrams. The first showed two hands, palms pressed together. The second, a full-body embrace, which I was already doing.

And the third... the third was an unmistakable icon of two pairs of lips meeting.

A flush of heat, entirely unrelated to the energy transfer, crept up my neck. "Damn system!" I cursed internally.

I looked down at his face. He was completely vulnerable, his features smoothed out in unconsciousness. The logical, surgical part of my brain saw it as a procedure. A necessary step for survival. But the other part of me, the part that was still just a girl who had never even been kissed, recoiled. Kissing a stranger? A man who had tried to strangle me just minutes ago? It felt violating. Wrong.

As if on cue, a low groan of pain escaped his lips. His body began to twitch, a small seizure racking his powerful frame. The black, curse-like markings on his chest flared, glowing with a malevolent red light.

The tiny thread of warmth flowing into me was severed.

My own body immediately felt the loss. The cold returned with a vengeance. I glanced at the interface in my mind. The number was ticking down.

Life Force: 0.9%.

The shadow of death, which had briefly receded, was now looming directly over me. It was a physical presence, a cold weight pressing down on my chest.

I clenched my jaw, the sound of my teeth grinding loud in the quiet forest. "Hammer, my ass," I muttered, the phrase a strange comfort. "For survival..."

There was no more time for hesitation.

I pushed myself up on one elbow, my movements stiff and clumsy. I cupped his face with my hands. His skin was burning, a dry, feverish heat that spoke of a body at war with itself.

I leaned down, squeezed my eyes shut, and pressed my lips to his.

The world exploded.

It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a connection. The moment our lips touched, a dam broke. A roaring flood of pure, warm energy surged from him into me. It was overwhelming, a tidal wave of life pouring into a desert. Every cell in my body, starved and dying, screamed in ecstasy. It was better than warmth, better than food. It was life itself.

I watched in stunned amazement as the bar on my mental display skyrocketed.

Life Force: 2%... 5%... 10%!

The feeling was so intensely pleasurable, so profoundly comforting, that a soft moan escaped my throat.

But my salvation was his torment.

As the energy poured out of him, a guttural roar of pure agony was torn from his throat. His body arched violently, his back lifting off the ground as he thrashed against an unseen enemy. It was as if I was siphoning his very soul, and the process was burning him alive.