For four days, my husband didn't say a single word to me.

No kiss before work. No hand on the small of my back in the kitchen. He ate breakfast standing at the counter and dinner somewhere else. At night, the guest room door clicked shut at ten sharp.

But his phone never stopped ringing.

On the fourth evening, I passed the study and heard her voice through the speaker, thin and wet with tears.

"I never wanted to come between you two, Kellan. Maybe I should just stop the treatments. Then nobody has to fight over me."

"Don't say that." His voice was gentle. Gentler than anything he'd given me all week. "This has nothing to do with you, Dette. Maren and I will be fine. Nothing touches this marriage. Nothing."

I stood in the hallway with my hand pressed flat against the wall.

Nothing touches this marriage. Then why did it feel like I was living alone?

"You look like a ghost," Priya said, sliding a lime soda across the bar toward me. "When's the last time you slept?"

"I sleep."

"Liar." She clinked her glass against mine. "Tonight, you don't think about him. Deal?"

"Deal."

The bar was loud and dim, full of bass and laughter. For almost an hour, I actually breathed.

Then a shriek of laughter cut across the room.

I knew that laugh. I'd heard it through a bedroom wall when I was eleven, while my stomach ate itself.

In a corner booth, Odette sat between two men, a cocktail glass in one hand, her head thrown back. No IV. No paper-pale skin. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her lipstick was perfect.

"Maren?" Priya touched my arm. "What's wrong?"

I was already walking.

Odette turned her head. Our eyes met.

The color drained from her face so fast it was almost funny. She shoved her glass at one of the men, grabbed her purse, and bolted for the back exit.

"Odette!"

The door swung shut behind her. By the time I pushed through it, the alley was empty, just the smell of rain and her perfume hanging in the air.

Kellan was in the living room when I got home, tie loosened, scrolling through emails.

"I saw her tonight," I said.

He didn't lift his head. "Saw who?"

"Odette. At Halcyon, downtown. She was drinking. Laughing with two men. She ran the second she saw me."

That got his attention. Slowly, he set the phone face-down on the cushion.

"Odette is in a hospital bed on dialysis."

"Then who did I see? Her twin?"

"Someone who looked like her. It was dark. You wanted it to be her."

"I wanted—" I let out a laugh with no humor in it. "Kellan, she ran. Sick people don't sprint through back doors."

He rose. "Do you hear yourself? You're so buried in old grudges you're inventing stories now. You're telling people she's faking kidney failure?"

"I'm telling you."

"You're spreading rumors about a dying woman!"

"She's not dying! She's—"

The air turned heavy.

It hit me like a wall of water. His Alpha power rolled out of him, raw and furious, and my wolf folded instantly, belly to the ground, tail tucked, whimpering. My knees buckled. I grabbed the back of the sofa to stay upright, but my legs shook so hard the leather squeaked under my fingers.

I couldn't get air into my lungs.

Kellan stared at my face.

Whatever he saw there made him blink. The pressure snapped back like a rubber band, and I sucked in a ragged breath.

For one second, I waited.

He picked up his phone.

"Go to bed, Maren," he said, and walked out.

No apology. Not even a glance back.

I was sitting on the edge of our bed an hour later, still trembling, when the bathroom faucet turned on.

Kellan stepped out with his sleeves rolled up, steam curling behind him.

"I ran you a bath," he said quietly. "Lavender. The kind you like."

I stared at him.

"Don't look at me like that." He crossed the room and knelt in front of me. "I was wrong tonight. I lost control. I hate myself for it."

My throat closed.

After the bath, he sat behind me on the bed with my brush, working through the knots in my hair. Long, careful strokes from scalp to ends. He used to do this every night when we were first married.

"You still hum when I do this," he murmured.

"I do not."

"You do. Little sounds. Like a cat."

I smiled before I could stop myself.

Downstairs, the dining table glowed with candles. Two plates of seared salmon. And in the center, a dark green bottle with a faded gold label.

My chest squeezed. "Is that—"

"Château Belair, 2014." He pulled out my chair. "Same as our first date. I had to call three wine shops to find one."

He poured two glasses, the red catching the candlelight like rubies.

"I missed you, Marigold," he said softly.

Marigold.

He hadn't called me that in months.

Suddenly, I was nineteen again, naked and shaking in the woods behind my parents' house after my first shift went wrong. My bones had snapped in the wrong order. I'd screamed until my voice tore. Kellan found me and didn't leave. He sat with his back against a pine tree all night, talking nonsense until the sun came up and I could stand on two legs.

And later, when Odette started texting him again, he'd stood up at his father's birthday dinner in front of fifty pack members.

"I've chosen Maren," he'd said. "Anyone who calls my phone hoping otherwise can stop now."

Odette had cried in the bathroom for an hour.

That was the man across from me now. Wasn't it?

"Did you mean it?" I asked. "That you were wrong?"

"Every word." He lifted his glass. "To starting over."

I lifted mine.

The wine was rich and smooth, exactly how I remembered it.

We talked about nothing for a few minutes. The neighbor's dog. A trip to the coast we never took. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

Then the candle flames doubled.

I blinked. They split again, smearing gold across my vision. The table tilted like the deck of a boat.

"Kellan—"

My fingers went loose. The glass slipped.

He caught it before it hit the floor. Caught me, too, one arm sliding around my waist as I slumped sideways.

I fisted my hand in his sleeve. My tongue felt thick.

"What… did you put in the wine?"

He didn't answer. He lifted me against his chest like I weighed nothing, and his lips brushed my temple.

"When you wake up," he whispered, "we can start over."

No.

My wolf surged.

She clawed up through the fog, snarling, fighting the drug with everything she had. My spine arched. Heat flooded my limbs. Fur prickled under my skin.

"Shh," Kellan said. "I know. I know."

Something cold pressed against the back of my neck.

A needle.

Fire shot down my spine. Wolfsbane. I knew the burn the way every wolf knew it, deep in the blood. My wolf let out a howl of pure agony that rang through every corner of my skull.

Then she went silent.

Not sleeping. Gone dark, like someone had cut her strings.

My head lolled against his shoulder. Through my lashes, I saw the front door swing open.

Three people in blue scrubs walked in, pushing a stretcher with silver straps hanging off the sides.

"Is she out?" one of them asked.

Kellan laid me down on the stretcher himself.

"Almost," he said. "Dr. Reyes is already scrubbing in. Odette's on the table next door."

The last thing I felt was the buckle sliding tight across my wrist.

Light.

White and hard, so bright it stabbed straight through my eyelids.

I tried to lift my hand to block it. My wrist didn't move.

Something bit into my skin there. Then at my other wrist. Then both ankles. A thin, sizzling pain, like a hot wire pressed into flesh and left there.

Silver.

I smelled it before I understood it. Burnt hair. My own skin cooking.

"She's surfacing," a woman said above me. "Heart rate's climbing."

"Give her a second."

I knew that voice.

I turned my head. Even that small movement sent fire racing down my spine. The wolfsbane was still in me, thick and poisonous, squatting in my veins. I reached for my wolf the way you reach for a light switch in the dark.

Nothing. No fur. No heat. No answer.

Every breath scraped my lungs raw.

"Kellan."

He stood beside the table in a blue paper gown, a surgical cap over his dark hair. Just his eyes showed above the mask. Gray. Calm.

"I'm here, Marigold."

"Kellan, please." My voice came out in pieces. "Please. Stop this. Untie me."

He didn't move toward the straps.

He took my hand instead, careful of the silver, and wrapped his fingers around mine.

"Odette's already in the next room," he said. "They've prepped her. We're out of time."

"Then stop it. You can still stop it."

"When this is over, I'll take care of you myself. Every day. I'll sleep in the chair beside your bed. I'll carry you up the stairs until you can walk them again." His thumb moved across my knuckles. "I'll spend the rest of my life making this up to you. I swear it."

I yanked my hand back.

At least, I meant to. My arm twitched once, weak as a dying moth, and stayed exactly where it was. His grip didn't even tighten. It didn't need to.

Tears slid sideways out of my eyes and into my ears.

"Do you remember what you said?" I whispered. "At the altar. Do those words still count?"

His gaze slipped away from mine. Toward the monitors. Toward the wall. Anywhere else.

"Go ahead," he said to the anesthesiologist.

A man in a mask stepped up with a syringe. He fitted it into the line taped to my arm.

"No. Wait—wait." I fought for air. "Check her again. Kellan, run her tests again. One more time. That's all I'm asking."

"Maren."

"I saw her. She was drinking. Her cheeks were pink. Sick people don't look like that. Please, just have someone look at her chart before—"

"You'll say anything right now." He sounded tired. Almost disappointed. "Anything to push this back another hour."

"I'm not stalling. I'm begging you."

He bent down.

His mask brushed my forehead, and through the paper, I felt his lips press against my skin. Soft. The same kiss he gave me every morning before work, back when he still did.

"Get some sleep," he murmured.

The plunger went down.

Cold flooded my arm. It climbed past my elbow, my shoulder, my throat. His face blurred at the edges, then in the middle, until he was nothing but a gray smear leaning over me.

And suddenly, I understood.

Twenty years. Every holiday. Every phone call. Every time she cried and he ran.

I had never won against a single one of her tears.

Not once.

Pain dragged me back.

Not the fuzzy ache of waking up. Real pain. Like someone had sliced my side open and stuffed hot coals inside before sewing it shut.

I screamed. It came out as a croak.

The sheets stuck to my back, soaked through. Sweat ran into my eyes and stung. My whole body shook so hard the bed rails rattled.

Heal, I begged. Come on. Heal.

Wolves close a knife wound in a day. I'd watched Kellan's broken hand set itself overnight once.

My body did nothing. My wolf did nothing. Where she used to curl warm under my ribs, there was only a hollow, quiet place.

"Hey. Hey, stay with me." A nurse hovered over me, round face, worried eyes. She pressed a cool cloth to my forehead. "Dr. Felix! She's burning up!"

A thin man with silver-rimmed glasses rushed in. He peeled back the dressing on my side and swore under his breath.

"That's infected. Badly." He pressed two fingers near the stitches, and I arched off the mattress. "Sorry. Sorry. Her levels are all wrong. She's having a catastrophic inflammatory response."

"In the donor?" the nurse asked.

"Her body isn't repairing the tissue around the wound." He scanned the chart and went still. "Who signed off on this wolfsbane dose? This is three times the limit. It's burned out her regeneration. She can't heal like one of us right now. She's healing like a human. Worse than a human."

"I'll call her husband."

The nurse picked up the room phone and dialed. She listened. Her mouth tightened.

"He's in Miss Hale's room," she said quietly. "Upstairs."

"Kellan." My lips cracked when I moved them. "Get Kellan."

"We're trying, sweetheart."

"Kellan." Softer. "Kellan… please…"

My voice kept shrinking. Like it was sinking down a well.

"I've got him," the nurse said, pressing the phone to her ear. "Mr. Voss, your wife's condition is—"

A sob burst through the speaker, loud enough that I heard every word.

"Kellan, don't go. I just woke up. Everything hurts. I'm so scared. You promised you wouldn't leave me. I need you here. Please. I need you."

Odette.

There was a muffled sound. Then his voice, low and patient. The voice he'd used on me in the woods all those years ago.

"Tell Dr. Felix to treat the infection first," he said. "I'll come down when I can."

The line went dead.

The nurse lowered the phone slowly. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Treat the infection," Dr. Felix muttered. "Like it's a cold." He snapped at the door. "Get me broad-spectrum antibiotics. Now."

They hurried out.

I lay alone and stared at the ceiling. A water stain spread across one tile, shaped a little like a wolf.

I thought about our wedding.

The white roses. My hands sweating in his. His fingers trembling so badly I thought he was nervous because he loved me.

"Whatever happens," he'd said, loud enough for every guest to hear, "I'll protect you, Maren. Always. From anything."

From anything.

I laughed. It came out as a wet breath, barely a sound.

The monitor beside me started to beep faster.

Then it shrieked. One long, flat, piercing note.

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Someone shouted my name.

A single tear rolled down my temple.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, the pain was gone.

All of it. No fire in my side. No burning at my wrists. I felt light. Weightless.

I was looking down.

At a bed. At a woman lying in it, her hospital gown pushed open, a long red line of stitches across her side, swollen and angry at the edges.

Dr. Felix was pumping her chest with both hands.

"Come on! Charge to two hundred!"

"Clear!"

Her body jerked. The line on the monitor stayed flat.

"Again!"

It jerked again. Her head rolled toward me.

My face.

My lips, gray and parted. My hair stuck to my cheeks in dark, sweaty strands.

"Doctor," the round-faced nurse said quietly. "It's been twenty minutes."

Dr. Felix's hands slowed. Then stopped. He stepped back, pulled off his gloves, and checked the clock on the wall.

"Time of death, 4:17 a.m."

The nurse unfolded a white sheet. She drew it up over my stitched body, over my chest, over my face.

I stared at the shape beneath the cloth.

That's me.

I'm dead.

Somewhere above me, through the ceiling, I heard my sister laughing.