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.