And so, I complied, as did my brother. Andrea shoved Rowan out of the way, and he allowed it, although our bond was flaring with fury and panic.
To her credit, Andrea tried everything. She retrieved some other potion vials I couldn’t hope to identify, and for a few minutes, they seemed to work. But every single time, the remedy was temporary. Luna’s condition—whatever it was—always returned. Her body was shaking so badly Nate and I could barely hold her down. Her skin was marble white, and yet, it felt hot to the touch.
Finally, Andrea plopped down on the ground, at a loss. “There’s nothing more I can do for her. I’m sorry.”
She sounded like she meant it, and that was exactly what terrified me, the fact that she regretted what was happening. “Sorry,” Rowan repeated. “Sorrywon’t make this right. Don’t just sit there. Fix this.”
His words echoed what Andrea had told us earlier, but she didn’t respond to his taunt. “There’s nothing left for me to fix. The poison shouldn’t have hurt her so badly. I miscalculated. We miscalculated.”
“I thought you didn’t care about her life, or the life of anyone else, as long as you followed your Alpha’s commands,” I answered.
“I thought so too. No sacrifice is too much if it means saving the pack. But this is useless. It’s a pointless waste. And she… She didn’t really deserve to die.”
My head was spinning. I wanted to point out she wasn’t dead, that she was still there, with us, her chest rising steadily. But before I could do so, her pulse started to slow down. Her heated skin grew colder. She went still on the bed, almost ominously so.
Rowan must have noticed, because he went to Andrea’s side and picked her up. “If you don’t help her, your life will be forfeit.”
“Then it is forfeit. I repeat. There’s nothing more I can do.”
And I believed her, because Wolfsbane healers only encouraged the natural abilities of a werewolf’s body to heal. For whatever reason, Luna’s powers had failed her. Maybe it was the poison, or maybe it was something else entirely, but she was dying.
“Luna,” I said, squeezing her hand desperately, “please. Please don’t leave us.”
Together, Rowan, Nate, and I reached out to her through our bond.“Stay. Live.”
I could sense the weak pulse of her consciousness at the other side of the connection, trying to reach back. Her eyelashes fluttered, and for a few seconds, it looked like she would wake up.
She didn’t.“I’m sorry,”she said instead, even if she was still unconscious.
The simple words seemed to drain her dry of the last remnants of her strength. Under my very eyes, my mate stopped breathing. The thud-thud of her heart vanished, the ominous silence clashing over me like a tidal wave.
This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be dead. Luna had always been so vibrant and full of life. She’d been precious to us even before we’d fully acknowledged the bond between us. She just couldn’t be gone.
But the truth couldn’t be denied, not when Luna’s spark was extinguished, chased away from our bond by the icy hand of fate. The moment I felt her vanish, my whole body shuddered with pain—an agony that went beyond the physical. But I didn’t move from where I was, nor did I try to find some way to ease it.
For the longest time, none of us moved. The very air in the hut seemed to freeze. We just waited there, staring, looking at her, hoping for some sign that this was all a bad dream. I leaned over and kissed her, but her lips were slack under my own. This was neither a nightmare nor a fairytale. Our bond didn’t awaken again, and her heart didn’t miraculously start beating.
A void of grief and anger was rising inside me, threatening to suffocate me. It was so powerful that I couldn’t hold onto my humanoid form anymore. I shifted into my wolf shape, howling, calling out to a mate who could no longer hear me.
My brother shifted with me, but Rowan didn’t. His part of our bond turned to ice, as cold as starlight, as the moon Luna had been named after. He clenched and unclenched his fists, studying Andrea with a speculative expression. “You’re right. Killing you won’t bring her back. But we’ll do it, anyway.”
He would have doubtlessly pounced on the woman, but before he could do so, the door to the hut burst open. Rowan’s brother, Rufus, walked inside, followed by Alpha Clayton and a group of other werewolves.
He took one look at the scene and pressed his lips together in a thin line. “Ah.”
The ice covering Rowan’s heart cracked when he saw his brother. “This is your fault, coward,” he growled. “You had to hide behind Mother’s machinations. I let you live once. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Forgetting about Andrea, he lunged at Rufus. As the two of them crashed to the floor, Alpha Clayton and the rest of his cronies tried to intervene. Some of them were Firewolves, I now realized, and they surrounded the fighting Rufus and Rowan without actually attacking Rowan. Meanwhile, the Wolfsbanes pulled out their guns and pointed them at us.
Those guns. Those damn guns. They were part of our cursed way of life, the silver burning our skin, the bullets carrying poisons similar to what had killed our mate. I wasn’t worried about myself, or even about my brother or Rowan. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t survive this, and I had no interest in it. But this was an insult to her and it was something we couldn’t allow. They’d interrupted us before we could kill Andrea. It was only fair that they’d pay the price for her failure instead.
The world melted away in a haze of red. It was almost as if the mist of the chaos had taken over my mind and my heart. I allowed it, and it guided me forward. In the blink of an eye, I was on the other side of the hut, ripping into the flesh of the people who’d once been my brethren.
It was just like nine years ago, when we’d fought Stuart. We’d been young wolves, still pretty inexperienced in combat, and he’d been stronger than us. It was only our bond as twins that had helped us prevail. We were outnumbered this time too, but our grief was a weapon, one more powerful than any poison.
One of the Wolfsbanes tried to shoot me, but my brother was there to stop him. And after that, we were all moving too fast for bullets to be an efficient counter. That was the biggest disadvantage of the ranged weaponry Wolfsbanes liked to use. In close-quarters combat, it could become a hindrance, especially during the chaos. It was very difficult for someone to miss when we were all so close, but if that happened—as was the case today—they didn’t get a second try.
Wolfsbanes had always been resourceful, though, and they didn’t let that thwart them. Once they realized their guns couldn’t help them, they slowly backed away, out of the hut. Alpha Clayton was with them, and his Alpha voice flowed over us, still as powerful as it had always been.
