I couldn't breathe. Black spots were dancing at the edges of my vision, my lungs burning, my body screaming for oxygen.
No. No, I wasn't going to die like this. Not here. Not now. Not when I'd finally found something worth living for. I stopped clawing at her wrists and went for her face instead.
My thumb found her eye socket, pressing hard, and Trinity screamed, releasing my throat to clutch at her face. I gasped, sucking in air, and used every ounce of strength I had left to shove her off me. She stumbled back, hand over her eye, and I scrambled away, my back hitting the cabinet under the sink.
"You crazy bitch!" Trinity was crying now, actual tears streaming down her face, and for a moment she looked less like a predator and more like a wounded animal. "You could have blinded me!"
"Get out," I rasped, my voice raw and broken. "Get out of my house."
"This isn't over." She was backing toward the door, still clutching her eye, her composure completely shattered. "This isn't over, Daphne. You think your precious pack is going to protect you? They can't be there every moment of every day. Sooner or later, I'll?—"
"GET OUT!"I grabbed the first thing my hand touched—a cast iron skillet from the lower cabinet—and hurled it at her with everything I had. It missed, crashing into the wall beside the door, but Trinity didn't wait around to see what I'd throw next.
She fled. The back door slammed behind her, and I was alone.
For a long moment, I just sat there on the cold kitchen floor, breathing hard, trembling all over. The adrenaline that had kept me fighting was fading fast, and the poison's effects came rushing back with a vengeance. I needed to call someone. Needed to get help. But when I reached for my pocket, my phone wasn't there. It must have fallen out during the struggle—I could see it across the room, screen cracked, lying in a puddle of spilled tea.
I tried to crawl toward it. Made it maybe three feet before my arms gave out. The floor was cold against my cheek. The ceiling above me was starting to blur, the edges going dark.
Please, I thought. Please let them find me. Please let them come. I thought about Oliver's steady warmth, his careful hands, the way he'd worshipped me in his study.
I thought about Micah's quiet intensity, his precise touch, the way he'd finally let himself be seen. I thought about Garrett's fierce protectiveness, his consuming kiss in the kitchen, the greenhouse he'd built with his own hands. I thought about Levi's sunshine smile, his boundless energy, the way he made me laugh even when everything felt impossible.
I thought about how close I'd been to having everything. How close I'd been to saying yes. If I died here, on the floor of my kitchen, I would never get to be theirs completely. Would never feel their marks on my skin. Would never know what it was like to belong to them in every possible way.
The darkness was creeping in now, pulling me under. The last thing I heard, before consciousness slipped away entirely,was the sound of tires on gravel. The distant slam of a car door. A voice—Levi's voice—shouting my name.
They came, was my last coherent thought. They found me.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Fifty
Levi
Something was wrong.
I couldn't explain it, couldn't point to any one thing and say "there, that's the problem"—but the feeling had been gnawing at me all day. A restlessness under my skin, an itch I couldn't scratch. My wolf was pacing, agitated, and no amount of distraction seemed to help.
"You're going to wear a hole in the floor," Micah said without looking up from his laptop. We were in the living room, supposedly reviewing financial projections for the pack's investments and upcoming jobs, but I hadn't been able to focus for the past hour.
"I can't help it." I stopped pacing long enough to check my phone again. No new messages. "Has anyone heard from Daphne today?"
"She texted this morning," Oliver said from his spot at the desk, where he was reviewing yet more legal documents. The Trinity situation had him buried in paperwork. "Said she was going to work in her garden and might take a nap. Why?"
"I don't know." I shoved a hand through my hair, frustrated. "Something just feels... off."
Garrett looked up from the chair where he'd been reading. His brow furrowed. "Off how?"
"I can't explain it. My instincts are going crazy. Like there's something I should be doing, somewhere I should be, but I can't figure out what." The others exchanged glances. I knew what they were thinking—Levi being dramatic again, Levi overreacting, Levi making a big deal out of nothing. But this didn't feel like nothing. This felt important.
"When's the last time anyone actually talked to her?" I pressed, running a hand through my hair, feeling anxious.. "Not texted—talked."
"I called her last night before bed," Oliver said slowly. "She seemed fine. Tired, but fine."
"And this morning? Did she respond to your text?" I asked, trying to make sense of why I was feeling so off.
Oliver picked up his phone, scrolling through messages. "She sent a thumbs up emoji around eight. That was it." A thumbs up emoji. That was it. Daphne, who usually sent paragraphs, who peppered her texts with exclamation points and random observations about her plants and little jokes that made me smile, had sent a single thumbs up emoji and then gone silent for six hours.
