I'd called David six hours ago. I knew what he'd said. I'd been trying to find another way ever since. There wasn't one.
"David suggested something," I started, my voice low and rough, each word dragged out of me like pulling teeth. I watched Leo's eyes narrow with immediate suspicion, his jaw tightening in that familiar way that meant he was already preparing to argue. "If the scent saturation didn't work. If she didn't improve."
"What did he suggest?" Ethan asked, his voice carefully neutral, his fingers still moving across his tablet even as his attention fixed on me. His gray eyes were sharp despite his exhaustion, analytical even now, already processing possibilities and outcomes like he always did when faced with a problem he couldn't solve.
I couldn't say it. Couldn't force the words past the tightness in my throat, past the guilt already clawing at my chest. So I just looked at them, at my brothers, and let them read it in my face.
Leo understood first. His jaw went tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek, his hand tightening around Ava's until his knuckles went white against the pallor of her skin. "No."
"Leo—"
"No," he repeated, his voice sharp as a blade, cutting through the heavy air of the room like a knife through silk. He leaned forward, his pale eyes blazing with fury and fear in equal measure, his whole body vibrating with barely contained Alpha aggression. "She's not conscious. She can't consent. We're not— we're not doing that to her."
"She's dying," I said, and the words tasted like ash on my tongue, bitter and wrong and utterly inadequate for the horror of what I was suggesting. I ran a hand through my hair, tugging atthe strands hard enough to hurt, needing the pain to ground me. "Her body is shutting down because it thinks we've abandoned her. The bond needs more than proximity. It needs?—"
"I know what it needs," Leo snarled, and for a moment his control slipped entirely, his Alpha flashing in his eyes like lightning, all protective fury and desperate fear. He rose up on his knees, positioning himself between Ava and me like I was the threat, like I was the one trying to hurt her. "I know exactly what David thinks we should do to her. And I'm telling you, we're not fucking doing it."
"Then what?" I demanded, my own control fraying at the edges, eighteen hours of terror and helplessness finally boiling over into something hot and ugly. I surged forward, grabbing Leo by the collar of his shirt, pulling him close until we were nose to nose, both of us breathing hard. "What do you suggest, Leo? Because I'm open to alternatives. I am begging you to give me an alternative that doesn't end with her dead."
Silence. Leo's mouth opened, closed. His eyes searched mine, looking for something — hope, maybe, or another way out. He found nothing. None of us had anything.
"Dr. Mercer is on his way," Ethan said quietly, his voice cutting through the tension like a scalpel, precise and careful. He hadn't looked up from his tablet, his fingers still moving across the screen, but I could see the tremor in his hands, the way his shoulders had drawn up tight around his ears. "I called him an hour ago. He's... he's dealt with severe bond sickness before. Maybe he'll have another option."
I released Leo, stepping back, latching onto that hope like a drowning man clutching driftwood. "When will he be here?"
"Twenty minutes," Ethan said, finally looking up, his gray eyes meeting mine with a desperation that matched my own. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and he pushed them back upwith a trembling finger, a nervous habit I hadn't seen from him in years.
Twenty minutes. I could hold myself together for twenty more minutes.
"Mason," Caleb's voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but it cut through my spiraling thoughts like a knife. He was looking at Ava's face, at the pale stillness of her features, at the faint blue tinge around her lips that seemed to have deepened in just the last few minutes. His hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone with heartbreaking tenderness. "Her breathing is getting worse."
I moved without thinking, crossing the nest to press my hand to her chest, feeling the shallow, stuttering rise and fall of her ribs beneath my palm. Too fast. Too weak. Her heart fluttered against my hand like a trapped bird beating itself against the bars of its cage.
"Ava," I said, my voice cracking on her name, breaking apart like ice in spring. I leaned down, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing in her wrong, sour scent and trying to find her beneath it. "Avalon, can you hear me? I need you to wake up. Please. Please, sweetheart, just open your eyes."
Nothing. Not even a flicker of her eyelids, not even a twitch of her fingers. She lay still and pale and barely breathing, slipping further away with every moment that passed. My Alpha roared inside my chest, a sound of pure anguish that I barely managed to keep from escaping my throat. She was right here, in my arms, surrounded by her pack, and she was still slipping away.
Twenty minutes passed like hours.
Dr. Mercer arrived with a black medical bag and the calm, professional demeanor of a man who'd seen worse. He was in his fifties, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, his face lined with the kind of weathered experience that came from decades of practice.He'd been on the Harper family payroll since before I was born. He knew how to keep secrets.
"How long has she been like this?" he asked, pulling out a stethoscope and pressing it to Ava's chest with practiced efficiency. We'd moved her to the center of the nest, all four of us arranged around her like sentinels, unwilling to give up even an inch of contact.
"Eighteen hours since we found her," Ethan answered, his voice tight with barely controlled anxiety, his words tumbling out faster than usual as he recited the facts like they might save her. "She was hypothermic and bond-sick when we brought her in. We've maintained constant skin contact, scent saturation, everything the literature recommends. She woke briefly around hour four, said a few words, then lost consciousness again. Her heart rate has been irregular, her temperature keeps fluctuating between ninety-six and ninety-nine degrees, and her cortisol levels are?—"
"I'll see for myself," Mercer interrupted gently, holding up a hand to stem the flood of information. He listened to her heart, checked her pupils with a penlight, took her blood pressure with a cuff he pulled from his bag. His face remained impassive throughout, giving nothing away, a poker player's mask that revealed none of his thoughts.
When he finally straightened, his expression was grave, the lines around his mouth deepening as he delivered his verdict.
"She's in crisis," he said bluntly, tucking his stethoscope back into his bag with methodical precision. "The bond sickness has triggered a cascade of physiological responses. Her body is producing stress hormones at levels that are actively damaging her organs. If this continues much longer, we're looking at cardiac arrest, organ failure, or both."
"What can we do?" I asked, my voice steady despite the terror clawing at my insides, despite the Alpha instincts screaming at me to do something, to fix this, to protect my mate.
Mercer met my eyes, and I saw the understanding there, the knowledge of what he was about to recommend, and the weight of it pressing down on his shoulders. "The bond needs to be reinforced at the deepest biological level. Skin contact and scent saturation aren't sufficient for a case this severe. Her hindbrain needs irrefutable proof that she hasn't been abandoned by her pack."
"Meaning what?" Leo demanded, though we all knew the answer, though the words hung in the air between us like a guillotine waiting to fall.
"Meaning one of you needs to knot her," Mercer said, his tone clinical, detached, as if he were recommending a course of antibiotics rather than what he was actually suggesting. He clasped his hands in front of him, his gaze sweeping across all of us with professional calm. "Preferably sooner rather than later. The bonding hormones released during knotting will counteract the stress response and signal to her body that she's safe, claimed, and cared for. It's the most direct way to convince her biology that she hasn't been abandoned."
