"I forgive you," I said, and watched his expression crumble.
"What?" The word came out choked, disbelieving, like he couldn't process what I'd said.
"I forgive you," I repeated, my thumb brushing against his cheek, catching a tear that had escaped despite his best efforts. "You saved my life. I was dying, and you did what you had to do to keep me alive. I understand that. I'm not angry."
"You should be," he said roughly, his voice cracking on the words. "You should be furious. What I did was?—"
"What you did was keep me from dying," I interrupted firmly, holding his gaze even though it hurt to see him like this, broken open and bleeding guilt. "I remember waking up, Mason. Just for a moment. I remember feeling you, seeing you, understanding what was happening. And I remember not being afraid. I remember feeling... safe. Because you were there.Because you were crying and apologizing and hating every second of it, but you were still there, still trying to save me."
His breath hitched, a sound that was almost a sob. "Ava?—"
"I told you not to leave me," I said softly, remembering the words I'd whispered before the darkness took me again. "And you didn't. You stayed. You did something that will haunt you forever, something that went against everything you believe about consent and choice, because the alternative was losing me. That's not something I need to forgive you for, Mason. That's something I need to thank you for."
He stared at me, tears streaming freely down his face now, his composure completely shattered. Then he pulled me against his chest, crushing me to him with desperate strength, his whole body shaking with the force of his relief.
"I thought you'd hate me," he choked out against my hair. "I thought when you woke up and remembered, you'd hate me forever."
"Never," I whispered, wrapping my arms around him as best I could, holding him while he broke apart. "I could never hate you. Any of you. You saved my life."
"We all did," Caleb said quietly from behind me, his voice rough with emotion. "We all agreed it had to be done. Mason took the responsibility, but we were all there. We all let it happen."
"And I forgive all of you," I said, meaning it with every fiber of my being. "I understand. I do. The bond sickness was killing me, and you did what you had to do."
Leo made a harsh sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You're too fucking good for us, Red. You know that? We violated you while you were unconscious, and you're lying here forgiving us."
"You saved me," I repeated, because they needed to hear it, needed to understand that I meant it. "That's not a violation.That's love. Desperate, terrified, impossible love. I'd rather be alive and loved than dead. "
Silence fell over the nest, broken only by Mason's ragged breathing against my hair and the soft sounds of Caleb pressing kisses to my shoulder. For a long moment, the only thing I could feel was the bond humming with something like relief, like gratitude, like hope.
Then Mason's arms loosened, and when he pulled back to look at me, the guilt in his eyes had been replaced by something harder. Something colder.
"I'm grateful you understand," he said, and his voice was steadier now, more controlled, the Alpha reasserting himself over the broken man. "But that doesn't change what you did, Ava. Forgiving us for saving your life doesn't erase the fact that we had to save it in the first place."
The shift was jarring, the warmth draining from the air as the reality of my situation crashed back down around me.
"I didn't know," I whispered, and the words sounded hollow even to my own ears, inadequate for the weight of what I'd done. "I didn't know it would be that fast. I thought I had more time."
"Time to what?" Leo's voice was hard again, brittle, the moment of vulnerability buried beneath fresh anger. He'd stopped stroking my hair, his hand resting heavy on my shoulder instead, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "Time to die in the snow while the bond tore you apart? Time to freeze to death five miles from home because you couldn't stand to be with us for one more fucking day?"
"Leo." Mason's voice was a warning, low and sharp, but Leo didn't back down.
"No," he said, and I could hear the crack in his voice now, the pain bleeding through the anger like water through a dam. "No, she needs to hear this. She needs to understand what she did to us. Forgiving us doesn't mean we forgive her. Not yet."He leaned down, his face close to mine, his pale eyes blazing with fury and hurt and something that looked terrifyingly like despair. "Do you have any idea what it felt like, Ava? Feeling you slip away through the bond? Feeling you get weaker and weaker while we searched for you in the dark?"
"Leo—"
"I felt you dying," he snarled, and his voice broke on the last word, shattering into something raw and wounded. "I felt your heart stuttering through the bond, felt your fear and your pain and your fucking regret, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't find you fast enough. I couldn't—" He stopped, his breath coming in harsh gasps, his whole body shaking with the force of his emotion.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, tears streaming down my face, hot and wet against my temples. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to?—"
"You didn't mean to what?" Mason's voice was cold now, controlled in a way that was somehow worse than Leo's fury. He shifted behind me, his arm tightening around my waist, not comforting anymore but restraining. "You didn't mean to run? You didn't mean to leave us? You didn't mean to almost die? You didn't mean to put us in a position where we had to violate you to save you?"
The last question hit me like a physical blow. He was right. Even though I'd forgiven them, even though I understood why they'd done it, they'd had to do it because of me. Because I'd run. Because I'd been so desperate to prove something to myself that I'd nearly died and forced them into an impossible choice.
"I had to know," I said, the words tumbling out of me in a rush, desperate and broken. "I had to know if I wanted to come back. If this was real. If I was choosing this or just... just being forced into it by biology and circumstance."
"And?" Mason's voice was hard as granite, unyielding, demanding an answer I wasn't sure I could give. "What did youfind out, Ava? In the snow, while you were freezing to death and the bond was ripping you apart — what did you learn?"
I closed my eyes, remembering. The cold. The darkness. The bone-deep certainty that I was going to die. Beneath all of that, the realization that had hit me like a punch to the chest.
