“The fever is down because the bond is giving up,” Dane says, his voice flat, emotionless. Only the tight set of his jaw betrays how much this is affecting him. “It’s not fighting anymore.”
“That can’t be right,” I argue, desperation making my voice sharper than I intend. “The doctor said we had days. It’s only been hours.”
“Look at them, Rett,” Dane says, gesturing to the almost-invisible marks. “They’re going.”
The air in the room is thick with our collective, panicked scents. A chaotic, overwhelming perfume of alpha distress that seems to fill every corner of the room.
It’s this, I think, this wall of scent and emotion, that finally penetrates Zoe’s deep sleep. Her eyelids flutter, then open. She blinks slowly, disoriented, her gaze unfocused as it moves from one worried face to the next.
“What...?” she whispers, her voice a raw scrape. “What’s wrong?”
Diego makes a small, wounded sound, his hand finally settling on hers, squeezing gently. “Nothing, cariño,” he lies, his voice thick with unshed tears. “Everything’s fine.”
But Zoe isn’t fooled. Her eyes, still glazed with the remnants of fever, are sharper than they’ve been in hours. She looks ateach of us in turn, taking in our tense postures, our worried expressions.
Her hand, as if by instinct, goes to her own neck. Her fingers trace the smooth, almost unmarked skin. A look of profound, dawning confusion crosses her face.
“The marks,” she says, her voice small and uncertain. “They’re... different.”
“They’re healing,” I say quickly, the lie bitter on my tongue. “It’s a good sign.”
But even as I say it, I know it’s not true. And from the look on her face, so does she.
She sits up, wincing slightly at the movement. Diego moves to help her, arranging pillows behind her back. She leans against them, her face pale, her eyes troubled.
“You’re lying,” she says simply. Her gaze finds mine, holding it steadily despite the weakness evident in every line of her body. “Tell me the truth, Rett Sterling. What’s happening?”
I open my mouth, but the words won’t come. How do I tell her that the bond is failing? That the connection that’s been the center of our world for weeks is slipping away? That we’re losing her, and there might be nothing we can do to stop it?
It’s Tristan who breaks the silence.
“It’s our fault,” he says, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I’m sorry. For the jokes. For the gallery. For all of it. I use jokes like a shield, Zoe, because I’m a coward. Because I never know what to do with something real. And this is real. And Ifuckedit up. We all fucked it up.”
Zoe stares at him, her eyes widening. This isn’t the Tristan she knows. This is the real him. The one only we get to see.
“We never told you,” he continues, his voice breaking. “We never said... what you are to us. What you really are.”
He takes a step toward the bed, then another, his hands spread wide in a gesture of supplication. “It was never about the static. Never about the claiming or the marks or any of that. Itwas you. Just you. Your laugh. Your mind. The way you look at art. The way you just…fit.”
I see it happen in slow motion. The last, fragile thread of the bond finally snaps.
Zoe gasps, her hand flying to her throat, her eyes wide with a sudden, sharp pain. At the exact same moment, the static slams back into us with the force of a freight train.
I choke, stumbling backward, my hand flying to my temple as if I could physically hold back the onslaught. Diego cries out, collapsing against the side of the bed, his face contorted in a grimace of pain. Tristan’s confession cuts off mid-word as he clutches his head, a look of pure agony on his face.
Dane manages to remain standing, but his face has gone gray, his knuckles white where they grip the edge of the bed.
Through the haze of pain, I see Zoe’s face. She’s staring at us, horror etched into every line of her expression. Her gaze moves from one to the other, taking in our tortured faces, our rigid postures, the obvious agony we’re in.
Then her hand goes to her neck again, fingers tracing the now-smooth skin where our marks used to be.
The realization dawns in her eyes, a slow, terrible understanding. The marks are gone. The bond is broken. And the four alphas who claimed her are now trapped in a private hell of their own making.
Zoe
There’s a sudden, sharp hollowing inside me. A cold that spreads from the base of my throat outward, replacing the fever’s heat with something worse. Something empty.
The last warmth from the claiming marks vanishes under my fingertips, leaving nothing but smooth, unmarked skin.
