"We just want to help," I continue, taking one careful step forward. "We need to make sure she isn't bleeding out. Please."
Those blue eyes don't leave my face, but something shifts in them. A flicker of uncertainty beneath the protective fury.
Another growl, softer this time. His grip on Cosima adjusts slightly, drawing her even closer against his chest like he's trying to absorb her into himself.
Azarel moves to my left, his face a mask of controlled desperation even through the pain he must be in from his bleeding shoulder. "Let me see her," he demands, though his voice carries none of its usual command. "Please. I need to know she's?—"
Knight snarls and steps back, his damaged metal arm sparking as his claws curl more tightly around Cosima's legs. Even now, he's being careful, the bladed edges somehow not slicing through her soft skin.
"Don't." I shoot Azarel a look that could strip paint. "You're making it worse."
"Raven, she's fuckingdying?—"
"Look at her neck," Nikolai interrupts, his voice tight with hope and shock.
I do.
The bite wounds are… changing.
Where Knight's teeth tore through her soft flesh—and gods, they toredeep, deeper than they should have, deeper than any normal alpha's bite would go—the damage is knitting together. Not like normal healing. Not scabs forming or blood clotting.
I watch, transfixed, as muscle fibers weave themselves back together like invisible threads stitching reality. Torn blood vessels seal. Mangled tissue smooths. The ragged edges of the wound pull toward each other with deliberate purpose, closing the gap millimeter by millimeter as the mating bond seals overwith the same silvery edges it would have if Knight didn't have razor-sharp teeth.
"Holy fuck," Geo breathes from somewhere behind me.
Cosima's chest rises.
Falls.
Rises again, stronger this time.
Her heartbeat—I can see it now, the steady pulse at her throat where Knight's bite is still closing—beats with increasing strength as the bonds flood her system. The rhythm steadies, evens out, becomes the reliable thump-thump-thump of life reasserting itself.
She's breathing.
She's healing.
She'salive.
"Cosima," I whisper, and my voice cracks on her name. Breaks completely. I don't even care. "Oh, goddess. You're alive."
Knight shifts his stance, angling Cosima more firmly against his shoulder so her face is pressed into his neck. Hiding her from our view. Protecting her even from us, from her own pack.
Or maybe protecting her from seeing his face.
That's what he's doing.
He's keeping her positioned so she can't look up at him. So when she wakes—ifshe wakes, my traitorous brain supplies before I shut that thought down hard—she won't see him without his mask.
My throat gets even tighter.
"Let us help," Geo says, his gruff voice surprisingly gentle. "We're pack now, Knight. All of us." His eye flicks to Azarel. "Most of us."
Azarel is too caught up in staring with desperate hope at Cosima to even respond to that. Or to the low growl—exhausted, but no less fearsome—that rumbles from Knight's chest as Azarel takes a step forward.
"I'm not trying to take her," Azarel says as Knight's growl builds, holding his ground despite the very real threat of dismemberment. "I just want to make sure she's stable. That the healing continues. Please."
The two alphas stare each other down.
