Guilt cuts straight through me. I shouldn’t have asked Siggy to go—not now, not with everything still breaking apart around us—but my mind isn’t on the fight or battle tactics anymore. I’m clinging hard to every scrap of medical knowledge I have, searching it for an answer, for anything that might still change the outcome of this.
The kits…the kits with the hemostatic bandages I packed myself, infused with kaolin clay. They could slow the bleeding. Maybe slow it long enough to get Rhosyn back to the healer cabin, and after that…Fuck, I don’t know!I don’t have an after that. This is all I have right now.
“I’ll go,” I say decidedly, already shifting my hands from her shivering body, already searching for the fastest path through the mess of fighting bodies.It won’t be enough, a quiet voice whispers in the back of my mind. I shove it down hard. “Siggy, come here. Put your hands right here and?—”
Rhosyn coughs again, harsher this time. Blood spills freely now, darker against her lips and chin. “No,” she breathes, but it’s a wet sound now, fingers twitching weakly. “I need you…to stay.”
“I’ll be right back,” I promise desperately, rising onto my knees.
Her hand shoots out and clamps around my wrist. The grip is weak, but it’s determined. “I’ll already be gone…before you’re back,” she pants. “Stay. Please.”
More blood, spilling freely from the corner of her mouth now. Too much. Her skin looks almost translucent under the unforgiving green light from the corrupted ward, the contrastmaking everything look worse than it already is. Hell, maybe it’s appropriately bad.
“Can’t you just pull it out?” Siggy cries, reaching for Rhosyn’s free hand with her unbroken arm. “We can help her once it’s out, right? Her healing will kick in.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes speaking. “No.” The rest of the sentence lodges in my throat—that would only succeed in killing her faster.“It’s slowing the internal bleeding,” I say instead, focusing on Rhosyn because I can’t look at anyone or anything else right now.
Meeting Rhosyn carried the same quiet certainty I’ve always known with Seren, the sense that she belonged in my life because fate had intended it that way. She was never achoiceI had to make, she was just a presence that settled in naturally as if she’d always been meant to stand there. My life is better for knowing her, for the loyalty she gave me before I’d earned it, for the way she walked away from her own pack Alpha without hesitation for me. Coming back to this territory felt like stepping into a life that had moved on without me, and she was the one who bridged that gap, guiding my reentry into the pack and its traditions with a quiet assurance that told me I still had a place here.
Her eyelids flutter.
The hand I have on her face, the one her fingers still cling to at my wrist, pats her cheek gently. “Hey, stay with us. Keep your eyes open, just a little while longer. We need to find a way to get Canaan here.”
Canaan.
Oh, Goddess.
The pain waiting for him isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. Losing a mate—fated or not—means a vital piece has been torn from the tapestry of your soul, and you’re expected to keep goingwhile the damage remains. You’ll never be quite whole again, that absence is something you’ll always carry.
“I need you to…tell Cane something,” she whispers.
I drag my shoulder across my face, wiping at tears I can’t stop, my hands never leaving her. They’re slick with her blood now, warm where it seeps from the wound in her chest and trails from the side of her mouth. When she speaks, her teeth are stained, even the small gap in front I’ve always noticed, always loved, now marked by crimson.
“No,” Siggy argues softly, but fiercely. “You tell him yourself.”
“Tell me,” I say louder, knowing how important this is. I lean in closer. “I’ll make sure he knows.”
Rhosyn’s smile is barely there, tears slipping slowly from her fading eyes. They track down her face and disappear into the wild mess of her curls.
“Tell him…I may have chosen him, but he—he was always my fate.” Her breath stutters, her chest beginning to rattle. “One way or another…I would have found him. This was always meant to be my story. I’m just…thankful I got to be a chapter in his.”
A sob breaks loose despite everything I’m doing to hold it back. I nod, throat burning. “Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll tell him. I promise.”
Her mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile, one I swear is almost conspiratory. “I took care of your mate… before he found you again.” She swallows hard and when she inhales, it’s a wet gurgle that she has to force words through. “Return the favor. Watch out for Canaan. Please. He’s going to…take this hard.”
“I will. Weallwill. He won’t be alone.”
“He’ll try,” she warns faintly. “You can’t…let him.”
“I won’t.”
Her body grows heavier beneath my hands. The heartbeat I’ve been tracking under my palm slows, each beat stretchingfurther apart than the last. Her eyes close, and for a horrifying second, I think it’s over. That we’ve lost her.
Then they open again.
But she isn’t really seeing this side of the veil anymore, she’s already peering past it. Into whatever is waiting for her beyond it.
I can only hope whatever Rhosyn finds there is kind to her.
