“It starves,” Lyanna explains. “Without pack bonds to feed on, it should weaken enough for us to purge it.”
Rafe steps forward, his massive frame tense with barely controlled energy. “The bonds you’re severing to starve it … some of those might not come back the same.” His voice is flat. “I hope you’re prepared for that.”
The room falls silent. Everyone knows the stakes.
“Five minutes,” I announce, nodding to those still conscious. “Say what you need to say.”
The pack members move to bedsides, touching foreheads and whispering quiet words to unconscious loved ones. Mateo kneels beside Ben’s bed, his young face streaked with tears as he grips his mentor’s hand. Kari stands beside Nova, her usual stoicism cracking as she murmurs something in the Alpha female’s ear.
I move to Dane’s side, placing my hand on his burning forehead. “Hold on,” I whisper. “The pack needs you. We all need you.”
When I look up, Lyanna is watching me, her forest-green eyes reflecting my own terror. For just a moment, the professional mask slips, and I see her—truly see her—afraid but determined, carrying an impossible burden.
“Time,” Harper announces quietly.
Everyone returns to their positions. The air feels charged with desperation and hope.
Lyanna takes a deep breath and positions her hands over the dampening equipment. “Beginning bond suppression procedure.”
Chapter 6
Lyanna
Iplace my hands on Dane’s fever-hot chest, feeling the rapid thrum of his heartbeat beneath my fingers. This is impossible. Terrifying. And our only hope.
Closing my eyes, I sink into the familiar current of healing magic, but this time I pull it in a different direction—not to strengthen, but to dampen. To starve the corruption that’s killing him.
“Bond strength at thirty-five percent,” Harper calls from the monitoring station. “Contamination still active.”
I push deeper, carefully thinning the golden threads of energy that connect Dane to every pack member. The threads grow translucent, fragile under my touch.
Don’t break. I can’t let you break.
The silver vial of emergency stabilizer sits on the table beside me—Elysia’s experimental compound, our last resort if bonds drop below nineteen percent. I pray I won’t need it.
“Callum, the stabilizer,” I whisper, wanting it to hand. Just in case.
His fingers brush mine as he passes the silver vial, the brief contact grounding me despite the tension saturating the room.
“Bond strength at twenty-eight percent,” Harper announces. “Contamination levels dropping to seventy percent of baseline.”
“It’s working,” Callum murmurs close to my ear as he wipes sweat from my forehead with a cool cloth. “You’re doing it, Lyanna.”
I don’t respond, can’t respond. Every molecule of my focus narrows to the impossible balance—enough suppression to starve the corruption, not enough to sever permanently.
“Twenty-two percent bond strength,” Harper says, excitement creeping into her clinical tone. “Contamination down to fifty-five percent.”
I shift my focus to Nova, whose bond with Dane pulses brightest—and most dangerous. Their mate bond is a river of golden light, thick with corruption. I begin dampening it, thread by careful thread.
“Bond strength at twenty-two percent,” Harper calls. “Twenty-one ... twenty ...”
Too fast. I ease back, heart hammering.
“Nineteen point three,” Harper’s voice sharpens. “Lyanna—“
“I see it.” I pour stabilizing energy into the bond, fighting to hold it at the threshold. For three agonizing seconds, the numbers hover at nineteen point one.
Then: “Nineteen point eight. Twenty. Holding steady.”
