I sat. My legs felt unsteady anyway.
Neal set the tablet on his desk. Turned it so I could see the screen—charts and graphs that meant nothing to me, numbers in red that clearly meant something bad.
"His organs are failing," Neal said. His voice was clinical. Detached. The voice he used when he was trying to keep emotion out of medicine. "Kidneys first. Liver showing early signs of stress. Heart rhythm increasingly irregular."
"Failing?" The word didn't make sense. "He's a shifter. Shifters heal. Shifters don't just—"
"He's not healing because he won't let himself heal." Neal leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. "The bond you share with him—it's incomplete. You know that. It's been stuck in a partial state since you first connected."
"Because he's fighting it."
"Yes. And that fight is killing him."
I stared at the charts. At the red numbers. At the evidence of Stone's body destroying itself from the inside out.
"I don't understand," I said. "How can fighting a bond cause organ failure?"
"The bond isn't just emotional, Lumi. It's physiological. It affects brain chemistry, hormone regulation, cellular regeneration. When a bond forms naturally, it stabilizes thesystem. Creates equilibrium." Neal's jaw tightened. "When a bond is fought—constantly, relentlessly, with every ounce of will a person has—it creates the opposite. Chronic stress. Systemic inflammation. The body attacking itself because it can't reconcile what it needs with what the mind is rejecting."
"So he's dying because he won't accept the bond."
"He's dying because he'd rather die than surrender." Neal's voice was heavy. Tired. "He's been fighting so hard, for so long, that his body has started to give out."
I thought about Stone's eyes through the barrier. The emptiness I'd felt through the bond. The way he'd stopped pacing, stopped fighting, stopped everything.
He knew. He had to know what he was doing to himself.
And he was choosing it anyway.
"How long?" I asked.
"Days. Maybe a week, if he stops fighting." Neal shook his head. "But he won't stop fighting. That's the whole point."
"He's dying. Not from ferality. From refusing the bond."
"Yes."
I sat with that for a moment. Let it settle into my chest, heavy and terrible and true.
Then: "What would happen if the bond completed?"
Neal looked at me sharply. "What?"
"The bond. It's incomplete because he's fighting it. But if it completed—if both sides stopped fighting and let it form naturally—what would happen?"
"Theoretically?" Neal's voice was careful now. Wary. "The physiological stress would resolve. The bond would stabilize his system instead of destroying it. His body would start healing instead of attacking itself."
"So if I could get him to accept the bond—"
"Lumi, no."
"—he might survive."
"You can't be serious." Neal stood, moved around the desk like he needed distance from what I was suggesting. "He's feral. Violent. Unstable. You saw what he did during Cole's visit. He threw himself against the barrier until he was exhausted."
"I know."
"And you want to go in there? Into his room? With nothing between you and a wolf who has shown consistent aggression toward every—"
