Someone cursed beside me. I wasn’t sure who.
“Her fever’s spiking again,” a voice said and I vaguely recognized it as Eamon’s, or at least I thought it was. He sounded calm, clinical, but threaded tight with worry. “Her temperature’s climbing. Heart rate’s increasingly erratic.”
Boots scraped closer. A presence settled near my head, steady as a wall. When a hand brushed my hair back, my entire body reacted, arching, trembling, a low, feral sound ripping from my chest.
“Tam…”
It was Griff. His voice cut through the chaos like a blade through smoke.
“I’m here.”
The fire surged in response, the wolf in my blood rearing up at the sound of him. It recognized him. Claimed him. Wanted him.
I hated how good that felt.
“Griff,” I croaked. “Griff?—”
“I’m here, Tam.”
His voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it, like he’d sandpapered it raw with fear. A hand closed around mine, big and callused and grounding.
“Don’t you dare leave us,” he growled. “You hear me?”
I tried to squeeze his fingers. I couldn’t tell if I succeeded.
Something wet slid down my temple, sweat or tears or blood, I didn’t know.
The room blurred again.
Time fractured.
Sometimes I was awake.
Sometimes I wasn’t.
Sometimes I was running through forests that weren’t real, chasing something that smelled like iron and rot and hunger. Sometimes I was trapped in my own body, aware of every nerve screaming as the heat built higher and higher.
I heard them around me—voices overlapping, breaking apart.
“She’s burning up?—”
“—can’t sedate her too deeply, not with the shift?—”
“—this isn’t normal?—”
“—maybe she’s going feral?—”
I tasted blood.
The lycan part of me howled in triumph, surging, stretching, trying to tear free. It wanted teeth. Claws. Violence. It wanted to hunt.
The wolf in me answered, but not with chaos.
With need.
A different kind of hunger bloomed, just as brutal. Not for flesh, but forthem. For grounding. Anchors.
For my mates.
