Kai woke up to the taste of blood in his mouth.
Again.
He rolled over in his hospital bed, wincing as the movement pulled at the IV line in his arm. The clock on the bedside table read 3:47 AM, which meant he'd managed maybe two hours of sleep this time. Better than last night's forty-five minutes, he supposed.
The doctors said his throat was healing. The swelling had gone down, the breathing tube was out, and he could speak again—though his voice still sounded like he'd been gargling gravel. What they couldn't explain was why the damage kept getting worse instead of better.
Or why he felt like he was slowly dying from the inside out.
"Bad night?"
Kai turned toward the door to find Dr. Martinez entering with a clipboard and the kind of expression that usually meant more bad news. She was young for a specialist, maybe early thirties, with kind eyes and a no-nonsense manner that Kai had come to appreciate over the past week.
"They're all bad nights," he managed, his voice still rough despite the healing.
"Your vitals are concerning." She moved to check the monitors beside his bed, frowning at whatever she saw there. "Heart rate elevated, blood pressure unstable, and your cortisol levels are through the roof. It's like your body is under constant stress."
Constant stress. If only she knew.
The mate bond was killing him. Slowly, methodically, like some kind of supernatural cancer eating away at everything that made him functional. Every day since he'd rejected Aria, the pain had gotten worse. Not just physical—though the crushing sensation in his chest and the way his wolf clawed at his insides were definitely real—but mental. Emotional.
He felt incomplete. Broken. Like half of his soul had been ripped away and the wound wouldn't stop bleeding.
"Mr. Blackwood?" Dr. Martinez was looking at him with concern. "Are you experiencing any chest pain right now?"
"Some." Some was like calling a hurricane "some wind," but he didn't know how to explain that the pain wasn't coming from his heart. It was coming from the absence of something that should have been there.
Someone.
"I'm going to order another round of tests. Blood work, an EKG, maybe a stress test—"
"No." Kai struggled to sit up straighter, ignoring the way the movement made his ribs ache. "No more tests. There's nothing wrong with me that you can diagnose."
"Mr. Blackwood, you're clearly suffering—"
"I'm suffering from consequences. That's different."
Dr. Martinez set down her clipboard and fixed him with a steady look. "Consequences of what?"
Of being an idiot. Of choosing duty over instinct. Of rejecting the one person the universe designed specifically for me.
"Nothing you'd believe," he said instead.
She studied his face for a long moment, then pulled up the visitor's chair and sat down. "Try me."
For a second, Kai was tempted. Dr. Martinez seemed like the kind of person who might actually listen, who might not immediately call for a psychiatric evaluation if he started talking about werewolves and mate bonds and the way rejection felt like someone was slowly peeling his skin off with a dull knife.
But then he remembered Madison's terrified face when he'd collapsed in her car. Remembered the way she'd held his hand in the ambulance, whispering reassurances while he struggled to breathe. She was already scared enough without him adding supernatural insanity to the mix.
"Relationship problems," he said finally. It was true, even if it was only about one percent of the whole truth.
"Ah." Dr. Martinez nodded like that explained everything. "The pretty blonde who's been here every day? She seems very devoted."
"She is." And that just made everything worse. Madison was perfect—sweet, caring, completely innocent of the supernatural world that was slowly destroying him. She deserved so much better than a man who was dying by degrees because he'd rejected his fated mate.
"But she's not the one you want."
Kai's head snapped up. "What?"
"You talk in your sleep," Dr. Martinez said gently. "The nurses have mentioned it. You call out for someone named Aria."
Ice flooded his veins. "I don't—"
"It's okay." She held up a hand to stop his protest. "I'm not here to judge your personal life. I'm here to figure out why a healthy twenty-four-year-old man is deteriorating like he's got a terminal illness."
Because maybe I do.
"The mind-body connection is stronger than most people realize," Dr. Martinez continued. "Emotional trauma can manifest as physical symptoms. Guilt, regret, unresolved feelings—they can literally make you sick."
"And what's the cure for that?"
"Usually? Dealing with whatever's causing the emotional trauma in the first place."
Right. Because it was just that simple. All he had to do was go back to Aria and beg her forgiveness for rejecting her, humiliating her, and choosing another woman over the bond the Moon Goddess herself had forged. All he had to do was destroy his family's legacy, shatter his pack's stability, and doom everything he'd spent his life building.
Easy.
"I can't," he said quietly.
"Can't or won't?"
"Does it matter?"
Dr. Martinez was quiet for a moment, studying his face with those sharp, kind eyes. "I'm going to recommend a psychiatric consultation. Not because I think you're crazy," she added quickly when she saw his expression, "but because you're clearly dealing with trauma that's beyond the scope of regular medicine."
"Fine." He didn't have the energy to argue anymore. Let them probe his brain and run their tests and try to fix him with pills and therapy. None of it would work—he knew that with the same certainty he knew his own name—but at least it would give Madison the illusion that something was being done.
"Get some rest," Dr. Martinez said, standing and gathering her clipboard. "I'll check on you in the morning."
After she left, Kai lay back against his pillows and stared at the ceiling. The mate bond pulsed in his chest like a second heartbeat, reminding him with every throb that somewhere out there, Aria was probably sleeping peacefully in her exile while he slowly fell apart.
He wondered if she felt it too—this constant, gnawing emptiness where their connection should be strong and whole. He wondered if she woke up every morning feeling like something vital was missing, if she went through her days with the persistent ache of incompleteness that had become his constant companion.
Probably not. She was strong, powerful, destined for greatness. She'd move on, find someone worthy of her, forget all about the coward who'd thrown away the greatest gift the universe had to offer.
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made him want to howl.
His phone buzzed on the bedside table. A text from Madison: Can't sleep. Thinking about you. Love you.
Kai stared at the message for a long time before typing back: Love you too.
The lie tasted bitter, but he told himself it was kinder than the truth.
Madison Pierce had always prided herself on being observant.
It came with the territory, she supposed. Medical students learned quickly to notice the small details—the slight tremor in a patient's hands, the way someone favored their left side when walking, the subtle changes in breathing that might indicate something serious.
Which was why she knew, without a doubt, that something was seriously wrong with Kai.
She stood outside his hospital room now, watching through the small window in the door as he slept fitfully in his bed. Even unconscious, he looked like he was in pain. His face was drawn, his skin pale except for the dark circles under his eyes, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides like he was fighting something in his dreams.
This was the man she loved. Had loved for almost eight months now, ever since they'd met in that coffee shop near campus where she'd been studying for her anatomy midterm and he'd been doing something mysterious on his laptop that involved a lot of very official-looking documents.
He'd been beautiful then—confident, charming, with those incredible golden eyes and the kind of smile that made her stomach do little flips. When he'd asked for her number, she'd almost dropped her textbook in shock. Men like Kai Blackwood didn't usually notice girls like her.
But he had noticed. And for eight wonderful months, she'd been living in a fairy tale.
Until ten days ago, when everything had changed.
"Madison?"
She turned to find Dr. Martinez approaching with a cup of coffee and a concerned expression. Over the past week, the doctor had become something like an ally—one of the few people who seemed as worried about Kai's condition as Madison was.
"Any change?" Madison asked, accepting the coffee gratefully.
"Some. His physical symptoms are improving, but..." Dr. Martinez hesitated. "Can I ask you something? As someone who knows him well?"
"Of course."
"Has he mentioned anyone named Aria recently?"
Madison's heart clenched. "Why?"
"He talks about her in his sleep. Calls out for her. Sometimes he sounds... desperate."
Aria. The name that had been haunting Madison's thoughts for over a week now. The name Kai had whispered when he'd collapsed in her car, when the doctors had sedated him for the breathing tube, when he'd thrashed and fought against the nurses in his fevered dreams.
"She's... someone from his past," Madison said carefully. She didn't know the whole story—Kai had been frustratingly vague about the details—but she knew enough. Aria Montenegro was the reason her boyfriend had been acting strange for weeks. The reason he'd been distant and distracted and sometimes looked at her like he was trying to memorize her face.
"An ex-girlfriend?"
"Something like that." Madison took a sip of coffee, using the moment to gather her thoughts. "Dr. Martinez, can I ask you something as a medical professional?"
"Sure."
"Is it possible for emotional trauma to cause the kind of physical symptoms Kai's experiencing?"
"Absolutely. The mind-body connection is incredibly strong. Severe emotional distress can manifest as chest pain, breathing problems, even throat issues if the trauma is related to communication or expression."
Madison nodded slowly. That fit with what she'd observed. Kai's symptoms had started right after that night—the night he'd come home from some kind of business meeting looking like he'd seen a ghost. He'd held her too tightly, kissed her too desperately, and when she'd asked what was wrong, he'd just said there had been "complications."
The next morning, he'd started having nightmares.
"What kind of trauma are we talking about?" she asked. "Like, hypothetically."
Dr. Martinez studied her face carefully. "Well, severe guilt is a big one. Regret over choices made or not made. Sometimes people torture themselves over decisions they feel were necessary but morally wrong."
Necessary but morally wrong. That sounded like Kai, all right. He was the kind of man who would sacrifice his own happiness for duty, who would make the hard choice even if it destroyed him.
"Is there anything that can be done? Any way to help him?"
"The only real cure for emotional trauma is dealing with whatever caused it in the first place. But that's not always possible."
Madison finished her coffee in silence, thinking about the man lying in that hospital bed and the mysterious woman whose name he called out in his sleep. She'd never considered herself a jealous person, but the way Kai said "Aria"—with such longing, such desperate need—made something ugly twist in her chest.
She loved him. She'd loved him for months, had built dreams around him, had started imagining a future with him. But it was becoming increasingly clear that his heart belonged to someone else.
Someone he'd lost, or given up, or hurt so badly that the guilt was literally killing him.
The question was: what was she going to do about it?
"I should go," she said, handing the empty coffee cup back to Dr. Martinez. "My roommate's covering my shift at the clinic, but I need to get back."
"Madison?" Dr. Martinez's voice stopped her as she turned to leave. "Whatever's going on with Kai... it's not your fault. And it's not your responsibility to fix him."
The words were kindly meant, but they hit like a punch to the stomach. Because the truth was, Madison had been trying to fix him. Trying to love him hard enough to chase away whatever demons were haunting him. Trying to be enough.
But some problems couldn't be solved with love and determination.
Some problems required the thing you couldn't give.
Elena Blackwood knew something was wrong the moment she stepped onto Shadowmoon territory.
The pack lands felt... sick. That was the only way she could describe it. Like a shadow had fallen over everything, making the familiar forests seem darker, the streams run slower, the very air feel heavier with some kind of spiritual pollution.
She'd been visiting her sister in Portland for the past week, taking a much-needed break from pack politics and her husband's increasingly volatile moods. But Kai's hospitalization had cut her trip short, and now, driving through the gates of the estate she'd called home for twenty-six years, she felt like she was entering a place she no longer recognized.
The pack house itself looked the same—all dark stone and imposing architecture, designed to intimidate visitors and comfort pack members. But the energy was wrong. Several pack members she passed looked haggard, stressed, like they hadn't been sleeping well. The younger wolves seemed jumpy, constantly looking over their shoulders as if expecting an attack.
And the silence... God, the silence was awful. Shadowmoon had always been a relatively quiet pack compared to some of the more boisterous groups, but this felt different. This felt like the silence of a place holding its breath.
"Luna Elena!"
She turned to find Marcus, one of the younger pack members, jogging toward her with obvious relief. "Thank the moon you're back. Alpha Damien is... well, he's been asking for you."
"How long has this been going on?" she asked, gesturing to the general atmosphere of unease.
Marcus glanced around nervously before answering. "Since the night of the Montenegro ceremony. Everything's been... off."
The Montenegro ceremony. Elena's heart sank. She'd suspected this had something to do with Kai's situation, but she'd hoped she was wrong.
"Where is my husband?"
"His study. But Luna, maybe you should know... he's not been himself lately. None of us have."
Elena thanked him and made her way through the house, noting the way pack members seemed to shy away from her presence. Not out of disrespect, but out of some kind of instinctive fear, as if being too close to the Alpha family had become dangerous.
She found Damien exactly where she'd expected—behind his massive oak desk, surrounded by papers and looking like he hadn't slept in days. His dark hair was disheveled, his shirt wrinkled, and there was a wild look in his golden eyes that she'd only seen a few times in their marriage.
Usually right before he did something spectacularly stupid.
"Damien?" She closed the study door behind her and approached his desk carefully. "Darling, what's wrong?"
He looked up at her with something that might have been relief, then immediately returned to the papers scattered in front of him. "Elena. Good. You're back. We have a problem."
"So I gathered. What kind of problem?"
"Kai's mate bond."
The words hit her like a physical blow. "His what?"
"He found his fated mate at the Montenegro ceremony. The pack princess herself." Damien's voice was bitter, angry in a way that made Elena's stomach clench with dread. "And he rejected her."
"Oh, Damien. No." Elena sank into the chair across from his desk, her legs suddenly too weak to support her. "Please tell me you didn't make him—"
"I didn't make him do anything. The choice was his." But there was something in his voice that suggested the choice hadn't been entirely free. "He chose duty over sentiment. Pack loyalty over personal desire."
"And now he's dying because of it."
"He's not dying—"
"He's in the hospital with mysterious symptoms that have no medical explanation, calling out for a woman whose name isn't Madison!" Elena's voice rose despite her efforts to stay calm. "How is that not dying?"
Damien's jaw tightened. "He'll recover. The bond will weaken over time, and—"
"The bond will never weaken!" Elena shot to her feet, all pretense of diplomacy abandoned. "Damien, how could you let him do this? How could you watch our son destroy himself and do nothing?"
"Because some things are more important than individual happiness!" Damien slammed his hand down on the desk, making the papers scatter. "Because the Montenegros are our enemies! Because allowing that alliance would have meant the end of everything we've built!"
"The end of what, exactly? The end of a pointless feud that's already cost us too much?"
"The end of Shadowmoon's independence! The end of our traditions, our way of life!" Damien stood as well, his alpha power pressing against the room like a weight. "Richard Montenegro died because he was weak, because he let emotion cloud his judgment. I won't let my son make the same mistake."
Elena stared at her husband—this man she'd loved for decades, who'd fathered her children, who'd built a life with her—and felt something inside her break.
"Richard died because you killed him," she said quietly. "Because you were so consumed with jealousy and pride that you manufactured a reason to challenge him to a death match."
"I protected what was mine—"
"You destroyed what could have been ours!" Elena's voice cracked with twenty-six years of buried pain. "Richard would have been a good brother-in-law. Aria Montenegro would have been a good daughter-in-law. But you've poisoned our son against any possibility of peace, and now he's paying the price."
"He's paying the price of doing his duty."
"He's paying the price of your hatred." Elena moved toward the door, then paused with her hand on the handle. "And it's not just affecting him. The whole pack feels it. When an Alpha's heir rejects his fated mate, it damages the spiritual fabric of the entire territory."
"That's superstitious nonsense—"
"Is it?" Elena gestured toward the window, toward the pack lands beyond. "Look around, Damien. Really look. See how our people are suffering. Feel how wrong everything has become."
For the first time since she'd entered the room, Damien actually seemed to consider her words. He moved to the window and stared out at the forest, and she saw his expression shift from anger to something that might have been uncertainty.
"The nightmares," he said quietly. "The pack members have been reporting nightmares."
"All of them?"
"Most of them. Dreams of silver light, of burning forests, of something hunting them through the darkness." He turned back to face her. "I thought it was stress from Kai's situation, but..."
"But what if it's more than that?" Elena finished. "What if rejecting a true mate bond has consequences that go beyond just the individuals involved?"
Damien was quiet for a long moment, and Elena could see him wrestling with the possibility that his certainty might have been wrong.
"Even if that's true," he said finally, "what's done is done. Kai made his choice."
"Choices can be unmade."
"Not this one. Too much has happened. Too much damage has been done."
Elena thought about her son lying in that hospital bed, slowly wasting away because he'd chosen duty over love. She thought about Aria Montenegro, wherever she was, probably suffering just as much. She thought about two packs full of innocent people being dragged into a conflict they didn't understand and couldn't control.
"What if you're wrong?" she asked. "What if this hatred you've carried for so long is destroying everything you're trying to protect?"
Damien turned away from the window, his face set in lines of stubborn determination. "I'm not wrong."
But Elena had been married to him long enough to hear the uncertainty underneath the words. For the first time in years, Damien Blackwood wasn't entirely sure of himself.
And that, she thought, might be the only hope any of them had.
That night, as the moon rose full and bright over the Shadowmoon territory, the nightmares came to everyone at once.
They started small—whispers in the darkness, shadows moving at the edge of vision, the sensation of being watched by something vast and hungry. But they grew stronger as the night wore on, feeding on the spiritual discord that had settled over the pack like a plague.
Pack members woke screaming from dreams of silver chains and burning bonds, of a great darkness rising from the depths of their collective unconscious to devour everything they held dear. Children cried for mothers who couldn't comfort them, because the mothers were trapped in their own visions of terror.
And through it all, in his hospital bed hundreds of miles away, Kai Blackwood thrashed against his sheets and called out for the woman he'd rejected, his body burning with fever as the mate bond slowly consumed him from within.
The price of rejection, it seemed, was higher than anyone had imagined.
And they'd only just begun to pay it.