Damon POV
"NO!" My roar shook the entire courtyard as Maya's needle hit Kira's neck.
I lunged forward, but Maya moved faster than any normal wolf should. She caught Kira as my mate fell, silver liquid spreading through Kira's veins like poison.
"What did you inject her with?" I snarled, my wolf trying to get out.
Maya smiled that cold, empty smile. "Just something to help her see things my way."
Kira's body went limp in Maya's arms. Her green eyes rolled back, showing only white. My chest felt like someone had ripped my heart out through my ribs.
This was all my fault.
For three months, I'd treated Kira like she was nothing. I told myself she was too weak, too broken, too pathetic to be my Luna. Every time she tried to talk to me, I walked away. Every time she looked at me with hope in her eyes, I crushed it.
I slept in my office because I couldn't stand lying next to her. Because every night, I felt the mate bond pulling me toward her, and I hated it. I hated that the Moon Goddess had given me someone so damaged when I needed strength.
Now I watched my mate dying in her sister's arms, and I realized I was the monster in this story.
"You're embarrassed by her, aren't you?" Maya said, reading my face. "Poor Alpha Damon, stuck with a broken rogue when he deserves so much better."
"Shut up," I growled, but the words hit too close to home.
"I watched you ignore her for months. I saw how you treated her like dirt on your shoe." Maya's silver eyes glowed brighter. "Do you know what she did every night after you rejected her again?"
I didn't answer, but my wolf whimpered inside me. " She practiced fighting in the basement until she fell from tiredness. She studied pack law until her eyes bled. She did everything possible to become worthy of an Alpha who would never want her." Maya's words turned mocking. "Sweet little Kira, still believing she could earn love through hard work."
Each word was like a claw to my gut. I'd seen her training late at night, heard her crying in her room, watched her try so hard to fit in. But I'd told myself she was weak for needing acceptance.
Now I saw the truth. Kira wasn't weak. I was.
"The serum is already working," Maya continued, touching Kira's hair. "In a few hours, she'll think exactly like me. She'll want to burn down the human world and make wolves the ruling species."
"There has to be an antidote," Elder Vera said desperately.
"Oh, there is." Maya's grin got bigger. "But you'll never find it in time."
I knelt beside Kira's unconscious form. Her face was peaceful, but her skin felt like ice. The mate bond between us was fading, getting weaker with every breath.
"Please," I whispered, touching her cheek. "Don't leave me."
Maya laughed. "Now you care about her? How convenient."
"I always cared." The words came out broken. "I was just too scared to admit it."
"Scared of what?"
"Of failing her the way I failed everyone else I ever loved."
The comment tore out of me before I could stop it. Maya's eyebrows rose with interest.
"Tell me more, Alpha. What happened to the last person you loved?"
My throat closed up. I hadn't talked about Sarah in five years. My sister, two years younger, who followed me everywhere. Who died because I wasn't strong enough to protect her from the wild attack that killed half our pack.
"My sister," I said finally. "She died because I was weak. Because I couldn't save her."
"And you thought Kira would die too if you loved her," Maya said with fake sympathy. "So you pushed her away to protect her."
"Yes."
"How's that working out for you?"
I looked down at Kira's still form and felt my world crumble. I'd spent three months protecting her from my love, only to lose her anyway. And this time, it really was my fault. "The joining process has three stages," Maya stated casually. "First, the serum breaks down her emotional walls. Then, my mind fuses with hers. Finally, we become one mind in two bodies."
"How long does it take?" Elder Vera asked.
"Six hours total. We're already past step one." Maya checked something that looked like a pocket watch. "Stage two begins in twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes. I had twenty minutes to fix three months of mistakes.
I lifted Kira into my arms, holding her against my chest. She was so light, so fragile. How had I ever thought she was weak? She'd survived ten years as a stray, suffered my coldness for months, and still tried to be the Luna our pack needed.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into her hair. "I'm so sorry, Kira. I should have protected you. I should have loved you from the beginning."
"She can't hear you," Maya said. "Her consciousness is already slipping away."
But I felt something through the mate bond. A movement, like a butterfly wing brushing against my mind. Kira was still in there, still fighting.
"Yes, she can," I said strongly. "Kira, listen to my voice. You're stronger than this stuff. You're stronger than your sister's evil."
Maya's face flickered with something that might have been worry. "It won't work. The drug is meant to be unbreakable."
"Maybe for normal wolves," I said, finally getting what Elder Vera had been trying to tell me for months. "But Kira isn't normal, is she? She's an Alpha's kid. Her DNA is just as strong as mine."
"Her wolf is weak from years of starvation," Maya argued.
"Her wolf is dormant from years of grief. There's a difference."
I pressed my forehead against Kira's, pouring every ounce of love and sadness through our mate bond. "Come back to me, Kira. Come back and I'll spend the rest of my life showing you were never too weak for me. I was too weak for you."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Kira's eyes snapped open, sparkling with silver fire that matched Maya's.
"Too late," she said in a voice that wasn't quite her own. "We are one now, Alpha. And we have work to do."
My blood turned to ice as I realized the joining had already started.
But then Kira's silver eyes flashed, and for just a second, I saw green underneath. She was still fighting, still trying to break free.
"The antidote," I said desperately to Maya. "Where is it?"
"Why would I tell you that?"
"Because deep down, you still love your sister. And you know this isn't what she would want."
Maya's perfect mask slipped for just a moment, showing something raw and painful underneath. "You don't know what I want."
"I know you spent ten years as someone's prisoner. I know you're doing this because you think you have to, not because you want to."
"You're wrong."
"Am I? Then why are your hands shaking?"
Maya looked down at her shaking fingers with surprise. In that moment of confusion, Elder Vera moved.
The old woman's hand shot out, pushing against Maya's face. Light blazed from her palm, and Maya screamed.
"Truth compulsion spell," Vera gasped. "Where is the antidote?"
Maya fought against the magic, but her lips moved against her will. "Hidden... in the old oak tree... by the river where I supposedly drowned."
The irony wasn't lost on me. The cure was hidden at the place where this whole nightmare began.
"How much time do we have?" I asked.
"Fifteen minutes before stage three is irreversible," Maya choked out.
Fifteen minutes to reach the river, find the cure, and save Kira from becoming a monster.
I was already running before Maya finished speaking, carrying Kira in my arms as I raced toward the trees. Behind me, I heard Elder Vera screaming orders to the pack fighters.
The trees blurred past as I pushed my wolf form to its limits. Kira's body was getting colder in my arms, her breathing more weak. The silver glow in her eyes was getting brighter.
"Hold on," I whispered. "Please hold on."
The old oak tree came into view just as Kira's body went completely rigid. Her back arched, and she screamed in a voice that was half her own and half something else entirely.
I found a hole in the oak's trunk and pulled out a small glass bottle filled with golden liquid. The fix.
But when I looked down at Kira, her eyes were solid silver now, no sign of green left.
"Hello, my love," she said in Maya's voice. "Did you miss me?"
The union was complete. I was too late.
Or was I?
Because as I looked into those strange silver eyes, I saw something that made my heart stop. A single tear rolling down Kira's cheek.
Tears that Maya would never shed.
Which meant somewhere inside this twisted fusion of thoughts, my mate was still stuck and still fighting.
And I was going to get her back, no matter what it cost me.