Mira's POV
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
The patient's chest wasn't moving. His lips were blue. And I had maybe thirty seconds before his brain started dying from lack of oxygen.
Through the blood bond, I felt Kael's emotions crashing into me—fear, rage, helplessness. It made my own panic worse.
"Focus!" I told myself out loud. "You've done this before. You can do it again."
But I'd never made antivenom from scratch in under ten minutes. Never tried to save someone who'd been poisoned TWICE. Never worked while a tyrant watched and waited for me to fail.
I crushed the venom glands, mixed them with the membrane antibodies, and added water from the black river—it smelled terrible but Elder Thorne had whispered it had purifying properties.
The mixture turned a sickly green color.
"That's your miracle cure?" Lyssa laughed. "It looks like pond scum."
"Shut up," I snapped without thinking.
The crowd gasped. Nobody talked to the Blessed One like that.
I didn't care. I was too busy drawing the green liquid into a makeshift syringe—really just a hollowed-out bird bone with a leather plunger.
"This is going to hurt," I warned the unconscious patient. Then I jammed the needle into his chest, right over his heart, and pushed.
The antivenom flooded his system.
Nothing happened.
Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen.
"He's dead," Lyssa declared. "One down. Two to—"
The patient gasped. His eyes flew open. Color rushed back into his gray face.
He was breathing.
BREATHING.
I nearly sobbed with relief.
"Impossible," Lyssa breathed, her smile vanishing.
"Not impossible." I moved to the second patient, working faster now. "Just medicine."
I repeated the process. Crushed venom glands. Mixed antibodies. Drew up the green liquid. Injected directly into the chest.
This patient responded even faster. Within seconds, he was gasping air, eyes clearing.
Two down. One to go.
The third patient—the one who'd stopped breathing first—wasn't moving. His skin was gray, his lips black. He looked dead.
"Too late for that one," Lyssa said, and I heard hope in her voice. She WANTED him to die. Needed me to fail.
"He's not dead yet." I felt for a pulse. Faint, but there. "His heart's still beating."
"Barely." Kael knelt beside me. Through the bond, I felt his certainty: this male was gone.
"I don't care." I prepared the third dose. "I'm not giving up on him."
But my hands were shaking worse now. Exhaustion was crashing over me—the borrowed tiger strength was fading. The bond had a time limit, and I'd burned through it running and mixing antivenom.
I tried to steady my hands. Missed the vein. Tried again.
"You're too weak," Lyssa observed. "You used all that stolen power and now you can't even hold a needle straight."
She was right. My vision was blurring. My muscles felt like water.
"Mira." Kael's hand covered mine. "Let me."
"You're not a doctor—"
"But I can feel what you're feeling. Know what you know. The bond works both ways." His amber eyes locked on mine. "Trust me."
Through the bond, I felt his steadiness. His absolute focus. His determination to save this male for me.
I let go of the needle.
Kael took it. His hand was perfectly steady. He positioned it exactly where I would have, using the knowledge bleeding through our bond.
Then he injected the antivenom with the precision of a trained surgeon.
We waited.
The crowd held its breath.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
"He's dead," Lyssa said triumphantly. "You saved two, I saved three. I win—"
The patient coughed.
Sputtered.
Sucked in a rattling breath.
His eyes opened.
The crowd ERUPTED. Cheering, shouting, crying with relief.
I collapsed backward, too exhausted to sit up. We'd done it. We'd actually done it.
All three patients alive.
Lyssa's face had gone white. "No. This isn't—you cheated! You used dark magic!"
"I used medicine." My voice came out weak but steady. "Real medicine. Not the poisoned politics you call healing."
"The blood bond is illegal!" she shrieked. "It counts as outside help!"
Elder Thorne stepped forward. "The bond was created before the challenge started. Legal by the old laws."
"Then I demand a recount! A revote! The tribes must—"
"The tribes have eyes." Kael's voice cut through her panic. "They watched her save three males who were already dead. While YOU—" he stalked toward Lyssa, and she backed up, "—poisoned them with extra venom while we were gone."
Murmurs swept through the crowd. Angry murmurs.
Lyssa's face flushed. "Prove it!"
"I can." I forced myself to sit up, though every muscle screamed. "Shadow serpent venom has a distinct chemical signature. If we test the patients' blood, we'll find TWO different injections. One from tonight's bites. One from sometime in the last hour."
The Blessed One's expression went from panicked to calculating. "Test them then. But when you find nothing, you'll submit to me as promised."
"Fine." I looked at Elder Thorne. "Do you have testing equipment?"
"We do. Ancient methods, but accurate." He gestured to his apprentices. "Draw blood from all six patients. We compare."
As the apprentices worked, Lyssa stepped closer to me. Close enough that only I could hear.
"You won this round, little healer," she whispered. "But you've made an enemy of the most powerful female in the Beastworld. Every day from now on, I'll be waiting. Watching. And the moment you make a mistake—" her smile was poisonous, "—I'll destroy everything you care about."
Then she raised her voice for the crowd. "I accept the test results, whatever they may be. And I congratulate the new healer on her... surprising victory."
She walked away, flanked by her warriors, leaving a wake of threats and unfinished business.
Kael helped me to my feet. "You did it."
"WE did it." I swayed against him, bone-tired. "That bond thing saved the last patient."
"The bond thing," he repeated quietly, "is permanent. You understand that?"
I nodded. Through the bond, I could still feel him—his relief, his pride, his something else that felt warm and possessive and terrifying.
"Are you angry?" I asked. "That I agreed to it?"
"Angry?" He laughed, short and sharp. "I'm the one who suggested it. If anyone should be angry, it's you. You're stuck feeling my emotions forever. My rage, my violence, my—"
"Your protectiveness," I interrupted softly. "Your loyalty. Your hidden softness you don't let anyone see."
His jaw tightened. "You feel that?"
"All of it." I looked up at him. "You're not as cold as you pretend."
"Around you? No." He tucked a strand of bloody hair behind my ear. "Around you, I'm dangerously warm."
The moment stretched between us, intimate despite the crowd.
Then Elder Thorne called out: "The test results!"
Everyone went silent.
"All six patients show shadow serpent venom," he announced. "But the new healer's three patients have TWO distinct venom signatures. One fresh, one approximately two hours old."
The crowd exploded in angry shouts.
"The Blessed One cheated!"
"She poisoned dying males!"
"She's a fraud!"
Lyssa was already gone, vanished into the night with her warriors.
But her parting words echoed in my mind: I'll destroy everything you care about.
Elder Thorne raised his hands for silence. "By the old laws, the new healer has won! She is free from all obligations to the Blessed One!"
More cheering. People surrounded me, touching my hands, thanking me, calling me blessed.
I just felt tired. And worried.
Because Lyssa didn't lose gracefully. And now I'd humiliated her in front of everyone.
Kael pulled me away from the crowd into a quiet corner. "You need rest."
"I need answers." I looked at him. "What happens now? Lyssa's not going to just accept this."
"No." His expression was grim. "She'll come after you. Probably soon."
"Then what do I do?"
"You stay in my territory. Under my protection. Where she can't reach you."
"And become a prisoner in a different way?" I shook my head. "I won't hide, Kael. I won't—"
A scream cut through the celebration.
We ran toward the sound.
A young female lay on the ground, convulsing. Foam bubbled from her mouth.
"Poison!" someone shouted.
I dropped beside her, checking her pulse. Racing. Pupils dilated. Muscles seizing.
"Who is she?" I demanded.
"Zara," Elder Thorne said, his voice breaking. "My granddaughter."
His granddaughter. The same family that had already lost a daughter to Lyssa.
"When did this start?" I checked her airways.
"Just now. She was drinking water and then—" He stopped, horror flooding his face.
We both looked at the water skin lying beside her.
Poisoned.
"It was meant for you," Kael said quietly. "Lyssa poisoned the water supply. Zara drank from your water skin by mistake."
My blood turned to ice.
This was the message: Lyssa could reach me anywhere. Could kill anyone around me. Would murder innocents just to hurt me.
"Can you save her?" Elder Thorne begged.
I looked at Zara's convulsing body. At the black veins spreading under her skin. At the way her eyes rolled back.
"I don't know what poison this is," I whispered. "I don't know how to—"
Zara's body went rigid. Then still.
Too still.
"No!" Elder Thorne fell beside his granddaughter. "No, no, no!"
I started compressions. Tried to restart her heart.
But I knew. I could feel it.
She was gone.
Killed by poison meant for me.
The celebration died. Silence fell over the village like a shroud.
I knelt in the dirt, hands still on Zara's cold chest, and felt the weight of it:
I'd won the challenge.
But Lyssa had won something worse—she'd shown me that anyone I cared about could die.
And there was nothing I could do to stop her.
Through the bond, I felt Kael's rage building like a storm.
"She's declared war," he said softly.
"War?" I looked up at him.
His amber eyes burned with deadly promise.
"War. And this time, I'm going to finish her. Permanently."