Chapter 6

Elara Thorne POV:

I slammed the bedroom door shut, the sound echoing in the empty room. Leaning back against the solid wood, my legs finally gave out, and I slid down to the floor. My whole body was trembling, a violent, uncontrollable shivering that was born of more than just the cold.

I looked at my hands. They were caked in mud, and a deep, ugly gash cut across my right palm. The bleeding had stopped-a wolf's healing was a powerful thing-but I knew it had taken longer than it should have.

More proof. More evidence of the decay spreading through me.

With a groan, I forced myself to my feet and stumbled into the bathroom. The face in the mirror was a hollow-eyed stranger. My lips were tinged with blue, my skin was unnervingly translucent, and my eyes were vacant voids. I was a ghost haunting my own body.

I turned on the shower, the water steaming as it hit the cold porcelain. I stood under the scalding spray, desperate to burn away the chill that had taken root in my marrow.

But as the water cascaded over me, a violent wave of nausea roiled in my stomach.

I lurched toward the toilet, my body heaving.

It wasn't food that came up. It was blood. Thick, black, foul-smelling blood that splattered against the white ceramic.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. I stared in horror at the black bile. This was it. This was what Dr. Vance had warned me about. It was the sign of a wolf's soul failing, of the final stages of the Withering.

My body was deteriorating faster than I could have imagined. The blood loss, the storm, the emotional devastation-it was all accelerating my death.

A terrible, piercing cry of agony ripped through my mind, and then... silence.

The space where Lyra had always been was suddenly, terrifyingly empty.

*Lyra?* I called out in my mind, my panic turning to sheer terror. *Lyra! Answer me!*

Nothing. Only a dead, echoing void. The connection was gone. My wolf was gone.

A soundless scream tore from my throat. I collapsed onto the cold tile floor, curling into a fetal position. Without my wolf, I was truly nothing. I was already dead.

As darkness threatened to consume me, a voice bloomed in the silent emptiness of my mind. It was warm, familiar, and utterly unexpected.

*"Elara? Is that you? Goddess, your mind-link... it's so weak."*

My body jolted. That voice. It couldn't be.

Zane Cross.

He was my childhood friend, the Alpha of the neighboring Crescent Valley Pack. We had been inseparable until Ryker had been announced as my mate. We had formed a temporary mind-link as children, a secret way to communicate while playing in the forests that separated our territories. I thought it had faded decades ago.

*"Elara, answer me!"* His voice was laced with urgency. *"I can feel your pain. What's happening?"*

His presence was a sliver of light in an endless abyss of despair.

I tried to form words, but my throat was raw. I could only manage a single, broken thought. *"Zane..."*

Even that one word took everything I had.

*"I feel you! Are you okay? Your scent... Elara, I can barely sense your scent. That's impossible!"*

He was right. A wolf's scent was the signature of their life force. To lose your scent was to lose your life.

I wanted to tell him everything, to pour out the whole horrifying story, but I had no strength left. The darkness was closing in again, heavy and suffocating.

Zane's voice cut through it, sharp with an Alpha's command, but softened by a desperate worry. *"Hold on, Elara! Listen to me. I don't care where you are or what's happened. You hold on! I'm coming for you. I'm coming right now!"*

His words were an anchor, a solid point in my swirling, disintegrating world.

I clung to the sound of his voice as my consciousness frayed at the edges.

Zane... Was he my salvation? Or was he about to walk into my hell?