Maya POV
Kael's blood covered my hands. Hot. Sticky. Too much of it.
"No, no, no," I chanted, pressing my palms against the massive wound on his shoulder. Blood pumped between my fingers with each weak heartbeat. "You don't get to die. You hear me? You don't get to save me and then just die!"
He didn't respond. His eyes had rolled back. His chest barely moved.
I was watching him die and I couldn't stop it.
Think, Maya. THINK. You're an engineer. You solve impossible problems. This is just another problem.
But I designed buildings, not bodies. I knew steel and concrete, not flesh and blood. What did I know about medicine?
Then it hit me. My college roommate Sarah. Pre-med student who'd spent four years complaining about anatomy classes while I complained about physics. I'd absorbed more than I thought just from living with her.
Arteries. Pressure points. Clotting.
The shoulder wound was arterial—that's why so much blood. I needed to stop the bleeding first or nothing else mattered.
My broken ankle screamed as I moved, but I ignored it. Pain meant nothing if Kael died.
I ripped a long strip from my already-shredded skirt. My hands shook so badly I could barely tie it, but I managed to wrap the cloth above his wound, creating a tourniquet. I twisted it tight using a stick, cutting off blood flow to the injured area.
The gushing slowed. Not stopped, but better.
"Okay, okay, that's good," I told myself. "What's next?"
The wound itself. It was deep, ragged, dirty. If he survived the blood loss, infection would kill him in days. I needed to clean it.
But with what? I had no antiseptic, no clean water, nothing sterile.
Wait. The underground water source I'd identified. Spring water was usually cleaner than surface water—filtered naturally through rock layers. If I could reach it...
I looked at Kael's unconscious face. Leaving him felt wrong. Dangerous. But staying here watching him bleed out was worse.
"I'll be right back," I whispered, touching his face. His skin felt too cold. "Don't you dare give up."
I crawled across the valley floor on my hands and one good knee, dragging my broken ankle behind me. Every movement sent lightning bolts of pain through my leg. Tears streamed down my face but I didn't stop.
The damp rocks I'd noticed earlier were thirty feet away. Might as well have been thirty miles.
Move. Just move. He saved your life. Now save his.
I reached the spot and started digging with my bare hands. The dirt was hard-packed, embedded with stones that tore my palms. Blood mixed with earth under my fingernails.
Ten inches down, water seeped up. Cold, clear, beautiful water.
I cupped my hands and carried as much as I could back to Kael, spilling half on the way. It took six trips before I had enough water pooled in a natural depression in the rock beside him.
Next problem: cleaning the wound meant touching it. Hurting him. But he was unconscious, so he wouldn't feel it, right?
I loosened the tourniquet slightly—couldn't leave it on too long or the tissue would die—and poured water directly into the wound.
Kael's eyes snapped open with a howl of agony that made my heart stop.
"I'm sorry!" I cried, but I didn't stop cleaning. "I know it hurts. I'm so sorry. But if I don't do this, you'll die from infection."
His amber eyes found mine, glazed with pain but aware. "Maya," he rasped. "You're... crying."
"Of course I'm crying, you idiot!" The words burst out between sobs. "You almost died! You fought a three-headed monster to protect me and you almost died!"
"Worth it." He tried to smile. Failed. "You're safe."
"I don't want to be safe if you're dead!" The force of my own words shocked me. I'd known this male for one day. One day. Why did the thought of losing him feel like losing everything?
Maybe because he was the only person in this nightmare world who'd treated me like I mattered. Not as property or a prize, but as a person worth protecting.
Maybe because when he looked at me with those amber eyes, I felt seen in a way I'd never felt back home.
Or maybe I was just desperate and traumatized and clinging to the first kind thing in this savage world.
I didn't know. Didn't care. I just knew I couldn't let him die.
I worked for what felt like hours, cleaning the wound as best I could, then packing it with clean cloth strips from my clothes. The bleeding had stopped to a slow seep. His color looked slightly better. Maybe. Hopefully.
"You need real medicine," I told him. "Antibiotics. Stitches. A hospital."
"No hospitals... in Beastworld." Each word seemed to cost him effort. "Just... healers. Rare."
"Then we need to find one."
"Can't move." He was right. Moving him in this condition would probably kill him faster than staying put.
"Then I'll go find one," I said, even though the thought terrified me. Going out into this alien world alone with a broken ankle was suicide.
Kael's hand shot out and gripped my wrist. Weak, but determined. "No. Too dangerous. You stay. I'll... heal or I won't. But you stay... safe."
"That's not—"
"Promise me." His eyes bored into mine with desperate intensity. "If I die... you take my supplies. Head east to the Green Valley Tribe. Tell them... tell them Kael sent you. They'll give you... sanctuary."
"Stop talking about dying!" I yanked my hand free. "You're not dying. I won't let you."
"Maya—"
"No!" My voice echoed off the rocks. "You told me you felt hope when you found me. Well, guess what? I feel it too. For the first time since that building collapsed, I have a reason to keep going. So you don't get to give up. We're both surviving this. Together."
Something flickered in his eyes. Wonder, maybe. Or disbelief that someone would fight this hard for him.
"Together," he repeated softly. Then his eyes drifted closed again.
Panic seized my chest. "Kael? Kael!"
"Still here," he murmured without opening his eyes. "Just... tired."
I sat beside him as darkness fell over the valley, keeping watch. The night brought new sounds—howls in the distance, rustling in bushes, the flutter of wings overhead. Every noise made my heart race.
Predators hunted at night. I knew that much. And here I sat with a wounded male and a broken ankle, completely helpless.
Around midnight, Kael started shivering. Fever. The infection was setting in despite my cleaning efforts.
I lay down beside him, pressing my small body against his massive frame, trying to share warmth. His skin burned against mine—too hot, then too cold, cycling between extremes.
"Hold on," I whispered. "Please hold on."
His arm moved, wrapping around me even in his fevered state. Pulling me closer. Protecting me even while dying.
Dawn came slowly. Kael's breathing had turned shallow, rattling. His fever spiked higher. I'd done everything I could with no supplies and no knowledge.
It wasn't enough.
Then I heard them. Voices. Multiple beast-men approaching through the valley.
My blood ran cold. Were they friendly? Hostile? Would they help or would they see a dying male and a helpless female as easy prey?
I grabbed a rock—my only weapon—and positioned myself between Kael and whoever was coming.
Three figures emerged from the morning mist. Two males and one female, all bearing different animal features. The female, covered in spotted leopard markings, stopped when she saw us.
Her eyes widened. "By the ancestors... is that Kael? The Silver Wolf?"
"He's dying," I said, my voice hoarse from crying. "Please. If you have medicine, if you know healing—"
The leopard female rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside Kael. She examined his wound with expert efficiency, then looked at me with new respect.
"You cleaned this? Applied a tourniquet?"
I nodded.
"You saved his life. Another hour of bleeding and he'd be dead." She pulled supplies from a leather bag. "I'm Zara. A healer. These are my brothers, Finn and Rook. We were passing through and smelled blood."
Relief crashed through me so hard my vision blurred. "You can save him?"
She was already working, applying a paste to the wound that smelled like herbs and something sharp. "If the infection hasn't spread too far. It'll be close."
One of her brothers—Finn, with fox-like features—stared at me with open curiosity. "Who are you? Why is Kael protecting a human female in the Cursed Valley?"
"I'm Maya. And he's not just protecting me. He's my..." I hesitated. What was he? My captor? My savior? My fate-marked mate?
"She's his fate-bond," Zara said quietly, her hands never stopping their work. "Look at his markings."
She pointed to Kael's chest, where silver lines I'd never noticed before had appeared on his skin, forming intricate patterns. They seemed to glow faintly.
"Fate-markings appear when the bond is accepted by both sides," Zara explained. "Even unconsciously. He's chosen you. And you've chosen him by fighting to save his life."
I stared at the glowing marks, my mind reeling. "I didn't choose anything. I just didn't want him to die."
"That IS choosing," Zara said simply. Then her expression darkened. "But you should know—once fate-markings appear, they can't be undone. You're bound to each other. If he dies, you'll feel it. And if you die..."
"He'll feel it too," I finished, understanding flooding through me.
We weren't just connected by gratitude or circumstance anymore. We were tied together by something deeper, older, that I didn't understand.
Kael's eyes fluttered open. Through the fever, he found my face and smiled weakly. "Told you... survive together."
Then his eyes rolled back and he seized, his entire body convulsing violently.
Zara cursed and pressed her hands against his chest. "The infection's in his blood. This is the crisis point. He either fights through it in the next hour or—"
She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
I gripped Kael's hand, feeling the fate-bond pulse between us like a living thing.
And I realized that if he died, part of me would die too.