Levi's POV
I do not take her to the camp.
Kael is waiting at the forest edge when I emerge carrying her unconscious body. His eyes go wide when he sees the silver fur, the violet eyes, the royal markings still faintly visible on her skin.
"Do not ask," I tell him before he can speak. "And do not follow me."
He opens his mouth to argue but something in my voice stops him. Maybe it is the rage. Maybe it is the desperation. Maybe he just knows me well enough to understand that I will not explain this right now.
I take her to the cabin. My cabin. The place I have built as my own since the massacre, where no one else comes. Where I do not have to pretend to be anything other than what I am.
Broken.
I lay her on the bed and she does not move. The fever is so high I can feel the heat radiating off her skin from a distance. The infection in her shoulder has spread. Dark lines are running down her arm like roots of something poisonous growing through her veins.
I have maybe a day before this kills her.
I gather everything I need. Cloth. Water. The herbs my mother taught me to use before she died. Before King Aldric killed her. Before everything became ash.
The thought sits in my chest like a stone.
I clean her wounds carefully. My hands are shaking and I cannot make them stop. The silver fur is matted with blood and dirt. The cuts on her paws are deep. The infection on her shoulder is so far gone that I have to use magic to even touch it without it spreading further.
I remember my mother's hands doing this for me. Gentle but firm. Healing but honest. She never pretended things were better than they were. She just worked with what she had and did her best.
I am doing the same now with the daughter of the man who murdered her.
The irony is so bitter I almost laugh.
I use the herbs, grinding them between my palms and pressing them into the wounds. I whisper the words my mother taught me, the magic that has no name but carries her intention. Heal. Fight. Live.
The girl's body responds slowly. The dark lines stop spreading. The fever does not break but it stops climbing. It is not much but it is something.
I wrap her wounds in clean cloth and I sit beside the bed and I watch her face.
She is beautiful in a way that makes it hard to breathe. Not the careful, practiced beauty of royalty. This is something raw. Something real. Her face is sharp with suffering and determination even while she is unconscious. There is strength in her features. She is not some delicate princess. She is a warrior who just does not know it yet.
The mate bond pulls at me like a rope around my chest.
It demands I claim her. Mark her. Run my hands along her skin and tell every wolf in the realm that she belongs to me. It demands that I shift and curl up beside her body and protect her from every threat while the world burns around us.
It is a constant ache. A constant pull. A constant reminder that something inside me that I thought was dead is very much alive.
But she is the daughter of my enemy.
And I should kill her while she cannot fight back.
The thought sits in my mind like an option. Like something I could actually do. I could make this quick. I could make this painless. I could take back some small piece of what was stolen from me.
Instead, I sit beside her and I watch her breathe.
Hours pass. The sun goes down. The cabin fills with darkness. I light a fire just to see her face better. Just to make sure she is still breathing.
My wolf paces inside me like an animal in a cage. It wants to claim her. It wants to protect her. It wants to do a thousand things at once and I am tearing myself apart trying to hold all of it together.
Around midnight, I make a decision.
I do not know why. I do not understand it. I cannot explain it even to myself.
But I decide that I will keep her alive.
I will save her life. I will heal this infection. I will bring her back from the edge of death even though she is the daughter of King Aldric. Even though my entire pack will question this choice. Even though every logical part of me knows this is suicide.
I will keep her alive.
And I will figure out why later.
I sit beside her through the rest of the night and I do not sleep. I do not rest. I just watch her breathe and I feel the bond settle deeper into my bones and I accept that my life has changed in a way I cannot undo.
By morning, the fever breaks.
Her skin cools. Her body stops burning from the inside out. The infection stabilizes. She is going to live. Her body is healing faster than should be possible because fated mates are stronger together than apart and the bond itself is working to save her.
But she is still unconscious.
I know what happens when she wakes up.
She will open her eyes and see me sitting beside her bed like a ghost. She will see the scars on my body. She will see the darkness in my expression. She will ask me who I am and what happened to her.
And I will have to tell her the truth.
I will have to tell her that her father destroyed my entire pack. That he murdered my parents. That I watched my family die because of his hunger for power.
I will have to watch her face when she realizes that the man who saved her life is the son of the pack she was taught to believe deserved to die.
I will have to tell her that she is my mate and that I am keeping her here whether she wants to stay or not because the bond will not let me do anything else.
And I have no idea how she will react.
She stirs a little as the sun comes up. Her eyes flutter beneath closed lids like she is dreaming. Her hand moves across the bed like she is searching for something.
For me.
My wolf howls inside my chest with satisfaction and rage and desperate longing all tangled together.
She is going to wake up soon.
She is going to ask questions I cannot answer. She is going to feel the bond the way I feel it, pulling her toward me, demanding that she accept something that should be impossible.
And I am going to have to watch her face when she understands that her salvation came from the worst possible source.
Her eyes open.