“And the wolves?” I ask.
“They came at dawn. Kade grounded her. Sat her in the frost until she stopped shaking. Brynn reached her somewhere the rest of us couldn’t… Talon got her running. First time she laughed since this started. The hunt, the burn of physical exertion seems to help.”
For a moment, relief brushes through our bond like weak sunlight.
Then it fades.
“What happened today?” I ask.
“The hunger spiked without warning during the last session.” Rogue’s voice lowers, then tightens. “Half an hour to bring her back under control. Thirty minutes of her fighting herself while the rest of us held the line.” He stops speaking, but he doesn’t withdraw. He stays here, in the bond, letting me feel the exhaustion pressing against him like a physical force.
“We’ve used everything we have,” he says finally. “Every method, every treatment. There’s nothing left to try.” My jaw tightens. “The window isn’t extending,” he continues. “The gains aren’t holding. She’s getting stronger, but the hunger is scaling with her. Everything we throw at it buys time…” he pauses, “… not control.”
I push away from the table and begin pacing without realizing I’ve moved.
“I’ve watched her hold herself together on sheer refusal,” Rogue says. “Watched her fight every session. Push through every fucking treatment. Do everything asked of her without complaint.” He exhales down the line like he is running out of steam. “She hasn’t quit.” His voice drops further. “She won’t quit.”
The weight of what he isn’t saying lands between us like a blade.
I stop pacing, understanding completely.
“But the clock doesn’t care,” I say.
“No.” Rogue exhales slowly. “It doesn’t.”
Silence falls again. It is not empty. It is full of everything he is trusting me to understand without needing to say it.
I have known Rogue longer than most civilizations have existed.
I have seen him bleed, rage, lead, and destroy.
I have never seen him reach.
Not until now.
“What do you need from me?” I ask, and this time, there is no hesitation in my voice at all. I move to the window, one hand braced against the frame, the low lights of the compound spread below me, and our bond is doing something I haven’t felt from it in days.
It’s reaching.
Not fraying.
The distinction is notable enough to stop me.
“You’re the only one with the experience,” Rogue says. “Centuries of it. You’ve trained new vampires before. You know what they need in ways none of us here do. Ways I can’t even comprehend.”
“I know what they need.”
“Then come.” The silence that follows is deliberate… but I feel the weight of it.“Please.”He pauses long enough for me to understand he isn’t finished, he’s deciding whether to say the rest out loud. “I’m asking you as your Bloodguard, and I’m asking you as the man who has ridden beside you for years.” He lets out a breath that’s not quite steady. “Please, brother. I’m begging you.Save her.”
The last sentence lands in the silence between us.
And stays there.
Rogue doesn’t beg. It’s not in his blood. Not in his code. The fact that he says it anyway tells me more clearly than all of Scorch’s reports combined exactly where they are.
Not at the edge.
They’re past it.
