The silence that follows is the worst sound I have heard in my life.
I watch four years of rage collapse in on Derek’s face and see him refuse to let it. He shakes his head once.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says quietly. “Even if that is true, it doesn’t bring her back. You could have figured out a way for me.”
His functioning eye focuses on me and then darts toward Miranda.
I see the intent in his eyes moments before he lunges.
I block his attack mid-air, shifting as I move toward him. We hit the concrete in a single tangled mass, two wolves locked together. He is bleeding from the wolfsbane burn around the socket, the poison slowing him, his right side a fraction off, his teeth clipping the air on his usual angle of attack instead of finding my throat.
I do not give him a second chance.
I tear into him.
Across the room, Coach shouts something I cannot hear over the noise inside my own skull. Then he shouts again, sharper. “GRAYSON. She’s not breathing properly.”
I cannot stop.
My jaws find the side of his neck as I twist him under me, and I bite down with everything I have. The bones crack. The body in my teeth goes slack. Derek meets my gaze, and I see gratefulness in the eye that is slowly losing its light. He shifts back into his human form and clutches on to me. I drop him on the concrete and shift back to my knees in the same motion. My heart is breaking, but I can’t grieve right now.
I am at Miranda’s side before I have fully come back into my human body. Her face has gone gray. Her chest is moving in small, uneven jerks, and there is pink foam at the corner of her mouth. Her hand is still wrapped around Ethan’s front leg. Her eyes are fluttering open and closed.
Coach is holding Ethan’s small wolf body, the boy whimpering and limp. The shift is already trying to recede. Small, bare skin shows under patches of fur.
The door bangs open, and the team pours in. Brody, Samuel, Eric, and one of the pack healers with a kit in his hand. The healer drops to his knees on the other side of Miranda, and his hands move fast across her chest, listening, pressing, his face going tight.
“Her lungs are crushed,” he says. “Internal bleeding. Massive. She has minutes, Grayson. I am sorry. We are too far from the estate. We cannot get her there in time.”
“Move.”
“Grayson.”
“Move!” I roar.
I push the healer off her without looking at him. My hands cup her face. Her eyes find mine, hazy, glassy, drifting.
“Miranda. Stay with me. Look at me. Stay with me.”
Her mouth moves. No sound comes out.
Coach steps over to us. He looks at Miranda. He looks at the boy in his arms. He looks at me.
“Don’t.”
I jerk my head up.
“Coach.” He knows what I intend to do. “I have to try.”
“If she dies with your mark, you won’t survive.”
“I’ll survive for my son. But I’ll fight for my mate.”
The room is silent except for the wet, shallow rasp of Miranda’s breathing.
I bend to her throat and find the soft place above her collarbone where her pulse used to live and is now barely there. Her skin is cool. Her breath against my mouth is shallow and wet.
I drop my mouth to her pulse, and I bite.
