After hours of fighting, the thing that was going to take Gavriel Sterling down wasn’t a death temple or a lava serpent or a vampire’s claws. It was something he didn’t tell anyone about when it happened.

She eased him onto the moss-covered ledge beside the pool, pulling him out of the water, laying him down on the soft green surface that lined the stone like nature had grown a gurney specifically for this moment.

Her hands trembled against his chest. His heartbeat was fast. Too fast. Hammering against her palm like it was trying to escape.

She felt his forehead first. He was fever-hot. The kind of temperature that burned against her fingers and made her stomach drop into her boots because outside of herself, wolves don’t run fevers. That meant something was terribly wrong.

“Shit.”

She reached for the zipper at the back of his combat suit, fingers fumbling twice before catching the pull, and dragged it down between his shoulder blades. She peeled the fabric away from his shoulders, the thermal weave separating from his skin with a wet, clinging resistance, steam rising from his exposed back as the cave air hit flesh that was radiating heat like a furnace.

Then she froze.

There was a bitemark on his shoulder.

Fresh. Deep. The kind of wound that looked like it had opinions about staying. Black veins fanned outward from the puncture in a slow, deliberate crawl, threading beneath his skin like dark roots searching for something to strangle.

Her breath left her in a strangled gasp.

“Oh gods.”

Hyran and Aeron both warned that vampire bites are fatal to wolves. Full stop. Period. The end. No asterisk, no footnote, no ’unless you try really hard and believe in yourself.’ Fatal.

She had never read any texts on vampires herself, so that was all she had to go off of.

That’s when she noticed her own shoulder was aching.

She ripped the zipper of her training suit down, peeling the suit off her torso, and looked down at her shoulder.

A black mark was forming across her skin in the same goddamn spot, a perfect mirror. The only difference between their marks was his had dark veins spidering outward and she didn’t.

That’s when her eyes caught something on his other shoulder.

A mark. Glowing gold against his skin, faint but unmistakable, pulsing with the same rhythm as his heartbeat. She knew that glow. She had seen it on Dexmon’s shoulder. She had seen it on Fin’s.

Her blood went cold.

She stared at it, waiting for the image to change, waiting for it to be a trick of the pink light or the steam or her own exhaustion feeding her hallucinations she couldn’t afford. It didn’t change. It sat on his skin like it belonged there.

Had she marked Gavriel?

Her stomach bottomed out.

No. No, no, no.

When did she do this? How? She searched her memory and came back empty.

Serena: Aurelia.

Silence.

Serena: I know you can hear me. Answer me. Did we mark him?

Her wolf stayed quiet.

Gavriel’s body twitched once. Violently. The kind of full-body seizure that traveled from his spine to his fingertips and left him rigid for a full second before going slack again.

She gasped.

Her hands started shaking.

She was alone. In a volcanic cavern with sulfur-laced air and steaming water and zero backup. Alone with an unconscious Gavriel Sterling and a ticking poison she had no cure for, no antidote for, and no fucking plan for.

She reached for the mindlink, praying the Aureus Catenes bracelet on her wrist was doing its job.

Serena: Hyran, Aeron, is anyone there?

Silence.

The silence was louder than the steaming pool behind her. Louder than her own heartbeat slamming against her ribs. Louder than the fact that they had received zero mindlinks since climbing this hellscape volcano, which meant the odds of one going out were about the same as the odds of Gavriel waking up and making a joke right now.

Zero. The odds were zero.

Serena: Gav was bitten. Tell me what I can do.

Dead air. The particular, merciless dead air of a connection returning absolutely nothing.

She tried three more times. Four. Five. Each attempt more desperate than the last, each silence more deafening.

“Alright Serena, focus. You have tools.”

She turned back to Gavriel and tried to heal him with her own magic. Gold light gathered in her palms, flickering, anemic, the magical equivalent of a lighter running on its last gasp of fluid.

Her insides burned. The familiar, vicious burn of a body that had already given everything it owned and was being asked to open a line of credit it couldn’t afford.

“Pink then.”

The gold was weak. The pink was weaker. Wisps curled from her fingers and dissolved before they reached his skin. Her insides burned even more.

She was drained. Completely, catastrophically drained. The volcano had taken it all, and the compound interest was collecting.

Her eyes closed. She took a deep breath trying to find and pull from his magic. Also doubtful considering he was unconscious. Also desperate. The kind of Hail Mary that only gets thrown when the clock reads triple zeros and the scoreboard is fucked.

Her insides burned again. Harder. The pain was a warning shot from her own body, and the warning was very clear: stop, or you go down too.

“Healing water. We have options, Serena.”

She was full-on talking to herself and well aware. She lowered him back into the water.

The steaming pool did what steaming pools do. It closed the lesser wounds, the cuts and gashes and bruises that war leaves behind like receipts. She watched them knit shut one by one, flesh sealing, blood retreating, the body’s repair crew doing overtime on everything except the one injury that mattered.

The bite stayed open.

The bite stayed dark.

The black veins continued to spread, slow and patient, threading outward with the unhurried confidence of a poison that knew exactly where it was going and had all the time in the world to get there.