An hour later, I was back at the clinic.

"Sit down before you bleed through that sleeve," I said.

Dax Mercer stood in the clinic doorway, his dark training shirt torn open from collar to elbow. Blood ran down the corded muscle of his forearm, dripping onto the clean linoleum. Behind him, two Silvercrest border guards lingered, looking uneasy.

"Joint training ran hot," Dax said, his voice level. "One of your border wolves misjudged a flank maneuver."

"Clearly." I picked up a sterile tray, curved suture needles, and antiseptic from the counter. Finch was across the ward stitching up a trainee's shredded palm, so I pointed Dax toward the rolling stool by the supply cabinet.

He didn't move right away. His gray eyes dropped to my leg, fixing on the thick elastic bandage wrapping my shin.

"You're off duty," Dax said.

"I have two working hands." I snapped open a pair of latex gloves. "Sit."

He walked over and sat on the stool, resting his bloody arm on the steel tray table. But as I pulled the iodine swab from its packet, he didn't roll his arm out for me. He kept his shoulder tense, his gaze locked on my face.

"Do you want to?" he asked.

I blinked, the swab hovering an inch above his torn flesh. "What?"

"Do you want to treat this?" Dax repeated, holding my eyes without a trace of mockery. "Finch is twenty feet away. If you're standing on that leg just to prove a point to your Alpha, don't waste the effort on me."

I stared at him.

Kieran had never asked me that. Not once in five years. If Kieran was bleeding, he stuck his arm in my face. If Serena was shaking, he shoved her into my arms. My labor was an entitlement, an assumed debt I owed the pack.

"I want to do it," I said.

The tension vanished from Dax's frame. He rotated his forearm, exposing the three-inch gash cleanly beneath the overhead light. "Then do it."

I pressed the iodine sponge against the split skin. He didn't flinch. Not even a twitch of the fingers.

"The cut is clean," I told him, picking up the curved needle with the forceps. "Fourteen stitches. Your healing factor will close the tissue beneath, but the skin needs alignment so the scar doesn't bind your wrist tendon."

"You know combat wounds."

"I ran border patrol for four years before Kieran made me his shadow," I said, driving the first stitch through the dermis. "I saw more lacerations than the head surgeon."

"Then you know your southern ridge line is garbage."

I paused, tugging the nylon thread snug and tying off the knot. "The southern ridge has natural rock choke points."

"Which are useless against wolves trained in high-elevation scaling," Dax countered smoothly, watching my hands work. "Your scouts hug the ravine bed. If rogues hit the upper crest at dawn, they have high ground and sun at their backs. You'd lose ten guards before anyone sounded the horn."

"Not if you place spotters on the jagged outcrop near the old logging bridge," I said, setting the second stitch. "Two marksmen with cross-angles cover the blind pocket."

Dax went quiet for three seconds. A faint, approving tilt touched the corner of his mouth. "You ran that setup?"

"Twice," I said, working with quick, steady rhythm. "Cut infiltration by eighty percent. Then Kieran took over the tactical roster and moved everyone down to the main road to show force for the council."

"A show of force is useless if your flanks are hollow," Dax said. "He threw away your best tactical position."

"He thought the display projected strength."

"It projected ignorance," Dax replied flatly. "A real commander uses the terrain, not parade theatrics. You should have been running that defense division."

I tied off the eighth stitch. My chest felt strangely warm, an uncoiling sensation that had nothing to do with the clinic heaters.

He wasn't flattering me. He wasn't patting my shoulder to make me work harder for him. He was discussing strategy like I was an officer whose mind held actual value.

"All done," I said a few minutes later, clipping the last nylon tail and smoothing antibiotic ointment over the neat row. "Keep it dry until tomorrow morning."

Dax flexed his fingers once, testing the tension across the skin, then stood up. He reached out, his bare fingers brushing the edge of the counter beside my hand as he leaned in slightly.

"Thank you, Maeve," he said, keeping his voice quiet. "You're wasted in this valley."

Before I could answer, he turned and walked out into the corridor, leaving the scent of frost and cedar behind.

***

Midnight brought a dead silence to the compound.

The air in my tiny nursery room was cool. I lay on the cot with an ice pack resting on my ankle, staring at the ceiling plaster.

Then came the tug.

It hit my sternum first—a heavy, dragging ache that coiled around my heart like a steel wire. The mate bond hummed violently, vibrating with manufactured misery. Kieran was pushing his emotions across the channel, deliberately flooding my mind with his unrest.

A second later, knuckles struck the wood of my door.

Two knocks. Short. Demanding.

I pulled the ice pack away, swung my bare feet to the cold floor, and walked to the entrance. I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door inward three inches, keeping the safety chain hooked.

Kieran stood under the flickering hallway fixture.

His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, his hair messy, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble. He looked ragged, but the dark focus in his eyes was razor sharp.

"Unlatch it," he whispered.

"No."

He leaned his forehead against the doorframe, letting out a heavy, shuddering breath. "Maeve, please. I can't sleep."

"Take a sedative. Serena has plenty."

"Stop bringing her up," he growled softly, his hand gripping the edge of the door, his knuckles whitening. "The bed is freezing without you. The link is screaming. You can feel it. Don't lie to me and say you can't feel what this is doing to us."

"I feel you pulling on it," I said, my voice dead flat. "Because you want what you can't control."

"I need you," Kieran rasped. He pushed his face closer to the crack, his eyes desperate, trying to find the crack in my armor that had always been there. "The elders are breathing down my neck about the treaty. The rogues are circling the perimeter. I have the entire weight of this territory on my shoulders, Maeve. I just need you to come back to the house. Sleep beside me. You don't even have to talk. Just be there."

I looked at his tired eyes, his handsome face, the mouth that had promised me the world in the dark and sold me out in the daylight.

A question rose in my throat. It was the question I had swallowed down for three years, burying it under loyalty and false patience.

"If we both need you," I said slowly, "who do you choose?"

Kieran stopped. The exhaustion on his face stiffened into sudden hesitation. "What?"

"Serena and me," I said, stepping closer so he could see every line of my face. "We're both trapped. We're both bleeding. The ceiling is falling down, or the river is rising, or the rogues are at the gate. If we both need you at the exact same second, Kieran... who do you choose?"

Silence settled over the hallway like lead.

Kieran shifted his weight, his eyes darting away from mine for a fraction of a second before returning. "That isn't a fair question."

"It's the only question that matters."

"It depends on who needs me more, Maeve!" he snapped, his voice rising in defensive frustration. "You're a warrior! You know how triage works! If one person is in mortal danger and the other can survive the hit, the Alpha has to prioritize the weaker link! It's not about favoritism—it's logic!"

A cold, empty clarity settled into my bones.

"Logic," I echoed softly.

"Yes!" He grabbed the edge of the door, thinking he had won the point. "You have strength, Maeve. You can hold out. She can't."

"So as long as I can survive being crushed," I said, "I will always be the one left under the rock."

Kieran's jaw dropped open. "That isn't what I said—"

"Goodnight, Kieran."

I shoved the heavy wood forward.

The latch clicked, but Kieran slammed his palm against the panel, fighting the seal. "Maeve! Open this damn door! You don't get to twist my words!"

I drove the brass deadbolt into the wall with a sharp, heavy slam.

A violent crash exploded on the other side. Kieran's fist slammed into the drywall beside the frame, cracking the plaster.

"You think Mercer gives a damn about you?" Kieran's voice snarled through the wood, thick with venom. "He's using you to crack my borders! The second this alliance ends, he'll throw you to the wolves!"

I backed away from the entrance, not saying a word.

In the dark of the small room, the mate bond suddenly shivered. Not with Kieran's anger—but with a sudden, distant tremor that rumbled through the foundation beneath my feet.

From the north boundary line, an emergency siren began to wail.