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I can practically hear his mind working through the implications. “I’ll look into it. But Griffin, you need to come back. The kingdom needs its king.”

“The kingdom needs a cure,” I counter. “And the only person who can provide it believes we murdered her mother.”

“And you think you can convince her to change her mind?”

I don’t answer.

“Griffin,” Erik sighs. “You’re not just the king. You’re her fated mate. If—”

“I know what I am. I’ll be in touch,” I say sharply, ending the call before he can argue further.

The lights finally go out in Maya’s office. Minutes later, she appears at the main entrance, her white lab coat traded for a dark jacket. She looks so small, so alone as she steps out into the rain.

I follow at a distance, staying in the shadows. Her path home is the same each night—past the coffee shop on the corner, through the park, to a nondescript apartment building twenty minutes from her workplace.

Tonight, she stops at a liquor store. Again.

It’s another pattern I’ve noticed in the days I’ve been watching her. She does this every night. She emerges with a paper bag that does little to disguise the two wine bottles inside it. I know that in the morning, the wine bottles will be in her trash outside.

Research tells me that the amount of alcohol she seems to be consuming is dangerous for a human—slowly killing her as surely as any disease. The thought of her drinking alonein that empty apartment, deliberately poisoning herself, makes something primal howl inside me.

But I keep my distance, respecting the boundaries she has drawn even as I break them by watching over her.

At her apartment building, she fumbles with her keys, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and what I suspect is already the beginning of intoxication. Inside, lights come on in a third-floor window. I settle in for another night beneath the cold Seattle sky, my eyes fixed on where she lives, wondering what I’ve done.

The prophecy flashes through my mind, then the interpretation I received from Isla: “Your fated mate will die once you mark her, and you will be the one who takes her life.”

I pushed Maya away to save her, convinced the prophecy meant I would somehow cause her death if I claimed her. But now I wonder if I’ve set her on a path to destruction by letting her go.

The young witch’s words haunt me: “The prophecies of the old bloodline are never wrong.”

But she also said prophecies can be misinterpreted. Twisted.

What if my absence is what’s killing Maya, slowly but surely?

The thought keeps me rooted to the spot long after her lights go out, long after the rain soaks through my clothes to the skin beneath.

For three more days,I watch. Each night, she follows the same ritual: work until exhaustion, alcohol, isolation. She speaks to no one outside of work except the occasional cashier or bartender. No friends visit. No phone calls last more than a minute.

The nights she doesn’t buy a bottle or two, she goes to a bar instead. A dive several blocks from her apartment, where the bartender knows her by name and starts pouring her usual without asking.

I’ve done this to her.

The realization sits like lead in my stomach as I watch her push through the door into the bar on the fourth night, shoulders curled inward as if against a permanent, invisible weight.

I need to leave. I’ve seen enough to know she won’t help, won’t return with me. My presence here is an invasion she never asked for.

Yet I find myself following her again when she stumbles out three hours later, her steps uneven, her path home a wavering line through rain-slicked streets.

She takes a wrong turn. And another. Suddenly, she’s in an unfamiliar alley, narrower and darker than her usual route home.

That’s when I smell them—three men, alcohol and adrenaline sharp in their scent, predatory intent unmistakable. My body moves before I can think, instinct overriding caution.

They’ve already surrounded her, laughing at something one of them has said. Maya stands frozen, just staring at them, her face expressionless. Why isn’t she moving? Why isn’t she leaving?

“Look, sweetheart, we just want to talk,” one of the men says, moving closer.

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t walk away. Just stands there, almost as if she’s waiting for whatever comes next. The lack of self-preservation in her posture finally hits me. She’s not going to fight. She’s not going to run.