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“Sweet Adelaide…” Lucian tsked his tongue. “Sometimes, you don’t have a choice.”

Calax made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and I spun in his arms, eyes wide. His own were dazed, staring at a spot over my shoulder, and his hands dropped from where they were rubbing my neck. The color had drained from his face, and it was only when he turned, horror carved into every feature, did I see Deth standing beside him holding an empty syringe.

A startled scream lodged in my throat.

No. No. No. No.

The skin on his neck shifted, something crawling just beneath the surface. No, not something.

An Arctic.

The parasite.

Deth had just injected Calax with it, and I felt my entire world stop. Icy terror skated down my spine, filled up my lungs, churned the contents of my stomach.

“No,” I whispered, but I didn’t know who I was pleading to.

Lucian’s smile was large in his face. Too large.

“Sometimes,” he repeated, stepping closer, “you don’t have a choice.”

With jerky, desperate movements, I threw myself onto the bed. The blanket was scratchy against my bare legs, but a twisted facet of me reveled in the pain. The discomfort.

I just got him back.

That thought repeated on a loop in my head. Over and over and over again. It was all I could think about, all I could focus on. I just got him back…and I was losing him all over again. This was staring down the barrel of a gun and knowing you were going to die. You saw your inevitable end laid out before you like a welcome mat. Hell, a part of you evenwelcomedthat relief only death could bring.

Something salty touched my chapped lips. Tears, I realized blankly.

“Do what you want with me,” I whispered to Lucian darkly. “But save Calax.”

A tiny piece of me broke that day. A piece that no amount of bandages nor thread could fix.

I would never forget the moment Calax’s eyes turned a vibrant red. When his skin shifted and contorted right before my eyes. When he stared at me, eyes looking right through me. When he snarled and lunged, only being restrained by five guards with guns. When the ropes were tied tightly, mutilating his skin. When he hissed at me, called me names, threatened me, all in a guttural voice.

I supposed a part of me always believed our love could survive the transformation. That a part of him would still remember and love me.

I was a fucking idiot.

I didn’t just break that day in the hospital room, the pungent smell of bleach assaulting my senses.

I died.