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Not Aidan, not my mate. I couldn’t be one of those people who have their loved ones torn away from them so soon after finding them.

That wasn’t his blood, it wasn’t him fighting for breath.

I was wrapped up tight in acres of grey woolly nothingness, putting a million miles between me and them.

I was watching this happen on TV, the life of a character I wasn’t really engaging with, who was suffering some awful fate, but I just wanted to get back to flicking through social media, the director having failed to move me.

Then the swinging doors burst open, and the many older women I’d seen at the alpha residence entered the room in a long stream.

“Finally!” Hobbes snapped. “Scrub up and get some gloves on. I need…”

Her voice trailed away as she heard the hum, the sound of each and every woman’s throat filling the room. It got louder and louder, especially when they joined hands, forming an inviolable circle around the operating table.

“Join us, Flick,” Ophelia ordered, taking a spot in the ring nearest the door, a white faced and pregnant Jules at her side. They took each other’s hands and then joined the tune.

“What the hell?”

My head whipped around to see the doctor pulling away from my love, her hands in the air, as if to protect herself. From what, it became immediately apparent. Light poured from Aidan’s body, slowing the drips of blood seeping from him first, his skin growing brighter and brighter.

“You must join us, Flick. You are Aidan’s mate, his anchor in this world,” Ophelia insisted.

“Flick, please,” Peter pleaded, his hands soaked in blood.

The weight of their expectations felt crushing, threatening to hammer me into the ground. What did they expect of me? I could do nothing, was nothing.

“Don’t do this right now, Flick.” Sen’s voice was a whip crack across my already raw flesh. “Don’t get caught up in the bullshit in your head. Just take the women’s hands.”

I stepped back automatically, until I felt hands part to accept me, then each grabbed mine and the world fell away.

It was beautiful here, the blood and pain replaced by golden clouds and radiant light.

“Direct us, Jules.”

My eyes flicked around me at the sound of Ophelia’s voice, and as if summoned by it, they all appeared.

Well, they did and more besides. I saw Jules and Ophelia talking animatedly, trying to work something out, the sounds increasingly drowned out by the sound of the humming.

It rose and rose until it was a physical presence in my ears, pushing against my eardrums, forcing everything out as rings upon rings of women filled the cloud landscape.

And then she came, a massive white wolf, padding forward, her head down and her green eyes burning into mine. She stepped over each ring, so tall she blotted out the light source here and replaced it with her radiance, then came to a stop in the centre of the circle and sat down.

My eyes ached and my head throbbed as if I stared directly into the sun, but I couldn’t look away. I trembled, my body fighting to hold its position, until finally she relented, looking away.

Why have you summoned me here?

Summoned you? I don’t even know who you are!

And yet, you do. Your ears may not have heard the explanations yet, but you know. So why am I here?

My mate Aidan… Something about my mind balked at this, shutting down, putting up roadblocks, trying to stop me going further. There is only pain there , it whispered. Go no further.

What is this Aidan to me?

Aidan’s hurt , I squeezed out, feeling like my throat, my brain was being shredded. The women came in the room and started humming.

They summoned me for you. To what purpose? I could hear the thinly concealed irritation there, a pulsing need to pull away, walk free of this place and its net of power, to run free on the plains.

I…

The red eyed wolf smashing into my mates.

He…

His teeth digging into Aidan’s throat, thrashing around, doing his damn best to tear his life out.

From death comes regrowth , she said sagely, like I was supposed to make sense of that. And that was apparently it, as the wolf got to her feet, readying to leave.

Everything I’d been struggling to keep a lid on came rushing out at the sight of her feet moving.

My thought process was so breathtakingly selfish, it stunned me.

Of course Aidan would get hurt trying to look after me.

Of course some red eyed fucker of a wolf was pursuing me, ready to steal my child away, to run him through some kind of serial killer bootcamp.

Of course Aidan’s blood was drying on my thigh, the red-eyed wolf’s blood on my teeth, making it feel like I’d been sucking copper coins.

Of course we would have some kind of metaphysical ritual with magic giant wolves that spouted useless aphorisms.

The white wolf nodded to me, then turned.

“Wait! Wait….” My voice trailed away. My chest heaved as everything faded away, plonking me right back in the room where the guys and Doc Hobbes were rushing around as Aidan’s body fought to stay alive.

And was losing that battle. The tears streamed down my face as I walked through them to his side and saw those same damn staring eyes, all that was Aidan leaching out of them, growing steadily dull.

I’d thought I loved Aidan before, but it was a selfish, summer love of heat and sweetness.

I’d wrapped him around me like a warm blanket, used him as a shelter against the storm of my abuse, and made a nice little home there.

And now that was being ripped away. As he tried to protect me, he’d been brought down, and now he needed me to step up and do as he had done for me—give him my strength, commit myself entirely to helping him, knowing I was probably going to fail.

The greyness threatened to wrap around me again, insulate me, keep me away from what I knew was going to break me until he was gone.

Not gone , a tiny voice in my mind cried. Never that.

We’d only been together for such a short time, but an avalanche of memories of being with him flooded me.

The feel of his hand in mine, taking it when I could bear it and then it never far out of his grip after that.

The gentleness when he stroked the hair back from my face and placed a kiss on my forehead as he put containers of food on the table.

His patience when he listened to Kade talk on and on about whichever cartoon he was obsessing about now, getting down on the floor and playing pew pew battles with him, much to Kade’s cries of delight.

Of carrying him into bed and laying him down.

Pulling his hair back into a ponytail as he worked at keeping the house clean.

Cups of tea on the coffee table waiting for me.

Arms around me, stroking my skin when I could tolerate its touch and then soothing my jangled nerves until they finally stilled.

Aidan was love. He’d grown up in a happy, well-adjusted house and it saturated him, and it was all he could do to just send it back out to those around him. And I couldn’t take that away from my son.

He’ll look after Kade , I told myself through ragged breaths. He’ll raise him well, help him to become a strong man in his own right, him and Peter. Renee’ll step in, be the mother. Fuck, her whole family would cluster around Kade, keep him safe from his fucking father.

Rick wants me, and he can’t have me. Kade needs Aidan. They’ll be able to protect him way more effectively than I will.

I looked up into those implacable green eyes, eyes who saw every thought, every feeling of each and every one of us, and nodded.

I stepped forward, knowing what I had to do.

Because love isn’t selfish. It’s that curious magic a bunch of sentient apes managed to conjure, where the needs of another became just as important as your own.

I’d never experienced the level of pain radiating in my heart before, and I welcomed it, every aching moment.

I’m sorry, Kade , I thought quietly.

From death comes regrowth? I said. Then take me. Regrow him, his skin, his muscle, his blood. Make him whole again. Let him continue to be the man I know him to be, let that heart of his keep beating to love entirely those lucky enough to find a place within it. Let him live, please.

This will come at a cost , the white wolf said.

I know. I don’t have anything else to give. Just…make sure Kade will be safe, please?

The cub is important. He will survive.

Figuring that was as good an assurance as I was going to get, I closed my eyes and stepped forward, into her white light.

They didn’t see it, with the hysterical action going on within the surgery, but I did.

Just as I had asked, I watched Aidan’s body knit back together, slowly at first, the wrench I felt only slight.

But the pace picked up, and my heart beat harder and harder as it did, the gaps between the beats expanding until it was the ponderous sound of a gong being struck, years going by between each pulse.

My vision started to grey when I saw him blink rapidly, when people stopped panicking and started to see.

It faded as the last of his skin was remade, and then I fell to the floor.