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Chapter 27 - Maisie

The world is burning, and Zane is bleeding out in my arms.

His body feels so heavy. I can’t stop the trembling in my hands as I press them harder into his wound. He already feels cold in my arms. Why is he so cold? Blood seeps between my fingers, warm and slick, but no matter how hard I press, it doesn’t stop. It won’t stop.

“Hold on,” I whisper, my voice cracking under the force of my fear. “Please, Zane, just hold on.”

He doesn’t respond. His eyes are half-lidded, glazed with pain and exhaustion. He stares up at me through the haze of smoke and firelight, his gaze unfocused, as if he’s looking past me into another world I can’t reach.

I press harder. The blood won’t stop. There’s so much of it.

When the Haverwood Alpha stabbed him through the stomach, he didn’t even seem to feel it. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. I felt it as if it had been me as I watched, terrified, furious, nauseous.

Around us, the sounds of battle are fading but the fire is raging on, and there is still smoke everywhere. The pack is picking off the last of the Haverwood wolves. I can hear the victorious howls from some of our fighters.

But the triumph feels distant, hollow. None of it matters if I lose him.

I can’t lose him.

“Zane, stay with me,” I beg, my voice frantic now, rising above the din surrounding us. “Stay with me, please don’t go, please don’t go. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if you go.”

His lips part, but no words come out. Just a ragged breath. A shuddering exhale.

I choke back a sob, forcing myself to focus. I’ve done this before—I’ve saved lives in worse conditions. I’ve pulled people back from the brink, from wounds that should have killed them. I know how to do this. I have to do this.

I’m out of bandages. I tear a strip of fabric from my sleeve, partially stuffing the wound and then wrapping the rest tightly around his torso to stem the bleeding. The pressure should help, but it’s not enough. I can already tell he’s lost too much blood.

He can’t die. He can’t leave me.

“Maisie!”

The shout cuts through the fog in my mind.

It’s Ado, rushing toward me, his face smeared with dirt and blood. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I reply, my voice hoarse. “I need to get him to the clinic. Now.”

Ado nods, and within moments, he’s barking orders, rallying the remaining pack members to help. The adrenaline surging through me is the only thing keeping me going, the only thing holding the fear at bay. The moment it fades, I’m going to crash.

Zane’s head lolls to the side, his breath shallow and uneven. His skin is clammy and pale. Too pale.

His lips are making the same shape over and over. I sob as I realize it’s my name.

The pack moves around us like a well-oiled machine, their training taking over as they load Zane onto a makeshift stretcher. I follow them, my hands still pressed against his wound, bile rising in the back of my throat while his faint heartbeat flutters against my hands.

Around us, Rosecreek is in ruins. Fires blaze on the western edge, and the smell of smoke mixes with the acrid scent of blood and death. I can’t even begin to conceive of what has been destroyed. The bodies of fallen wolves—thankfully appearing to be almost entirely theirs—litter the streets. So many dead. Did they ask for this? Did they know they were signing up to die?

Byron passes us in the dark, shouting something into his walkie. He sees Zane, and ten emotions seem to cross his face at once, none of which I can name. His horrified face swings past us into the darkness again.

I think I’m definitely going to be sick.

But when we reach the clinic, I snap into action.

My hands move on autopilot. We hoist him onto one of the beds. I set to cleaning the wound, stitching where I can, stopping the bleeding—everything I’ve been trained to do.

My mind is clear, but I can’t stop the trembling. My hands won’t steady no matter what I do.

When Veronica arrives, she has to take over suturing his butchered stomach because I can’t keep my hands from shaking. She says nothing, just takes the needle from me and tells me he needs to be on fluids.

I manage to find a vein for his IV and target it somehow. Later, I’ll probably look back and wonder how the hell I managed it in this state.

Hours pass. I don’t know how many. Time becomes a blur of blood, sweat, and panic as I fly about the clinic. Others come in—injured, wounded, dying, all of them members of our pack that stayed to save their home. I tend to them all, but inside, I can’t focus on anything but Zane. I must be a horrible doctor, but it’s the truth.

He means everything. His death, the mere possibility of it, eclipses everything else in my mind.

I wash my blood-slick hands in the sink, then disinfect again. I pull on a dozenth pair of gloves at set to work on another bullet wound on another patient who feels faceless to me, anonymous, just a brutalized limb on a table.

Veronica calls out to me every five minutes that he’s still stabilizing.

He’s alive. We’re not out of the woods yet, but for now, it’s the best we can hope for.

As morning comes, we move him to the back of the clinic, where the other wounded are resting in curtained-off sections. When my work is done with the critical cases, I stay by his side, refusing to leave. My hands shake as I wipe the blood from his skin, cleaning the dirt from his face.

He looks so peaceful now, his face relaxed, his body still. He looks like he’s sleeping.

I should be helping Veronica with the rest of our influx of patients. Percy is still unconscious, pumped full of drugs after two bullet wounds. Rafael got shot in the arm. There are a dozen patients here.

But I just can’t move.

I just clutch Zane’s cold hand in mine and try not to cry.

The hours stretch on. At noon, I force myself to get up, to move, to tend to the other wounded. I smile emptily, administer painkillers, change bandages, up morphine doses, and fetch water. I work until my hands are numb, until my legs feel like they’re going to give out beneath me. I whisper reassurances to those who are still shaking after the battle.

Outside the clinic’s windows, the smoke eventually slows, then stops. Somehow, the sight doesn’t raise my spirits.

Through it all, my thoughts are with him.

When the last of the jobs at the clinic have been seen to, when the fires have been put out and the town finally falls silent, I return to his side. He’s still unconscious, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths.

I sink into the chair beside him. My body feels like a wrung-out sponge.

He’s alive. That should be enough.

I almost lost him.

The tears aren’t a surprise when they come. I reach for his hand, clasping it in mine. His skin is warm, and for the first time since the battle began, I let myself cry, really cry. Silent, shaking sobs wrack my body as the fear and relief crash together in a wave so powerful, I can’t hold it back.

“I can’t lose you,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I can’t. I love you, Zane. I don’t know why. I guess no one does. But I love you, and I think I’m always going to. So you can’t go. You just can’t.”

He doesn’t respond, but that’s okay. I know he can’t hear me.

I lean my forehead against his cool hand, closing my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “For everything. Anything you want me to be sorry for. All of it. Just come back, please. Or I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself.”

The tears come faster now, my body trembling with the force of them. I cry for him, for myself, for our child. I cry for the future we might get or we might not, for the past we never quite got right. For all the false starts, all the moments it seemed real, and all the moments it didn’t.

And as I sit there, holding the hand of the father of my child, I realize something.

I’m not afraid anymore.

Not of loving him. Not of the future. Not of what comes next.

Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.

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