Chapter 1

The healer gave me exactly seven days to live. My mate, Lucian, was spending them on a private island with his ex-fiancée.

I asked him over text if he would mourn me when I was gone. He replied with an automated transfer of $888.

Three years. Three years of being his liar, his manipulator, his gold-digger. Three years of cold disgust every time I needed my Alpha.

This time, I just left my terminal prognosis behind. I didn't touch a single cent.

I had spent a brutal year fighting to stay alive. Now, I didn't have to prove I wanted to.

---

At the end of my final treatment, the healer withdrew the IV needle from my arm. His assistant hurried over with a square of gauze.

"Hold still, Nora."

I let her press it to my skin.

"How much time do I have left?"

The healer looked down at my chart. After a long silence, he wrote a prescription for the pain and told me where to collect it.

I had almost reached the dispensary when I remembered my treatment papers. On my way back, I heard the assistant speaking through the open door.

"Her wolf's already fading. Isn't there anything else we can do?"

"We can keep her comfortable."

"How long?"

"At most, one week."

I stopped outside the room.

One week. I had counted appointments for a year, always hoping the next treatment would help. Now there would be no next appointment.

"Her mother died in this room," the healer said. "The same disease."

The assistant said nothing.

"She hasn't missed a treatment. Not one. Other patients have their mates beside them at night. When the pain gets bad, she has whoever happens to be on duty."

"What about her mate?"

"He's never come. She called him once while I was with her. A woman picked up."

Lucian was the pack's Alpha. I was his Luna. Neither title had brought him to my bedside.

I waited until the voices stopped, then collected my papers without asking any more questions.

My mother had tried to comfort me when she received her diagnosis.

"Don't look so frightened, sweetheart. I can handle this."

She had smiled when she said it. Near the end, she could no longer manage that, but she still squeezed my hand whenever I cried.

I was holding her when her wolf gave out.

Three years later, I knew what she had hidden from me.

The pain. The fear. The effort it took to tell someone you loved that everything would be all right.

I had tried telling Lucian the truth from the beginning.

On the night of our mating ceremony, silver poisoning entered my body. Before we could complete the marking, a healer told me I needed a witch to flush it out. The treatment would cost three hundred thousand dollars.

I went to Lucian still wearing my ceremonial dress.

He stared at me as though I'd slapped him.

"Is that all I am to you, Nora? A wallet?"

"What? No. Lucian, I—"

"My parents warned me. My friends warned me. Even Camille said you were an outsider looking for a rich mate. I defended you to every one of them."

Camille had grown up with him since childhood. They had been engaged before he chose me. Whatever she told him about me, he had never stopped trusting her.

"My father broke three of my ribs when I told him I'd chosen you," he said. "They were carrying me into the clinic, and I was still telling him I would make you my mate."

I remembered those bruises. I had sat beside him, afraid to touch anywhere that might hurt.

Now he wouldn't let me take his hand.

"There was silver in the ceremonial wine," I said. "The healer said a witch could remove it, but we have to—"

"Tonight?" He yanked his tie loose. "You couldn't even wait until tomorrow to show me what you really wanted?"

Tears blurred his face.

"I'll pay you back. I swear. Or I'll find the money somewhere else. Please, just listen to me."

He pulled a card from his wallet and threw it at me. Its edge struck my collarbone before it fell to the floor.

"There's more than enough on that. Isn't this what you married me for?"

I bent to pick it up.

"And don't tell me another story about silver or your dying wolf. Take the money and stop pretending."

He left before I could answer.

I sat in the living room until four in the morning. Each time a car passed, I looked toward the door.

Camille brought him home. He was too drunk to walk without her, his arm slung around her shoulders. Under the entryway light, I saw a red mark on his neck that looked like a kiss.

She gave me a small, apologetic smile.

"He needed someone to take his anger out on. Don't worry about him now, Nora. You can go to bed."

The ceremony had bound us. But the silver kept him from finishing the marking, and without the marking, he couldn't feel a thing I felt.

We had no bond to speak through — no way for me to make him understand what was happening inside me.

For the next three years, all I had were words.

He had already told me not to use them.