Chapter 190

Nicholas

“Detain her!” I snarled at the nearest warriors, who were tangled with their new mates in various states of undress beneath the trees. They scrambled to their feet at my command, eyes widening as they took in Isabella writhing on the ground beneath me, her glamour spell completely faded now. “Lock her up and don’t let her speak to anyone!”

I didn’t wait to see if they obeyed. I was already running, Jade at my heels, my heart hammering against my ribs with such force I thought it might burst clean out of my chest.

Not Kayla. Please, Goddess, not Kayla.

We burst through the back door, nearly taking it off its hinges, and raced up the stairs to our bedroom. The metallic scent of blood hit me before I even crossed the threshold—too much blood, far too much.

“What’s going on?” I barked, skidding to a halt in the room.

My heart stopped.

Noah and Marcus were standing on either side of the bed, their faces ashen. Emma sat in her wheelchair nearby, tears streaming down her cheeks. Grace was hovering by the window, wringing her hands.

And on the bed, surrounded by a growing stain of crimson on the white sheets, lay Kayla.

The doctor was bent over her, his movements frantic as he worked. “She’s hemorrhaging,” he muttered to himself. “Dammit, I need to…”

I moved to the bedside in two long strides. “What’s happening?” I demanded once more.

The doctor spared me a brief glance. There was blood smeared across his cheek, and his hands were completely covered.

“She’s miscarrying,” he said tersely. “And her body is shutting down. I’m doing everything I can, but…” He shook his head, reaching for another instrument from his bag.

I stood there, frozen, as he worked. Time seemed to stretch and distort, seconds feeling like hours, minutes like days. I watched the doctor administer drugs, attempt to stop the bleeding, check Kayla’s pulse with increasing desperation.

“Her heart rate’s dropping,” he announced grimly. “I need—”

But whatever he was about to say was cut short as the monitors he’d hastily attached to Kayla began to wail. A high-pitched, continuous tone that could only mean one thing.

“No!” the doctor shouted, immediately beginning chest compressions. “No, no, no!”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be happening. Kayla couldn’t be…

“Come on, Kayla,” the doctor urged, continuing his efforts. “Come on, breathe!”

But she didn’t. Her face remained still, peaceful almost, as if she had simply gone to sleep. The blood no longer flowed from between her legs; her heart no longer pumped it through her veins.

The doctor’s movements slowed, then stopped. He stepped back from the bed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “She’s gone.”

The words hit drove all the air from my lungs. In that moment, I felt something inside of me tear. Maybe it was the mate bond, or maybe it was my heart splitting in half.

The pain was indescribable. It wasn’t just emotional agony but a physical rending of flesh and spirit. My wolf howled in anguish, the sound tearing from my throat in a primal, guttural cry that shattered the windows, sending glass exploding outward into the night. The music and revelry outside stopped abruptly, replaced by shocked silence.

I surged forward, shoving the doctor aside, and gathered Kayla’s limp body into my arms. She was still warm, still soft, still smelled like Kayla, but the essential spark that made her who she was had gone.

“Kayla,” I choked out, pulling her against my chest. “Kayla, please. Please wake up.”

I knew she couldn’t hear me. Knew she was beyond hearing anything. But I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out, couldn’t stop myself from begging, pleading with her to come back to me.

“You can’t do this,” I said, my voice breaking as I shook her shoulders. Her head lolled back, but I caught it in my palm, refusing to let her fall. “You can’t leave me. Not like this.”

Across the room, Noah let out a roar of grief and anger, his fist punching through the wall with enough force to crack the plaster all the way to the ceiling. Marcus’s hands tore at his hair as he cursed violently. Emma shook in her wheelchair, silent tears streaming down her face. Grace simply stared, completely in shock. Jade collapsed to her knees and just… screamed.

But I barely registered any of it. My world had narrowed to the woman in my arms, to the absence where her heartbeat should have been.

This couldn’t be. I couldn’t lose her. If I lost her, I’d die too. I was already dying; I could feel it happening. With our mate bond severed, my own heart struggled to keep beating, my lungs to keep drawing breath. It was as if my body had forgotten how to function without her.

I shook her gently, then more forcefully. “Kayla! Kayla, wake up!”

Nothing.

As I held her, images flashed through my mind in rapid succession—every moment we’d shared, from the first time I saw her in that hotel bar, beautiful and out of place in her wedding dress and too-tall heels. I remembered how she’d placed her hands on my chest, how that brief touch had set my heart racing in a way no other woman had before.

I remembered her stubborn attitude, the way she’d stood up to me when no one else dared. The fiery outbursts that had both infuriated and captivated me. The time she’d slapped me across the face, cutting my lip, because I’d been an insufferable asshole.

The fierce look in her eyes when she told me, time and time again, exactly what she thought of me.

Each memory was a knife to my heart, twisting deeper with every breath I took—breaths she would never take again.

I felt my wolf surge forward, so close to the surface that I was just moments away from shifting. If I shifted now, in this state of utter despair and rage, I might never shift back. Wolves who lost their mates sometimes lost themselves to their animal side, becoming rogues, wild and dangerous and beyond reason. They ran until their hearts gave out or until another wolf put them down.

Right now, that fate seemed almost welcome. I didn’t want to live in a world without Kayla. Didn’t want to draw another conscious breath knowing she never would again.

I clutched Kayla tighter against me, burying my face in her hair, inhaling her scent one last time.

“Kayla,” I whispered brokenly against her ear. “Kayla, wake up…”

The room around me was chaos—sobbing, cursing, the sounds of things breaking as my friends raged.

This was wrong. All wrong. We were supposed to have decades together. We were supposed to raise our child, have more children, grow old watching them thrive. We were supposed to have a lifetime of moments—fights and reconciliations, laughter and tears, quiet mornings and passionate nights.

Now there would be nothing. Just emptiness. Just the hollow shell of the man I used to be, moving through the motions of life without actually living.

The shift was coming; I could feel it building under my skin, bones and muscles preparing to rearrange themselves. Part of me wanted to fight it, to hold onto my human form long enough to say a proper goodbye.

But the larger part welcomed it, craved the simpler pain of the animal, the release of conscious thought. A death of consciousness. My body trembled with the effort of holding back the shift, every cell screaming for release. I knew I had seconds, maybe less, before my wolf took over completely. And I welcomed it. Hoped for it.

“Kayla…” I breathed her name one last time, squeezing her limp body against mine, as if I could somehow transfer my life force into her, as if love alone could bring her back from wherever she had gone.

And then—so light I thought I might have imagined it—I felt something.

Fingers. Her fingers. Tangling in my hair.