Chapter 79

DEREK

"You are?" the doctor asked, his voice tight with disbelief.

I nodded. "Yes. I’m ABX."

Everything after that happened fast—too fast to make sense of.

The doctor turned, snapping orders like gunfire. A nurse materialized from around the corner. Another tech arrived with a rolling cart and waved me down a hallway, their pace clipped, voices tight with urgency.

I didn’t look back.

Couldn’t.

Behind me, Elena was still frozen in place, staring like the floor had disappeared beneath her. Like I’d just ripped open a door she wasn’t ready to walk through. But this wasn’t about her. Or me. Or whatever sat between us like rubble.

It was about the boy bleeding out in the next room.

They led me into a side lab—too bright, too clean, too quiet. The scent of antiseptic hit me like a wall. Cabinets lined the room in neat rows, stocked with medical supplies. A monitor blinked green in the corner. I couldn’t focus on any of it.

The nurse—small, no-nonsense, already gloved—gestured to the chair in the middle of the room. I sat down and rolled up my sleeve with mechanical precision.

"Tourniquet coming on," she said, voice even. Her fingers worked fast, wrapping the band tight around my arm. The pressure made my pulse spike. I could feel it in my throat, my temples, the space behind my eyes.

"You good?" she asked, already swabbing my skin.

I gave a shallow nod.

A sting. The slide of the needle. The tube filled almost immediately—dark, spiraling red. I couldn’t look away from it.

Every drop that left my body felt heavy. Heavy with meaning. With fear.

This wasn’t just a blood donation. This was something else. Bigger. Sharper.

The nurse adjusted the bag, checked the flow. “Nice and steady,” she said. “You’ve got strong veins.”

I didn’t answer. My chest felt tight. Like I’d been holding my breath since the moment they’d taken Aiden from my arms.

I didn’t know him.

Not really.

But I’d carried him. Held him. Watched him bleed all over my clothes. Watched Elena fall apart in ways I’d never seen before.

That boy mattered.

I closed my eyes for a second and tried to slow my breathing. I pictured the blood doing what it needed to. Fueling him. Saving him. Buying time.

I opened my eyes again, locking them on the bag as it swelled, slow and steady, with the blood draining from my veins. I willed it to fill faster. Willed my body to move the process along like it knew what was at stake.

Be enough. Goddess, please let it be enough.

Each minute dragged like it had claws. I had no way of knowing how many more Aiden had. If any. And I was here—tethered to a chair, pumping blood like it was all I had to offer.

Maybe it was.

When the nurse finally returned, she was holding a cup of water in one hand and a protein bar in the other. Her smile was kind. Too kind. I couldn’t take it.

"You’re doing great," she said softly, setting the water within reach. "Once this bag’s full, we’ll get some fluids in you and let you rest. If you’re still up for it, we’ll draw again in an hour."

I shook my head. “Can’t you take it all now?” My voice came out rough, strained. “He needs it now.”

She reached out and patted my hand, gentle but firm. “So do you.”

I clenched my jaw. “But—”

“We can’t have you collapsing halfway through,” she said, matter-of-fact. “We do this the right way. One pint at a time. The last thing we need is another emergency. Or worse, someone who can’t finish donating at all.”

I looked down.

The bag was nearly full now, the tubing still pulsing faintly with the rhythm of my heartbeat. My chest tightened as I thought about what would happen if it wasn’t enough—if I was too slow, too late.

My blood might be rare, but it wasn’t special. It couldn’t turn back time. It couldn’t stop what had already happened.

But maybe—just maybe—it could give him one more shot.

She placed the items beside me on a tray and looked at me carefully. "It’s wonderful of you to do this for that boy."

My voice felt hoarse. "It’s nothing."

She tilted her head. "Are you related?"

“No,” I answered automatically.

She smiled, not unkindly. "Even more amazing, then.”

The nurse checked the tubing again. The bag was almost full.

"The Goddess was looking down on us today."

I frowned. "Why do you say that?"

It certainly didn’t feel like the Moon Goddess had been smiling on us. Not after the blood. The screaming. The knife at Aiden’s throat.

Not after holding him while his body went limp in my arms, his pulse weak and fading.

I could still feel it—warm and wet and terrifying—his life’s blood seeping out and onto my arms.

The nurse gave a soft chuckle, oblivious to the war inside my chest. "ABX is almost unheard of. It’s the rarest of rare. There are thousands of wolves who will go their whole lives without meeting someone with a matching type."

She glanced at the bag beside me, the tube still drawing slow, rhythmic pulses of blood from my arm.

"It’s why we don’t have a big store of it. Why we always need more," she went on.

My fingers dug into the armrest. A slow, creeping tightness began to build in my shoulders.

"How rare?" I asked. My voice was hoarse.

"One in ten thousand shifters," she said gently. "Maybe more. That’s why I asked if you were family. ABX isn’t just rare—it’s genetic. Passed down through bloodlines. If he has it, one of his parents had to."

The world stopped spinning.

The fluorescent lights overhead hummed like static in my ears. The blood flowing from my arm might as well have been a faucet left running—I couldn’t feel it anymore.

I could only feel the weight of her words.

Elena isn’t ABX.

She’d told the doctor that. I remembered it with perfect clarity—etched into my skull.

So how—

The nurse glanced at the monitor again. "The boy’s mother said his father wasn’t in the picture. We thought the worst. Without the father or another ABX family member around… That boy was as good as dead. But then you showed up."

She smiled, like the answer had fallen from the stars. "The odds have to be astronomical. Thank the Moon Goddess you were here. You know, you should think of becoming a regular donor. Donate every week, that’s what you should do. You know—”

But I wasn’t listening anymore.

I wasn’t breathing.

His father wasn’t in the picture, Elena had said. Of course he was. Logan and Elena were engaged for Goddess’s sake.

Logan.

The odds of Logan also being ABX were astronomical, the nurse had said. He couldn’t be.

And now, like a curtain being yanked back, it all clicked.

Aiden wasn’t his.

He was mine.

I stared straight ahead, but my vision tunneled. The monitor beeped beside me. The blood bag was full, almost too full. Good, I thought vaguely.

The only thing I could hear was the echo of my heartbeat and one single truth pounding through my skull:

He was mine.

Aiden was my son.

And I had almost lost him before I ever knew.

Something inside me snapped taut—some ancient instinct that came roaring to life.

He was mine.

And no one—not time, not fate, not the Moon Goddess herself—was going to take him away from me again.