THE MATE I LEFT BEHIND

CHAPTER SIX

Kaelan's POV

I surfaced slowly to Selene's voice arguing down the hall.

"Run the toxin panel again on a shortened cycle. This compound isn't the one from three days ago. It's evolved."

"Dr. Voss, with respect, you're not even fully credentialed in this facility."

"I delivered your Alpha's mating bond diagnosis five years before either of you had a license. Move."

I opened my eyes to the sight of her standing over a nurse with the exact look she used to wear cornering me into eating vegetables.

"You're still bossy," I managed.

She spun so fast she nearly toppled the IV pole.

"You're awake.

She stared me.

You absolute i***t. Why would you take a needle meant for me?"

"Would you rather I'd let him hit you instead, and watched?"

"I'd rather neither of us got poisoned tonight."

"Don't," she said quietly when I tried to joke. "I thought you were dying in my arms twenty minutes ago. I've already buried you once in front of this whole valley.

I'm not doing it again for real."

That stripped the last of the anger out of me. I reached for her hand instead of the argument I'd been building. She let me take it.

"Marcus," I said. "Did Ivy…"

"Got away."

Ivy's voice from the doorway, tight with fury and guilt.

"Car waiting at the east gate, engine running. Whoever's funding him planned the exit before he ever swung that needle."

Her eyes moved between us.

"The whole pack will know she's alive by morning."

"Good," Selene said.

"Five years of disappearing didn't stop a single thing that mattered. I'd rather fight than run again."

Ivy studied her for a long moment, arms still crossed, some of the fury from earlier finally settling into something quieter, something closer to grudging respect than forgiveness, but a start all the same.

Whitfield knocked and stepped in, tablet in hand, face grim.

"Toxin panel's back. There's a secondary agent. It's not just suppressing the shift response, Kaelan. It's designed to strip it. Permanently. If the dose is sustained."

The room went very quiet.

Even the storm outside seemed to hold its breath, rain drumming steady against the glass like it was waiting for someone to speak first.

"How permanent," I said finally.

"I don't know yet," Selene said.

And the honesty in her voice was worse than any lie would have been.

"I've never seen a compound do this before tonight.” I don't have a timeline. I don't have an antidote.”

She looked at me.

“What I have is a sample and about four hours before the next dose would have finished the job, if Marcus had gotten the two weeks he was counting on."

"They weren't trying to kill me," I said slowly.

"They wanted me alive.”

My jaw tightened.

“Powerless. Easy to control."

"Marcus went for Selene tonight because she was the actual threat," Whitfield said. "The mate who might notice what the compound was doing before it finished."

"You saved my life tonight,"

I looked at selene

"Twice."

"Don't make this noble," she said. "I came because I was too much of a coward to stay away."

"It's exactly the same as heroism," Ivy said flatly.

His arms remained crossed.

"You just don't want to admit it, because admitting it means admitting you're allowed to forgive yourself a little.”

She glanced at Selene.

“Clearly that's a bridge too far tonight."

Selene opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to decide it wasn't worth the energy, and closed it again.

Something in her shoulders dropped half an inch, some small fraction of five years of self-punishment loosening its grip.

"Selene.”

I tightened my hold on her

“The proof from five years ago. We need it. Tonight, before Marcus warns whoever he answers to."

Her face changed.

Fear.

Sharp and Sudden.

"I hid it somewhere warded to my blood. Nobody else can retrieve it."

"Where."

It wasn't really a question anymore. It was closer to a demand, or a plea, or both tangled together in the same breath, some instinct older than reason already guessing at the answer before she said it.

Thunder rolled low over the mountains, rattling the glass.

Somewhere out in that valley, some instinct in my blood already knew Marcus was telling his employer the ghost had come back, and that she remembered everything.

"The old mating cabin," she said.

"Past the northern ridge. The one your father built us before the ceremony.”

Her voice softened.

“I buried it under the floorboards the night before I ran. Right beneath where our bed was going to go."

Ivy made a small, choked sound in the doorway.

Whitfield cleared his throat near the door.

"I'll pull together a discreet security detail. If Marcus already reported in, whoever he answers to may already have someone watching that ridge."

"Then we move tonight," I said, already reaching for my boots despite the fresh spike of pain along my ribs.

"You are not walking into the mountains in your condition," Selene said.

"Then I go," she said, before I could argue further. "It's warded to my blood regardless. And Ivy comes, because I'm not walking into those woods alone with an assassin's employer possibly already watching that ridge."

At the door, she paused, hand braced against the frame, and looked back at me the way she used to when we were eighteen and certain nothing could ever separate us.

"If I don't make it back down," she said quietly, "I need you to know I don't regret any of it. Not the running. Not the lying. I would do it again if it meant you kept breathing."

"Come back down that mountain," I said, "and we'll figure out the rest. I'm not in any hurry to lose you a second time, Selene. Not to a river, not to a ridge trail, and not to five more years of silence."

Something in her face cracked open at that, just slightly, just enough to see the girl underneath the surgeon, underneath the fugitive, underneath five years of careful, exhausting armor.

She and Ivy disappeared through the side entrance into a night thick with ozone and coming rain, two shapes swallowed by the treeline while I lay useless in a hospital bed, poison still dragging cold through veins that refused to cooperate.

Thunder cracked again.

Closer this time.

And somewhere past the northern ridge, in a cabin none of us had entered in five years, the truth waited under a floor built for a wedding night that never happened.

Marcus already had a head start.