Bound to My Step-brother

Chapter Thirteen

Victor's POV

Draven arrived a little past noon, dressed in black with a long wool coat over a high-collared shirt. His silver hair was swept back without a strand out of place. The whole ensemble gave him the look of a man perpetually en route to a funeral.

His usual unhurried calm was intact, as though the past week hadn't happened at all.

As though my son wasn't lying two floors above us looking thinner and more hollowed out by the day instead of stronger.

"He's worse," I said, before Draven had even fully crossed the threshold. "Not better, Draven. Worse. I brought you into this house to heal him, and instead he's wasting away in front of me."

"Fever runs its course the way it runs its course, Victor," Draven said, unbothered, setting his bag down on the hall table with the same maddening precision he did everything. "The body fights what it fights. I can't force healing faster than the wound allows."

"That's not good enough." My voice came out sharper than I intended, months of exhaustion finally cracking through the composure I usually kept so carefully in place. "Look at him. He's lean in a way he wasn't a week ago. He can't hold food down. He coughs blood, Draven. That is not a fever running its natural course. That is a boy dying by inches in my own house while you tell me to be patient."

Draven's expression didn't change, but something in his pale ice-blue eyes sharpened thoughtfully.

"And whose fault is that, precisely?" I pressed, because the frustration had been building in me for days and I needed somewhere to put it. "You offered me a way to ease this. Weeks ago. You told me you could extract her from his mind, cut the thread that keeps this poison fed, and I hesitated. I asked for time to think." I dragged a hand down my face. "If I'd said yes then, would anything have changed?"

"The bond has been feeding the poison every hour it's gone unaddressed. Every day you spent deliberating was a day his body kept fighting a battle it didn't need to fight."

I felt something cold settle low in my chest. Not quite guilt, I told myself, simply the recognition of a costly delay, nothing more. Does bond feed poison? Well, I’d never had any reason to doubt Draven.

He’d been the pack’s mage for years. No one had ever questioned his knowledge.

We climbed the stairs together in silence, and the sound reached us before we'd even opened his door-a low, wretched groan, familiar now in the worst way, followed by the rustle of sheets as Ryker thrashed weakly against whatever nightmare had claimed him again.

The sight of him still stopped me short every time, no matter how many days I'd already had to grow used to it. My son had always been broad-shouldered, athletic, the kind of easy, confident build that made him look like he belonged wherever he stood. Now his cheekbones had sharpened, his skin gone the grey-white of old candle wax, dark hair damp and plastered flat against his forehead. His collarbone stood out too clearly beneath the collar of his sweat-soaked shirt, and the black threading up from the wound at his shoulder had crept another visible inch since I'd last looked. He didn't look like my son. He looked like the beginning of a memory I wasn't ready to have.

"Lila." Her name, broken and half-formed, dragged out of him in a voice that barely sounded like his own anymore. "Lila, don't... "

Roseline was already at his bedside when we entered, chestnut hair loose and unbrushed, dark circles carved beneath her eyes, still in the same cardigan she'd been wearing the day before, as though she hadn't left this room long enough to change. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hand wrapped around his, her face carved with a grief so raw it made me look away rather than witness it directly. She murmured something low and soothing, the kind of nonsense words a mother uses on a frightened child, and for a moment Ryker's thrashing eased slightly under the sound of her voice.

I felt an ugly twist of jealousy and disgust at the display of it. The open, unguarded devotion she offered so easily to a boy who wasn't even hers, while I stood in the doorway in my pressed shirt and trousers, keeping my own feelings locked down tight.

"He's calling for her constantly now," Roseline said quietly, not looking up. "Even while unconscious."

"I'm aware," I said, more clipped than I meant to sound.

I motioned Draven toward the corner of the room, away from the bed, my voice dropped low enough that Roseline wouldn't catch more than fragments of it over her own murmuring.

"Do it," I said.

Draven's eyebrows lifted, just slightly, his black coat shifting as he turned fully toward me. "You're certain."

"I am not going to watch my only son cough his own blood onto these sheets for one more week because I couldn't decide fast enough." My jaw was tight, my voice tighter. "Extract the memory of her and whatever thread in his mind keeps this fever fed on her absence. Cut it. I don't care what it costs him to forget the specifics, so long as it stops killing him."

Something in Draven's expression settled, satisfied in a way I chose not to examine too closely.

"Okay," he said simply. "I'll need tonight to prepare properly. It isn't a small working."

"Tonight, then," I said. "Not a day longer."

He nodded once and moved to gather his things, already calculating, already planning, and I told myself the tight, cold feeling still sitting in my chest was relief. Only relief. Nothing more complicated than a father finally choosing his son's survival over a bond that should never have existed in the first place.

Behind us, the bed creaked violently.

I turned in time to see Ryker's eyes snap open, glassy, fever-bright, but lucid in a way I hadn't seen from him in days. He shoved himself upright against every ounce of weakness clearly dragging at his limbs, his whole body trembling with the effort. The muscle he'd built over years of pack training all wasted away beneath skin.

"Ryker, lie back down," Roseline said, alarmed, reaching for his shoulders. "You're not strong enough... "

"I have to find her." His voice cracked, hoarse and desperate, but there was a clarity underneath it that hadn't been there in his delirium, something fierce and unshakeable pushing through the exhaustion. "Before it's too late."