The sound of beeping aggravated me as I attempted to roll over, only to be stopped by a fiery burning sensation, my blood running cold as it trickled through my veins. I couldn't open my eyes, my body feeling frozen in ice. I was cold, and perhaps I was in ice?

Mumbling. There was mumbling around me, filling my ears and whirling around inside of my head, confusing me even more. I attempted to open my mouth- to speak- to say anything, but my lips remained in a line. It was as if I had no control over my body. Like I was living in some sort of lucid dream.

"Her heart rate has quickened," I managed to make out, and I tried to scrunch my eyes up as I concentrated on the other person's reply, but, their voice was further away and was much harder to make out. "I agree. I'll give her some morphine in case she wakes soon."

I was awake. Kind of.

Hearing the sound of footsteps, I noticed the dimming of the light from behind my eyelids, and I could tell that the people around me had made the room a little darker in anticipation of my awakening. Perhaps feeling frozen in your own body was normal after going through...trauma.

I couldn't quite remember what had happened though. It was all a blur. Christopher. He was there. I had basically killed him. I had shot a bullet through his chest with a human weapon that I had never heard of before.

A gun.

Then Finn had stabbed him.

Cole. He was injured.

I began to panic, and I longed for my body to respond, but it just wasn't listening. I was frightened that I was paralysed. Was I going to be stuck like this forever?

Suddenly, the sound of a door opening next to me caught my attention, and I felt a warm presence beside me. The person sighed, reaching for my hand, but the sparks I longed to feel didn't arrive. It wasn't Cole.

"Reya?"

I released a breath at the sound of Amara's voice, feeling hope at having somebody right beside me who I recognised. She sounded broken- hopeless. She didn't sound like the usual chirpy and enthusiastic Amara I had come to know and love.

"Did you just...?" she wondered, the question escaping her lips quietly as she released my hand, my fingers having twitched slightly. I heard shuffling around me, and before I knew it, two more voices were next to me. I didn't recognise them.

"Her body is preparing itself to awake," someone said. "It happens slowly though. The body doesn't want to shock itself."

Was my body really that clever? I wasn't convinced.

Trying my toes, I breathed out what felt like a sigh of relief as they twiddled, my cold skin gliding against itself and causing painful friction. Everybody gulped around me, and I took that as a sign that they had also spotted my movement.

"Raise the bed up slowly," someone ordered, their voice quiet. "It'll help get the blood to her head so she doesn't feel dizzy."

I felt my body tilt upwards slightly- more into a sitting position. My chest hurt, and so did my stomach, my abdominal muscles having to tense slightly to hold myself upright while the bed moved. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was on fire. Was I? I was burning. Surely not. I was going crazy.

Peeling my eyes open, I was shocked that my body was actually responding to my inner begging, my eyelids retracting so that I could stare up at the ceiling above me. Everything was blurry, and I blinked a few times before craning my neck to the side to see a frowning Amara, her thin and light coloured brows bulled together in worry.

"Reya?" questioned someone beside me, their mouth seemingly moving before the words reached my ears, the sound of their voice echoing inside of my head and giving me an instant pounding headache.

"Ow," I muttered, moving my hands to my ears to cover them. My senses were becoming overwhelmed.

"Do you remember what happened?" someone who I assumed was a doctor asked me, and I contemplated, biting down on my bottom lip with force as I removed my hands from my ears, nodding at them as a thank you for lowering their volume.

"I...shot someone," I mumbled, knowing how pathetic I sounded. That was the least of my worries, but I couldn't form into words how I was feeling. "I want to see Cole." He was all I cared about. I just wanted to know that he was okay. I had led the humans away from him so that he could get the help that he needed, and I was praying that the doctors had managed to extract the wolfsbane from him before any lasting damage was done.

"Reya," Amara sighed, running her hand through her auburn hair, glancing at the doctors for help, her eyes widening slightly.

"Alpha Cole isn't stable at the moment."

The words went in one ear and out the other, and I stared with my mouth hanging half-open at the doctors as if they had just spoken some foreign language to me. I didn't understand. What did they mean he wasn't stable? How could he not be stable? "He's an Alpha. He's a strong wolf," I managed to mutter out, and the doctors shook their heads.

"I'm afraid that doesn't matter much when wolfsbane is involved," they told me. "It entered his heart and wreaked habit inside of his body. He has a punctured lung that won't heal since it had been burned by the wolfsbane. We can't operate until all of the wolfsbane is out of his system or it will just undo all of the work."

"Can't you take it out somehow?" I asked, desperate.

The doctors shook their heads. "His body has already absorbed it. We managed to take the bullet out of him since it wasn't overly deep, but the wolfsbane has already entered his bloodstream."

"I'm seeing him," I muttered, pushing myself up off the bed and swinging my legs sideways so that my feet were planted on the floor. It hurt like a motherfucker, but I was too focused on the news that Cole was hurt. I didn't care how I was. I would be fine. He needed me.

"Reya, please," Amara tried to reason with me, moving over so she could take both of my hands. We weren't the touchy and mushy type, but it seemed like she was putting that aside for the time being, trying her best to get through to me that I wasn't okay. "You were shot by a hunter. It hit your side and you lost a lot of blood. You're going to make yourself so much worse by moving around."

"Amara," I breathed, my tone deathly serious. "I've just been told that my mate isn't stable. That is a nice way of telling me that they don't know if he's going to make it or not. I don't care what anybody says, but I'm going to visit him. Where is he?" I was crying by the end of my sentence, a single tear trickling down my cheek, wetting my thin hospital gown. I hadn't even noticed I was wearing it.

My mind was running a mile a minute. How was the baby? Had he or she survived me being shot? I was too afraid to ask. I didn't want to know the answer. Right now, I was going to focus on Cole.

Pushing myself up off the bed, nobody stopped me- which I was thankful for- and I held onto Amara tightly, testing my own weight. It felt strange to step forwards, and although my insides were burning and screaming at me to stop, I ignored them. "Please take me to his room," I asked with pleading eyes, causing everyone around me to sigh.

I imagined that I was at the pack hospital, but I hadn't confirmed it. I didn't recognise these doctors, but Amara was here. I just hoped that the humans hadn't discovered our pack and destroyed it. Perhaps I was at a makeshift hospital after ours had been burned to the ground.

Amara gazed at the doctors, silently asking for permission to take me out of the room, and she took their silence as a yes. They knew they couldn't stop me. I was technically their leader. Cole had always told me that if anything were to happen to him, I would technically be the next in charge.

I couldn't think about that though. Rowan was the person for the job- not me. I wasn't even a wolf, and I knew nobody would listen to me. I had no idea what I was doing, and I cursed myself for not researching the history of the wolves when I had the chance.

It was important for me to know more about them, and although I had tried, I hadn't prepared myself.

Exiting the room, Amara led me down the hallway. The flooring was the same colour as the usual hospital, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. It was quiet though- a little too quiet. The hospital was usually bustling, and I had imaged that the hallway would be filled with family and friends of the injured.

"We lost a quarter of our warriors in that fight, so there aren't many people here. Most of the injured passed away in the woods," Amara informed me, seeming to have read my expression. "Tirus is okay."

I nodded at the news, thanking the stars that our friend had survived. He wasn't technically a warrior, but since the threats, more and more people had been recruited and asked to begin training. We needed the numbers.

We reached a door at the end of the hallway, and I gulped as Amara slowly pushed it open for me, gesturing for me to head in first. She stopped in the doorway though, shaking her head. "I won't come in. I'll give you some alone time with him. They don't know which way he could go, but just know that they're doing their best. He's an Alpha and although he is one of the stronger wolves we have, it doesn't guarantee his life. I know he'll be fighting though."

I hated how upfront Amara was being with me, but I also knew that I wouldn't have liked for her to beat around the bush and tell me lies. I made my way into the room, my blood running cold and my skin turning pale. I was filled with anxiety at the thought of seeing Cole- not sure what kind of state he was going to be in. 

I was shaking as I opened my eyes, not realising I had clamped them shut. My breath became stuck in my throat as I gazed at my mate lying in his hospital cot, wires attached to him from every angle, the sound of the machine beeping from beside him filling the silence. My eyes instantly filled with tears, and I allowed them to fall as I shuffled over to him, taking his cold calloused hand.

It appeared he had been cleaned- there wasn't a splatter of blood in sight. He was also dressed in a hospital gown, but it seemed that they didn't have one large enough for him, and his muscles were bulging out of it. I pressed my head to his chest, gulping as I listened for his heart beat. I knew it was still going- the heart monitor giving it away, but I wanted to hear the thump of it for myself.

Cole didn't deserve this. He had given up so much for this pack. The humans were evil. Pure evil. Christopher had been kicked out and must have immediately run to another colony to share our secrets.

He was a bastard and I wished that the wolves had just disposed of him when they had the chance. It wasn't in their nature to do so though. They wanted to prove to the humans that they didn't kill unless it was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, they had failed to realise that killing Christopher was most definitely necessary.

"I'm sorry," I cried, stroking Cole's gaunt looking cheek tenderly, shaking my head as my bottom lip quivered. If I hadn't have been his mate, none of this would have happened. "You're going to be okay. Your body is going to fight off the wolfsbane. Your heart and lung are going to heal. You'll be fine. I promise."

I knew that he couldn't hear me, but I had to reassure him anyway- it was mostly for myself. I needed to hear these things. I refused to let him go. He wasn't going to die. The thought was unthinkable.

Just as I was about to open my mouth and pour my heart out even more to my unconscious mate, I heard yelling and crying from outside my door, causing my ears to perk up. Giving Cole one last longing look, I moved over to the door, flinging it open to reveal a hysteric looking Kassandra with her back against the wall, multiple nurses around her with wide eyes.

"We need you to calm down," one of the nurses told Kassandra, holding his hands out to show her that he wasn't going to harm her.

She looked frantic though, her entire body shaking and her pupils dilated as she continued to yell gibberish, tears pouring from her eyes and dripping down onto the floor.

"What's going on?" I asked with panic, taking a few tentative steps towards Kassandra, her hands shaking.

"You can't be in this wing," another nurse perked up, gazing at Kassandra with sympathy. "Please just come with us so we can escort you to the waiting room."

"I don't need to be taken to the waiting room!" yelled Kassandra. "I need to talk to Reya! We need a plan! We need to help him!"

"Okay, okay," I attempted to soothe her, gulping. "What are you talking about? Help who?"

Kassandra ran her hands through her hair as she glanced at me, cocking her head. "You don't know?"

I shook my head. "I just woke up."

She breathed out a sigh, her eyes widening at my response before she composed herself. She swallowed, her brows knitting together. "The humans- they took Finn."

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