[POV: Atlas]
I surfaced from the dark like a drowning man clawing toward air, and the first thing I registered was cold. Deep, marrow-deep, spreading through my veins in slow, deliberate pulses.
My fingers were numb. My chest felt compressed, as though someone had filled my lungs with wet sand while I slept.
I opened my eyes. The ceiling of Draven's bedroom swam above me, candlelight wavering at the edges of my vision.
"Hyde?" I whispered into the silence of my own skull.
Nothing. A vast, echoing emptiness where my wolf's presence should have been. He was still there… I could sense him buried deep beneath layers of exhaustion and something darker.
"Atlas." Ava's voice cut through the fog.
She was sitting in the chair beside the bed, jaw set in the way it always was when she was trying very hard not to look scared. "Don't move yet. You've been out for almost twelve hours."
My arms buckled against the sheets, and I would have collapsed if Ava hadn't caught my shoulder and eased me back against the pillows.
"What did I just say?" she snapped, though her hand was gentle. "Lie still. Mia's on her way."
"What happened? The border—"
"They hit us at dawn. Crimson Fang held."
She ticked them off with deliberate precision, reading the panic in my eyes before I could voice it. "Levi took a bad wound to his shoulder protecting one of the younger fighters, but Mia patched him up. He's resting."
I closed my eyes. The relief lasted half a second before the cold surged again, crawling up my spine like frost spreading across glass.
My hand went instinctively to my ribs—to the spot where Evan had bitten me—and even through the fabric of my shirt I could feel it: a wrongness pulsing beneath the skin, rhythmic, patient.
The door opened and Mia entered, carrying a leather satchel that clinked with glass vials. Her gnarled fingers reached for my wrist to check my pulse, and I read the tension in the lines around her mouth before she spoke.
"Tell me what's happening to me," I said. "The truth, Mia."
She released my wrist and sat on the edge of the bed, meeting mine with a steadiness that told me she'd already decided not to soften this.
"The curse Evan planted in your blood is a parasitic sigil, designed to feed on your connection to the moon—specifically, on the silver wolf bloodline that runs through your veins."
She paused, choosing her next words with the care of someone handling something fragile and explosive.
"Your power, Atlas—the crescent mark, the shadow manipulation—the curse is consuming it, turning your own strength into fuel for its spread."
"How long do I have?"
"The lunar eclipse falls in less than three weeks. When the moon's light disappears entirely, even for those few hours, the curse will sever your bond with it permanently. Your wolf will die first. Then your body will follow."
I felt the cold pulse again, stronger this time, and understood that the shiver running through my muscles was the thing living inside me, feeding on everything I'd fought to become.
"Can you slow it down?" Ava asked from her chair, her voice sharp-edged with the kind of fury she wore when she had nowhere to direct it.
"I've applied suppressive poultices to the sigil site, but it's like pressing a cloth over a wound that bleeds from the inside," Mia admitted.
"I can buy him days at most, not weeks. The magic is older than anything in my training. Breaking it requires knowledge I don't possess."
"Then who does?" Ava demanded.
"Elder Axel's studied the ancient rites longer than anyone alive. He believes there's a place—the Hollow Stones—a sacred site tied to the silver wolf bloodline. If the old texts are accurate, the rituals performed there could sever a curse at its source."
The Hollow Stones. Ancient and apparently my only chance at survival.
Mia left after applying a fresh poultice to my ribs: birch ash and something bitter pressed into the skin above the sigil. The cold receded slightly, but it was a temporary mercy. I could feel the curse coiled beneath it, waiting.
"I need to get up," I told Ava.
"You need to rest."
"I've been doing that for twelve hours and I'm worse than when I started." I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, planting my bare feet on the hardwood.
The cold shot up through my soles and my vision went white at the edges. I gripped the bedframe and breathed through it.
"Atlas, I swear to the goddess—"
I stood. My legs held for exactly four seconds before the strength drained from them like water through a cracked vessel.
I went down hard, knees cracking against the floor, and the impact sent a shockwave of nausea rolling through my stomach.
Ava was beside me before I finished falling, hauling me upright with a strength that belied her lean frame. "You stubborn, reckless, impossible—"
"I know," I gasped, letting her guide me back onto the bed.
My hands were shaking. My crescent mark throbbed weakly at my brow, its light guttering with every heartbeat.
She sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. Then she turned to me with eyes that burned like coals in a dying fire.
"You are not allowed to give up," she said. "I didn't watch you crawl out of the wreckage of Midnight Crest, survive the trials, earn your place in this pack, and choose the most terrifying Alpha in the Northern territories as your mate just to watch you lie down and let some blood magic erase you. Do you understand me?"
"Ava—"
"Do you understand me, Atlas?"
I looked at her—fierce, unbreakable, furious on my behalf—and something in my chest cracked open. It wasn't despair. It was the stubborn, irrational refusal to accept the ending someone else had written for me.
"I understand," I said quietly.
She nodded once, satisfied, and squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
That was when I heard the voices through the door. Draven and Aaron, their tones low but heated, the kind of argument that happened between men who disagreed too deeply to stay silent.
"Elder Axel confirmed it: the Hollow Stones are three days' journey north through unclaimed territory," Aaron said. "But sending a team now, with Damian's army probing our borders every twelve hours—"
"I'm not asking for a battalion," Draven cut in, his voice rough with exhaustion and something rawer beneath it. "Four wolves, five at most. A small party moves faster and draws less attention."
"And if Damian launches the real assault while you're gone? Who commands the defense?"
"You do. That's why you're my Beta."
"Draven, listen to me. If Atlas doesn't survive the journey in his condition, you'll have marched into the wilderness for nothing and left your pack exposed. We need to consider the possibility that—"
"Finish that sentence and I'll break your jaw, Aaron."
Silence. Heavy, charged, thick enough to taste through the door.
I looked at Ava as she looked at me. Something passed between us, a shared understanding of what had to happen next.
I pulled myself upright, bracing my weight against the headboard, and raised my voice loud enough to carry through the door.
"Draven, come in here."
The arguing stopped, and the door opened. Draven filled the frame: blood-streaked, dark circles carved beneath his eyes, every line of his body rigid with exhaustion. Behind him, Aaron hovered with his arms crossed.
I met Draven's gaze and held it. My body was trembling, my mark flickering, and Hyde was buried so deep I could barely feel him.
But my voice came out steady.
"I heard everything." I straightened my spine against the headboard, ignoring the cold that clawed at my ribs. "I'm going, Draven. Whether you approve or not."