KADE'S POV
The thought of Ivy seeing me like this - broken, screaming, barely human - filled me with a different kind of pain. She was so beautiful, so pure. She didn't deserve to witness the monster I became.
But I couldn't move. My body convulsed again, and I felt my muscles bulging and shifting under my skin.
My clothes stretched and tore as my frame expanded beyond its normal limits. The transformation was fighting me, and I was losing.
"Stop," I gasped to myself, but the word came out as more of a snarl.
Something inside me snapped. The rational part of my mind - the part that was still Kade - was being overwhelmed by something primal and violent. I needed to destroy something. Anything. The urge was so strong it was almost impossible to resist.
I lurched to my feet, my vision blurring with pain and rage. Ivy's door was right there, solid wood that looked so fragile compared to the strength coursing through my transformed body. Without thinking, I threw myself against it.
The wood splintered and gave way easily. Too easily. I stumbled into her chambers, and the beast inside me roared with satisfaction at the destruction.
Her room was peaceful, feminine, everything I wasn't in this moment.
The sight of it should have calmed me, but instead it only fueled the need to destroy. I grabbed the wooden chair by her desk and hurled it against the wall.
The sound of it shattering was somehow satisfying.
"No," I tried to tell myself, but my fist was already connecting with the stone wall.
Pain shot up my arm, but it was nothing compared to the fire in my veins. Chunks of rock fell to the floor, and I felt a savage pleasure at the damage.
I overturned her bed next, sending pillows and blankets flying. My breathing was heavy and animalistic. Everything looked red through my eyes, and I couldn't think clearly. The curse was winning.
The mirror. I turned toward her mirror, raising my fist to destroy that too. But then I heard her voice.
"Kade!"
I spun around, my fist still raised, and there she was. Ivy. Beautiful, fragile Ivy, rushing toward me with determination in her eyes instead of the fear I expected to see.
My fist was flying toward her face before I could stop it. Time seemed to slow down as I watched my knuckles heading straight for her delicate features.
She was going to get hurt because of me. Because I couldn't control myself.
But somehow, impossibly, I managed to stop. My fist froze in the air, just inches from her face. The effort of stopping the blow sent shockwaves through my entire body, but I did it. I stopped.
"Ivy?" My voice came out rough and broken, like I'd been screaming for hours. Which I probably had been.
"It's me," she said softly, and her voice was like cool water on my burning soul. "It's okay. I'm here."
Looking at her face, seeing the concern in her eyes instead of disgust or terror, something shifted inside me.
The red haze began to clear, and I could think more clearly. She wasn't afraid of me. Even seeing me like this - violent, barely human - she wasn't running away.
"I... I could have hurt you," I whispered, finally lowering my fist. The reality of what had almost happened hit me like a physical blow.
"But you didn't," she replied, taking a step closer instead of backing away. "You stopped."
My whole body was shaking now, but it was different from the violent convulsions of the transformation. This was exhaustion mixed with the terror of what I might have done to her.
"The pain," I gasped, trying to explain what she had just witnessed. "It's too much. I can't... I can't think straight when it happens."
"Let me help you," she said, reaching out her hand toward me.
"No," I stepped back instinctively. She had no idea what she was offering. "You don't understand. I'm dangerous. I could kill you without meaning to."
"You won't," she said with such firm conviction that it almost made me believe her. "I trust you."
Before I could protest again, she placed her hand on my chest. Her palm was cool against my overheated skin, and the simple touch sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the curse.
"Ivy, what are you doing?"
"Helping you," she whispered.
Then I felt it. A warmth that was completely different from the burning fire of the curse. This warmth was gentle, soothing, like sunlight after a storm. It flowed from her hand into my chest and began to spread through my body.
The pain that had been tearing me apart started to lessen. For the first time in hours, I could take a full breath without it feeling like my lungs were on fire.
"I can feel it," she murmured, and there was something in her voice that made me think she was experiencing my pain somehow. "The curse. It's like poison in your blood."
"Can you..." I started to ask if she could heal me, but the words stuck in my throat. I was afraid to hope.
"I'm trying," she said, and I felt more of that soothing warmth flow into me.
It was working. The poisonous fire in my veins was being replaced by her healing energy.
My breathing became regular again, and the violent trembling in my muscles finally stopped. Even the burning heat that always accompanied the transformation began to cool.
"It's working," I breathed, hardly daring to believe it. "The pain... it's going away."
She kept her hand on my chest until every trace of the curse's agony had faded.
When she finally opened her eyes and looked at me, I felt something shift in my chest that had nothing to do with healing magic.
"How do you feel?" she asked, stepping back to give me space.
"Better," I said, though the word felt inadequate. "Much better."
And she had saved me again, not just from the physical pain, but from the madness that always came with it. She had pulled me back from the edge when I was about to lose myself completely.
"I just helped with the pain," she replied, and I could see her cheeks flush slightly under my gaze.
"No," I said, taking a step toward her. I needed her to understand what she had done for me. "You did more than that. You stopped me from going completely insane."
Looking at her standing there in her destroyed room, having just witnessed me at my absolute worst, I was overwhelmed by what I felt for her. She was brave and kind and powerful in ways she probably didn't even realize.
I reached out and pulled her toward me, cupping her face gently in my hands. Her skin was so soft, and she was looking at me with those incredible eyes that seemed to see straight through to my soul.
"Ivy," I whispered her name, and it felt like a prayer.
Then I was kissing her, pouring everything I couldn't say into that moment. The kiss was gentle but desperate, trying to tell her how grateful I was, how much she meant to me, how she had just saved me in every way a person could be saved.
She melted into me, her hands finding my shoulders, and for a moment the world disappeared. There was no curse, no pain, no fear of what I might become.
There was just her.