Claudius’ perspective
With my eyes still closed, I can hear a familiar, soft and feminine voice calling my name. It was clear in her tone that she was crying.
“Alpha, you can't leave me! Wake up! Your pack needs you! I need you!” she said with an evident desperation in her voice. I felt her lightly tapping my cheeks. When she stopped, I felt a tear drop down from her eyes and fell straight onto my cheeks.
Eero! It was Eero's voice! She was the one holding me and sobbing.
I opened my eyes. Our eyes met, and yet, my forehead knotted immediately.
She looked pale, and her lips were quivering. Her hand felt cold too.
Just when I was about to reach for her cheeks after I called her name, she flashed a smile out of relief. I saw her eyes close in slow motion. The next moment, she fell to the ground.
“Eero!” I shouted at her. I got up from lying on her lap. It was my turn to have her head on my lap.
“W-What happened to her? Why does she look like this? She feels cold!” I asked and informed Caspian at the same time. All he could do was running his eyes at Eero.
“You fucking snap out of it and pull yourself together! Tell me! What the hell happened to her?” I asked him again, but it was as if the cat got his tongue and my beta lost his ability to speak.
“I was shot by a poisonous arrow. Eero said that I was dying. She healed me first.” Caspian stopped talking for a while. He kept glancing back and forth between me and Eero.
“And then she healed you. But before that, she was already very weak. She could no longer stand. She crawled towards you.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?!!!”
“I tried, but she just wouldn’t listen!” Beta spat at me frustrated.
He came closer to Eero and placed his finger on her neck, his eyes widening. I could feel my heart thumping loudly at his reaction.
“Her pulse is weak. She is barely alive, if not dead. If we can't do something about it, she'll die before the sunrise,” Caspian said in a small voice that triggered my anger even more.
I pulled him up by the neckline of his ripped shirt, leaving Eero lying on the fine white sand.
“Die? Why would she die before sunrise? Eero won't die! I won't let her die!” I growled at Caspian and then pushed him away from me. That made him take a two-step back.
I kneeled near her and wrapped her in my arm to keep her warm.
I looked around, and found that we were trapped in the middle of nowhere. It seemed that we were miles away from my territory. I couldn’t even mind link anyone from my pack to come for rescue.
With each hour passing by, Eero became paler and colder. At the back of my mind, the idea that Caspian was right about Eero would die before sunrise, was starting to climb its way inside my head, and it was scaring me.
I pressed my fingers on a particular spot on her neck to check her pulse. It became weaker than the last time I checked it.
“I need to do something, Caspian. You gotta help me! We cannot just let Eero die!”
Caspian stared at me with his eyes wide-opened. He looked up at the full moon in the sky and then back at me.
“You were still in a coma even after Eero did everything that she could to heal you…" Caspian trail off.
“Then she said something about sacrificing her life if that was what it takes to wake you up.”
“What?”
Now Caspian and I both looked up at the moon.
“What if the moon Goddess heard her pleas? Now that you're awake, could it be that the moon goddess did take Eero’s life away? Maybe that's why Eero is dying right now—”
“Shut up! If there is someone who'll die in this forsaken place, it's going to be you if you don't stop blabbering this nonsense."
I could see that Caspian had something to say, and yet, he chose not to further stretch my patience.
Looking around, I quickly sashayed to a dagger-shaped rock.
I could feel Caspian walking behind me. He stopped after seeing me snatch the sharp rock from the sand.
“What are you going to do?” He asked me with his eyes still pasted on the sharp rock in my hand.
“I need you to stay close to Eero. Look after her. Make sure that her condition won't get any worse.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Caspian quickly countered my words. That earned a glare from me.
“I need to have a word with the Moon Goddess,” I said to Caspian before making a deep cut on my palm. My blood soon dripped into the sea.
I closed my eyes and when I opened it, I was transported to the temple of the Moon Goddess.
The Goddess was sitting on the golden throne and her sparkly white robe was blinding me.
“Moon Goddess, I need your help.”
“Are you going to trade your life for hers now?” She asked.
“Eero really traded her life for mine?”
“Almost like that, Claudius.”
“I am not letting you take her life. I need her!”
“Of course you do. I am not taking her life. But to save her, you are the only one that would be of help.”
“How?”
“Mark her, Claudius.”