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Dad, tell Luke! I almost called out, but the crowd was milling about, screaming, confused and angry. Luke had collapsed, and healers were surrounding him. It was too late.
We needed the Council Alpha to call an emergency meeting, now.
I scanned the crowd, finding Bradley. I had just taken a breath to call for his assistance when Margarette screamed. “The girl!”
Dad gripped my leg again, hard. “Brand. Her heart has stopped.”
I felt my own heart stop beating for a moment, and for the second time that night, I lost my balance. My mate was dying, and even though we hadn’t secured the bond, I felt her pain. Saw her darkness.
Dad turned me to face him, his eyes wide with shock.
“No!” I pulled myself away and dropped to my knees next to her, knowing there was nothing I could do.
What could be done was already happening. In the absence of a declared Alpha for the Southern pack, there was no Alpha of Southern.
Bradley leaped into the center of the ring, where the ground was stained with the Alpha’s blood. “Council, a quorum is present, and a meeting is called. I request that the powers of Interim Alpha of Southern be transferred to me as Head of the North American Council.”
Voices shouted out around the ring—Margarette, Dad, Dean. “Aye!”
Two voices murmured, “Nay.” Finnick’s father, and his Head Enforcer, Torran. But we had a majority.
“Thank the moon,” Margarette breathed.
Bradley moved over the still form of my mate as I watched, unable to move, even to blink. I felt rather than saw Finnick and Glen step next to me. My head swam. I would lose my perfect, fierce mate before I’d ever held her, kissed her.
She was the only one. The only voice I wanted to hear each morning, the amber eyes and mischief-filled smile I wanted to see reflected back in my children’s faces.
Please, Mother Moon, I prayed. Please. I will give anything.
I will give everything.
My life, my heart, my pride, my strength. Take it. It is yours. It is hers.
Bradley shouted, “Shift!” in a baritone voice that had a few of the surrounding shifters dropping to four paws in response.
My tiny, bloody mate lay motionless, though.
If she dies, I will too.
I didn’t know I’d said it out loud until I heard Glen and Finnick’s soft answers. “Yes.”
“Son?” Dad’s voice was raw.
“Yes,” I answered, all of my heart in that word. He understood. His hand reached out, crushing my arm, squeezing it like he could hold me to this world if she left.
Then Bradley leaned down, grasping Flor’s pale arms in his hands, and shouted once more, directly into her ear. “Shift!”
And my mate’s broken body began to move. Began to change.
I cried as I watched. It was the worst shift I’d ever seen, slow and bloody. Bradley chanted into her ear, each syllable infused with power, his command to keep going, keep changing, keep living, acting as a spiritual shock to her whole system.
I felt her agony in my own bones, reached out with my own spirit, and accepted it into me gladly. I felt blood begin to pour from my own nose and splatter the ground.
When Bradley had finished, when he’d forced her to change to her wolf, she lay motionless. I couldn’t tell what color she was. Her fur was so bloody, she shone red-black in the dim light.
“Why is she still unconscious?”
“She’s not healed enough,” Finnick gasped.
