Page 31

"His arm," Konstantin says. "It's swelling. Black streaks running up from his wrist to his elbow. Dr. Roger is saying something about rejection. He's saying the prosthetic is—"

He stops. His eyes go past Ivan to me, standing there in Ivan's too-big shirt with his bite mark dark on my neck, my straight bangs disheveled into tight curls from our showers, and whatever he was about to say dies.

He doesn't need to finish it. His eyes look away, unable to meet mine, and my stomach plummets.

I push past Ivan. Past Konstantin. His slippers are practically snowshoes on me. His shirt is hanging towards my knees, and I've pulled his jogging pants as high as I could so that they sit beneath my breasts. None of it matters. I am already running.

The smell hits me before I'm fully through the infirmary door. Not just antiseptic. Beneath the antiseptic sits the faint odor of rotting flesh. My cougar recoils, flattening her ears, and I have to force myself forward, because that smell is coming from my patient.

Aleksej is on the bed. Awake. His eyes are glassy and fevered, and his arm, oh God, his arm. The bandages have been cut away, and the skin around the graft site is swollen to twice its size, angry red streaked with black. His body is fighting. His shifter healing, the same healing that should be knitting his tissue together, is attacking it instead, treating my prosthetic like an invader.

I am at the bedside. Gloves on. Hands moving. I touch the graft site with careful fingers, hot, too hot, check his temperature, lift his eyelids to check his pupils, and I lock my jaw and keep my hands moving so the scream stays trapped behind my teeth.

"How long?" I ask Dr. Roger, keeping my voice steady despite the pulse hammering in my wrists.

"Two hours. Maybe three. The swelling started after his last sedation cycle. I tried reducing the dosage, thinking it might be an interaction, but—" Roger's owl eyes are huge behind his lenses, and his hands wave towards Aleksej's arm.

"It's not integrating." My voice is flat. I stare at the black streaks. Infection, rejection, something neither of us has seen before. What we call it hardly matters if I can't stop it. I look at Dr. Roger, waiting for him to tell me there's something I've missed, some obvious explanation for the swelling, for the way Aleksej's body is turning against the very thing we put inside it to save him.

"I've started an antibiotic treatment," he says quietly. "But it's getting worse."

"There must be something else." My voice comes out thin. I search his face. "Roger?"

He shakes his head.

And that's when my eyes fill. Because I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if it can be fixed. If I'm wrong, if I've made a terrible mistake, Aleksej may spend the rest of his life trapped in a body that can never become a tiger again. Ivan's brother. My mate's brother.

Through the bond, Ivan sends me soothing caresses, but instead of helping, they only deepen the guilt. "His body is rejecting it. The prosthetic. My prosthetic," I say in a half-whisper.

Ivan's family is here. Vlad by the door, arms crossed, stone-faced. Anya stands beside Aleksej's bed, one hand on her son's forehead, but her eyes are on me, and they aren't unkind, which only makes it worse. They are a mother's eyes. Konstantin and Georgy flank the walls like bookends made of muscle and worry. Every single one of them is looking at me.

Counting on me.

My gloves rest on Aleksej's arm, and no answer comes through my fingertips.

"I don't know why," I say, and my voice finally cracks. "This was a chance we knew we were taking. I'm so sorry. He was doing so well." I stop. Swallow. And in that moment, I stop being a doctor and become a woman terrified she has ruined another shifter's life. A tiger who trusted me to give him his animal back.

"Maybe I can't," I whisper, a broken sob catching in my throat. "Maybe I couldn't. Lizards, I made it work for lizards, but lizards regenerate. They regrow tails. They practically do the work for you. Maybe my big discovery wasn't so big. Maybe I just, maybe I got lucky with the small ones, and I had no business, I should never have—"

"Enough," Ivan says.

I don't hear him. The doubt, the shame, the crushing certainty that I have failed, that Aleksej is going to lose his arm or his life, and it will be my fault. "I knew I couldn't do it. I told you I couldn't do it, and now—"

"I said enough." He crosses the room, takes me by the shoulders, and turns me to face him. His eyes burn into mine, fierce and absolutely certain. I expect him to blame me. I almost want him to. It would be easier than watching him look at me like I can still fix this.

"I would kill any man who spoke about you the way you're speaking about yourself." His voice is low, deadly serious. "No one disparages my mate. Not my enemies. Not my brothers. Not even you. Do you understand?"

"Ivan, I—"

"You did not make the weapon that injured Aleksej. You did not fire it. You flew across the world under duress and gave my brother a chance he did not have. Whatever happens next, that does not change."

His grip loosens, but he doesn't let me look away. "You are a doctor. A brilliant one."

"You don't know that."

"I've seen your work, Cienna. I have seen you do what other doctors said could not be done. So if you need help, we get help. If you need something, I find it. But you will not stand in front of me and tell me my mate is not good enough. I will not hear it."

My lips tremble. I want to believe him. I want it so badly that it hurts. And through our bond, I feel what he's giving me. It's solid and unshakable. He isn't saying it to comfort me. Ivan believes every word. The man who trusts no one with his family's safety has put his faith in me, and even now, with Aleksej feverish behind us, he hasn't taken it back.