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"What if I can't save him?" I whisper.

"Then we face that together. But you are not finished yet, little one."

I blink at him. My lips tremble. I take a breath.

"The graft," I say, wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands. My voice still shakes. I make myself keep talking. "If his body won't accept the graft, if the rejection continues, the prosthetic has to come out. And if it comes out—"

"Steel rod," Dr. Roger says quietly. "We have twenty-four hours at most. If he doesn't improve, we'll have to operate. We can't wait longer than that."

"Twenty-four hours," I repeat. I close my eyes. "Then we could lose everything. He'll never shift. He'll—" I stop. Open my eyes. And I swallow the name waiting behind my teeth. I hate what asking will cost Ivan. But I hate what not asking could cost Aleksej even more.

"Steven." Ivan recoils.

"We need to call him," I say. "He knows the graft as well as I do. Maybe better. If anyone can figure out what went wrong, he can." I swallow hard. "He needs to come here, Ivan. He helped develop the material. He needs to examine it himself, not through a screen. He needs to be in the room."

Ivan's tiger does not growl. He does not snarl. He goes very, very still. Anyone else would be terrified, but I face man and beast. I will do whatever I have to do to save his brother.

"Nyet," he says.

"Ivan—"

"Nyet. You are my mate. You wear my mark. You sleep in my bed. That man does not come to my compound. That man does not breathe your air. That man does not look at what is mine."

"He is the only person alive who can—"

"Then find another person."

"There is no other person." I step closer to him, my legs trembling. "You brought me here because I was the best. Well, he is the other half of the best. I cannot do this alone, Ivan. I am scared, and I need—"

I stop. My breath hitches. I press my fist to my belly because something hurts, not my body, something deeper, the bond between us vibrating with everything I'm feeling. But it's not a one-way street. The bond is processing his emotions, too.

"I need help," I say, barely a whisper. "I am asking you for help. Not for me. For him."

The room is silent. Vlad watches us, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Aleksej makes a sound from the bed, low, pain-drunk, his tiger growling underneath it even through the sedation.

Ivan looks at me. His mate. I'm asking him to invite the man who put a ring on my finger into his home.

"One room," he says. "He sees the patient. He works with you and Dr. Roger. He does not eat at my table. He does not sleep under my roof. And when the work is done, he leaves." His gaze locks on mine. "I am doing this for Aleksej, Cienna. Do not ask me to enjoy it. And make sure Steven understands whose mate you are. If he forgets, I will remind him in a way neither of you will like. Are we clear?"

I nod.

"Konstantin," he says, stalking away. "Make the call. Get him on a plane. I want him here by morning."

Before I leave, I make Dr. Roger promise to call me at the slightest change. He has the monitoring instructions. He knows what to watch for. I go to Aleksej's bedside one more time, but I can't bring myself to offer him a cheerful lie. I only squeeze his good hand, and he squeezes back.

Ivan takes me back to the cottage after. I protest, I should stay, I should monitor Aleksej, I should prep for the possibility of tomorrow's surgery, but my hands are shaking, and my eyes keep tearing up. He picks me up and carries me out of the infirmary while his family watches, and I curl my face into the crook of his neck and breathe in as much of him as I can.

He builds the fire back up, and I sit in my nest with my knees drawn up, one hand clamped over the other so they stop shaking, and the bond between us is racked with my grief. My guilt. My doubt. It bleeds into him. He takes all of it.

He strips our clothes and joins me in the nest. He kisses away my tears, laps them up on his tongue, which only makes the tears flow freer. The gentleness slays me. Not the way he claimed me, not the rutting, the growling, the teeth. This is different. His mouth finds every place I have been holding tension, and his hands refuse to let me retreat from him. He kisses my mouth until it softens under his. He kisses my throat, my collarbone, the mark he left there, his mark, his claim, proof that I am his and he is mine, and that is not changing no matter what happens in that infirmary tomorrow. He kisses my breasts, my ribs, the soft plane of my stomach, and he takes his time with every inch of me; he takes his time until every place he touches burns from his attention.

I cry a little when he enters me. Not from pain, from the other thing. My chest aches with everything he sends through our bond, his concern, his tenderness, the certainty that he is here, and he is not going anywhere. He moves inside me deeply, and I wrap around him like I am drowning.

"You are not a failure," he tells me, his mouth against my ear, his cock buried to the hilt, his heart cracked open and pouring into me. "You are brilliant and brave. Do you hear me, mate? I know what you can do. And I believe in you even when you do not believe in yourself. Especially then."

"Ivan—"

"Do you know how much I want you? Need you? I could eat you," he growls against my throat, and he means it, God help me, he means it with everything he is. Not cruelly. Not violently. The way a tiger loves, completely, consumingly, down to the bone. "I could eat you right down to your marrow. That's how much I want you inside me. All of you. Every piece."