Chapter 3

"No!"

I dropped to my knees before I could stop myself.

"Adrian, Ethan's lungs are already failing. The standard wing doesn't have the equipment he needs. Punish me if you want, but don't touch my brother."

He didn't look back.

The bedroom door slammed in my face.

Through it, I heard Vivian comforting him and Adrian saying, his voice tight with anger, "She always knows exactly which weakness to use against me."

That was when I finally understood. In Adrian's mind, every plea I made was another calculation.

I had knelt too many times.

The first had been for Ethan's treatment. Then for the contract. Later, I knelt for servants caught in Adrian's temper, friends he drove from the territory, and every time he threatened to use my brother's care to force me into obedience.

Each time, I told myself that as long as he still looked at me, there was something left to save.

This time, no footsteps paused behind the door.

I used the wall to stand and realized I was no longer waiting for him to turn around.

I ran from the estate with a fever burning through me. The storm had closed the mountain roads, and no ride service would enter pack territory, so I followed the highway toward the rehabilitation center on foot.

It was more than ten miles.

I fell three times.

By the time I reached the old wing, Ethan had already been moved. His oxygen line had come loose, alarms screamed from the monitor, and the staff stood at the end of the corridor laughing over coffee.

Cold air leaked through the windows. The room smelled of bleach and damp plaster.

I had personally selected my brother's original care team and required vitals every two hours. Now his chart hung crooked at the foot of the bed, the bottom edge wet from rain.

I pressed the call button. Nobody came.

For the first time, I truly hated Adrian.

Not because he had stopped loving me, but because he knew my brother couldn't fight back and still used him as leverage.

"Ethan."

I rushed to reconnect the line, my hands shaking too badly to grip the fitting. Ethan's skin had turned gray-blue from lack of oxygen.

I pressed my forehead to his hand and finally broke down.

My phone had three percent battery left.

Vivian answered Adrian's line.

"How do you like the standard wing?" she asked softly. "This is only the beginning."

Then her voice changed without warning, suddenly shaky and sweet.

"Elena, please don't say those things. I only want you and Adrian to work things out. I never tried to steal your position as Luna."

Adrian was standing beside her.

"Put him on. My brother's equipment was disconnected. He could die."

Adrian came on the line, his voice flat. "Are you threatening Vivian again?"

"No. Listen to me. The equipment in this wing-"

"What else do you have besides your brother and money to make me surrender?"

Something crashed on his end.

His breathing was uneven. The mate bond must have been feeding him my fever, my panic, and the way I couldn't get enough air. He felt it. He simply chose the version of events that supported what he'd believed for years.

Admitting I might be telling the truth would mean admitting how completely he'd been wrong.

"Adrian, please," I whispered. "Just this once."

Silence.

For those few seconds, I thought he remembered who we used to be.

He had once held me through an entire night when my kidnapping trauma returned. He had banned anyone at the estate from mentioning electrical restraints or underground interrogation rooms because the words alone made me shake.

Then he said, "You're going to undergo neural suppression therapy."

My entire body went cold.

Silverpine's private clinic used low-voltage stimulation to calm wolves who became dangerously unstable. Under normal rules, the current was minimal and a physician had to monitor every second.

But I had once been tied to an electric chair and tortured for two days by the rival pack. Since then, even the hum of exposed wiring could send me into a full trauma response.

"You know I can't handle that."

"I ordered the lowest setting." His breathing sounded rough. "You need to calm down and learn to stop hurting people."

"And if I refuse?"

The alarm beside my brother's bed kept shrieking.

For a long time, Adrian didn't answer. Pain pulsed through the mate mark, and I knew some of it belonged to him.

His voice shook when he finally said, "Then Ethan stays in the standard wing."

The last warmth inside me went out.

I closed my eyes. "All right."

The clinic staff arrived within minutes.

They strapped my wrists and ankles to the treatment table. The lead physician was Vivian's cousin, Dr. Nolan Hart.

After checking the machine, he murmured to a nurse, "The Alpha authorized the lowest level, but Miss Hart wants the lesson to stick."

My head snapped toward him. "What are you doing?"

No one answered.

Before the current began, Nolan leaned over me with a smile that never reached his eyes. "Don't worry, Luna. The longer you endure it, the longer your brother gets his premium equipment back."

The light above me burned white.

I remembered a blackout three years earlier, when lightning struck the estate and the generator noise triggered a panic attack. Adrian had kicked down a storage-room door and held me for four hours. He ordered every backup generator shut down, leaving the entire estate in darkness rather than make me listen to the electrical hum.

"Anything you're afraid of," he had promised, "I'll stand between you and it."

Now his order had put me on the table.

The machine began to whine.

I fought the restraints, and the mate mark burned in response to my terror.

Then electricity tore through my body.

My scream ripped down the hall.

My wolf slammed against the edge of my mind. Agony surged through the mate bond toward Adrian. Later, his assistant would say Adrian had doubled over at the gala, one hand over his chest, his face white.

Vivian asked what was wrong.

"Nothing," he said. "She's using the bond to make me feel guilty again."

He drank whiskey and forced the connection closed.

I called his name through the entire night.

He never heard me.