Time flies by when you’re waiting to find out how soon you were going to die. Nicolae was avoiding me, and I couldn’t tell if it was because we’d fucked and that was just what he did, or because he didn’t know what to say. Comforting wasn’t his schtick, and being consoled wasn’t mine.

Nicolae was like the tide. Every time he drew closer, I knew it was only a matter of time before he drifted even further away. He couldn’t help it. It was just who he was. I wasn’t going to be the one who changed him, and I didn’t want to.

Whatever this was, I’d already promised myself that I wouldn’t ruin it by wishing it was something it wasn’t. That didn’t mean I always succeeded. Every night since that one, we’d slept in our separate rooms, but I’d still roll over expecting him to be there. It was strange how someone who’d been your constant companion for sixteen years could become a distant memory in one, and how someone you barely knew could imprint themselves so deep in you that their presence became a pillar in a matter of weeks.

Sunday morning, I got up and got dressed. I didn’t hear Nicolae, but he was always gone by that time of day, so I didn’t bother to look for him. I went down the hall and got Andrei ready instead. I’d realized that bribing him with food was the only way to get him to hold human form for more than a few minutes, and he would only tolerate his damn pajamas, but at least we had progressed to the point where he was dressed and sitting at a table and holding a fork. He was holding it grudgingly and grasping it like a knife he planned to stab someone with, but he was holding it nonetheless. I felt an absurd sense of accomplishment as I watched him jab his waffles with it, snarling before he took a bite.

It occurred to me as we went about our breakfast routine that it was cruel to let him get attached to me when I might not be there for the little scamp much longer. I’d already made arrangements for him to stay in the pack daycare while I went to my doctor’s appointment. The teacher wasn’t happy about it, but I assured her that we’d worked past devouring markers and toys and hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a lie. It would be good for him to form other connections.

Once we were done eating, I took Andrei downstairs and he was perfectly happy until we reached the daycare room and he heard the other kids laughing and playing. He put on the brakes and clung tighter to my hand.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “You’re just going to be here for a little while until I get back from the doctor.”

He shook his head violently, blond curls spilling out everywhere. With a vocalization that sounded an awful lot like a “no,” he buried his face in my sweater.

I knelt down to be at eye level with him. “I know you don’t like all the noise, but you’re going to make friends. You’d like that, wouldn’t ya?”

He scowled at me as the teacher came over. “Hello, Andrei,” she said pleasantly. “Are you coming to join us?”

He bared his teeth at her.

“Sorry. Just give us a second,” I pleaded. Once she’d gone back to the other children, I faced Andrei and looked him in the eye. “Listen, kid. I know you understand more than everyone thinks. Now, I’m gonna tell you what I told Ellie on her first day of school. Everything worth doing starts out scary. You’re gonna make friends and play games and do crafts and eat snacks, and you’re gonna have so much fun you won’t even wanna leave, but you’ve gotta take that first step. And I’m going to be right down the hall.”

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he seemed to be listening and thinking about what I’d said. “Come back?” he finally whispered in his soft, raspy voice.

My heart ached. “Yeah,” I choked out, knowing there was probably going to come a day soon when the answer would be different. “Of course I’m coming back. And soon.”

He grunted in acknowledgment and hesitated at the door a second before carefully putting his foot over the threshold. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him inch into the room. A little girl came over immediately and whacked him on the arm with a cry of, “Tag, you’re it!”

Andrei blinked at her in shock before he took off after her with a roar. The other kids shrieked and laughed, and I watched just to make sure he wasn’t going to go completely feral when he caught one. When I was satisfied that he was going to be alright, I closed the door and turned only to find Nicolae watching me from the hall. “How long have you been there?”

“A while,” he answered, slipping his hand into his pocket. “I’ve never heard him talk before.”

“Neither have I,” I admitted.

“You’re good with people,” he murmured, walking toward me. “Even Mason is starting to hate you less.”

“That’s not much of an endorsement.”

“Oh, it is. Mason still hates me,” he snorted. “It’s rare for the pack to accept an outsider. Rarer still for them to accept a human.”

“Guess it’s just that southern charm,” I teased. “I was starting to think you’d moved out.”

Guilt flickered over his expression. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I needed time to think.”

“You don’t need to apologize. You don’t owe me anything.”

He seemed to want to say something, but I decided to spare us both. “I should get going, I’m due across the hall in five minutes.”

“Jack, wait,” he said, taking my wrist. It wasn’t the first time, but as firm as his grasp was, it was gentle. When I met his eyes, they were full of desperation. “I want to be with you.”

I stared at him, afraid of how my heart shaped itself around those words even though my brain knew I’d heard them the wrong way. “I guess you can come if you want.”

“No. I mean, yes,” he said, frowning like he was as confused as I was by his momentary lapse in composure. “But that’s not what I was trying to say.”

“What are you trying to say?” I asked, as afraid of his answer as I was to my reaction to it.

“I want to be with you. Not just now, but always. Not just as my mate in name only, or the man I fuck because I can’t convince myself to stay away.” His voice was so raw and full of passion that it might have sounded like anger, if I didn’t know the subtle shades of him so well. “Whatever those X-rays show, I want to care for you and call you mine for as long as we have. As long as you’ll allow me.”

Call you mine… Those words were too good to be true. He was speaking too plainly for me to doubt that he’d said them, which meant I had to be dreaming. The constant pain in my chest said otherwise. “Nicolae… I don’t know what to say to that.”

He pulled something out of his jacket and I began to reconsider the possibility that I was dreaming, or hallucinating, when he got down on one knee. A few wolves who were walking across the corridor gave us some strange glances, but they didn’t say a word. “Say ‘yes.’ And remember, I can make you.” He said it in a wry tone, but the look in his eyes made me doubt he was entirely joking.

“You’re fucking serious,” I muttered in disbelief, my face burning with a combination of humiliation and infatuation. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

“Absolutely. I’ve had three days to trace back my steps and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no reclaiming it, so I may as well dedicate myself to insanity.” He grabbed my hand and pulled the ring out of the box. I was torn between a racing heart and a dead one as he put the ring on my finger alongside the band I still wore from my union with Francesca. When he looked up at me, I just quit. I quit trying to pretend like my entire world didn’t revolve around this man, I quit trying to pretend like I hadn’t fallen in love with him, I quit trying to pretend like there was any part of me left that was strong or decent enough to resist that this thing we’d both been trying to fight was going to drag us to hell.

“It is ironic, is it not?” he asked, brushing his thumb over the stacked rings on my left hand. “When we met, the sight of you wearing this band enraged me. I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing her with you. Now I cannot stand that you were hers. I’m every bit the savage monster you saw me for that day on the side of the road, and I must possess every part of you, past and present.”

I couldn’t breathe. Not in an “I’m dying” kind of way, but in an “I think I’m experiencing two-decades-delayed alcohol-induced brain damage because this can’t actually be happening” way.

“Jack?” His tone was impatient, because even down on one knee, he was still an entitled, egotistical fuck who thought he shouldn’t have to wait for anyone. And goddammit, he didn’t.

“Just to clarify. You’re asking me to marry you?”

He frowned. “What else would I be doing, you backwoods brat?”

“Would you just stand up?” I muttered, looking around. We were still being watched. Now there was a fucking crowd.

“Say ‘yes.’”

Now he was using humiliation rather than compulsion to force my hand. Prick. “Yes,” I growled through my teeth.

He gave me a victorious smirk as he rose to tower over me once more. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“I can’t believe you.”

“You said yes, didn’t you?”

“That doesn’t mean anything!”

“You’re already my mate, what’s the problem with making it official by human standards?”

“It’s just… it’s weird, okay? And unexpected, and,” I lowered my voice, “there’s a chance I’m not even gonna be around for the honeymoon.”

A shadow came over him, like something had blocked out the sun. “I’m not letting you go that easily. You may have already given up, and I know you’re afraid to face this, but I’m not leaving you a choice. You’re mine. Whether it’s for a month or a lifetime, you’re mine and I will not let you do this alone.”

I tried to swallow, but the knot in my throat wouldn’t let me. “So,” I said, realizing if I didn’t say something, the tears in my eyes were going to give him fodder for weeks to come. And I knew him well enough to know that, yes, he would absolutely mock me minutes after he proposed to me, and then I would have to tell him to fuck off in front of his pack. It was kind of our thing. “How long’ve you been carrying around that ring, or did you just get it out of a vending machine this morning?”

I realized he’d never let go of my hand when he pushed his fingers through the spaces in mine and pressed his forehead against my bangs. “You’ll find out if your finger turns green, won’t you?”

Smiling was just about the last thing I imagined I’d have reason to do today, but it was so hard to fight it when he was this close. “I hope you realize, you made me late for my appointment.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, kissing my cheek. “I know the management.”

“Oh, yeah. I heard he’s a real prick.”

His husky laugh made me wish we weren’t in the middle of a public floor, surrounded by wolves trying to pretend like they were just going about their business. “So I’ve heard.”

* * *

Kel’s office was the kind of place that made you feel like you had the flu even if you didn’t. As I sat on a lumpy exam table staring at the blank gray slate that would soon be lit up with images of my insides, I felt like time had slowed down on purpose. The day I’d been putting off for years was finally here, and it was punishing me for running from it for so long.

Nicolae was across the room, looking absurd in the clinical surroundings with his black duster and black boots and black clothes and the aura to match. He’d taken an interest in the cotton balls sitting in a canister by the sink.

“You know, you don’t have to be here for this. I’m sure you’ve got other shit to do,” I said.

He gave me a look that said it wasn’t even worth bothering with a verbal response and turned back to the cotton that was infinitely more interesting than my latest attempt to boot him out of the room.

A knock at the door announced the end of my stay in purgatory and possibly the beginning of the afterlife. The look on the doctor’s face as she came in with a thick folder packed with white-edged X-rays didn’t bode well. Neither did the fact that she needed so many of them. If there was nothing to see, there’d only be a few, I figured.

She seemed surprised to see Nicolae there, but she adjusted and gave me a nod. “Good to see you again, Jack.”

“I’d say the same, but I get the feeling you’re not gonna tell me anything I wanna hear.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. That was never a good sign, especially from someone who looked like she lived for watching political documentaries and giving out expired raisins on Halloween.

I watched her arrange a few of the X-rays on the lighted screens, and before she said a word, I knew the cloudy white splotches on the screen blocking out full view of my ribs weren’t just cotton candy.

“As you can see here, your X-rays show some considerable abnormalities,” Kel began, using her pen to gesture to the largest lesion. “I believe without a doubt that we’re looking at advanced coal workers' pneumoconiosis,” she said slowly, giving me time to process every word.

“Black lung disease?” Nicolae demanded, already prepared to fight.

I didn’t know how he even knew what that was if I didn’t, but then again, I’d been keeping my fingers in my ears all along. I’d been so prepared to hear it was cancer that my mind went AWOL for a minute, but I quickly composed myself. “Sorry, what is that? And can you put it into layman’s terms?”

She sighed. “You can go without symptoms for years before it progresses to a point where your lungs are necrotic and your other organs are impaired. It comes from inhaling coal dust.”

Nicolae gave me the filthiest look yet and turned back to Kel. “How do you fix this?”

“It’s incurable.”

“Bullshit,” Nicolae snarled, flinging everything off the counter with one swipe.

“Nick!” I snapped. Kel didn’t seem phased.

“What about a lung transplant?” he demanded.

“He wouldn’t receive approval, not at this stage. The chances of success, even if he was approved —“

“Fuck the chances, and fuck the list. I’ll find some fucker with good lungs and cut them out myself.”

Kel paused to let him recover. She had more practice dealing with Alphas in raging denial than I did, and my head was still full of… everything. Memories. Realizations of all the things I’d always said I would do and didn’t. Francesca’s voice.

“This job is going to kill you, Jack.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do, Franny, go into Clarksville’s thriving banking sector?”

It was the only argument I ever won, because she knew as well as I did that we needed the money. Braces didn’t come cheap. Neither did a mortgage, cars, cable packages or any of the other staples of suburban life.

Nicolae was still arguing with Kel when I finally came back to earth. I checked in on the tail end of, “—wouldn’t survive the surgery, sir.”

“How long?” I asked suddenly. They both looked at me like what I’d asked didn’t make any sense, so I clarified, “How long do I have?”

“Maybe a year, maybe less. It’s a wonder he’s made it this long without coming in,” Kel answered somberly, looking at Nicolae like she expected him to lash out again. He said nothing. He was stone and I was ice, melting fast.

The silence didn’t last long. “There’s a doctor in Warsaw who specializes in diseases of the lungs. We’ll fly him in,” Nicolae said firmly. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

I stared at Nicolae in disbelief as he rattled off his research and Kel listened patiently. And here I thought he’d just been avoiding me. Knowing he’d taken the time or even cared enough to chase any threads that might keep me with him longer meant more than anything he’d said down on one knee. It meant more than anything anyone had ever said or done for me, and all I could do was wonder how the hell we’d gotten here.

Not here, in this sterile office at this appointment that had been inevitable for so long, but here with him actually wanting me to live and me not wanting him dead.

“We’ll do everything we can,” Kel said finally. I felt a camaraderie with her, because we’d both already accepted the thing that Nicolae was fighting like his life depended on it. He knew it, too, but he was nothing if he wasn’t pride incarnate, and he would still probably be clinging to false hope while I was rotting. “For now, there are drugs I can start him on.”

“Nothing with side-effects,” I said suddenly.

“Jack,” Nicolae scolded, looking at me with the same exhaustion I’d felt during the countless hours I’d spent trying to convince Andrei that vegetables were not going to kill him.

“I’m not saying I won’t try anything,” I assured him. There was no point long-term, but hell, if it gave me a few more months with my very small circle of loved ones, I’d deal with the sickness. I’d just be trading one type for another. “But it has to wait until after the hunt.”

“I told you, it’s not happening.”

“So we’re just going to let the Court give Ellie back to her grandparents, then?” I challenged. “I’m going to immediately start taking drugs that turn me into a walking corpse, and I’m going to suffer through the last few months I have knowing that they’re going to take Ellie away from you as soon as I’m gone?”

He was livid. I could see it in his eyes and feel his rage pulsing in the suffocating energy that filled the room. He hated me right now, because if he didn’t let the rage out that way, it would turn into fear, and he was not a man who could give in to it. I knew, because it was the same thing that had kept me out of his arms for so long even if it hadn’t kept me out of his bed.

“You can’t handle it. The stress alone could kill you.”

“There’s gotta be something I can take that won’t make me sick, right?” I asked, looking at the doctor. “Breathing treatments, maybe? Let me have something experimental so I can give these fools the slip for a few weeks, and I’ll comply.”

Kel hesitated and looked between us, like she was trying to decide if agreeing with me was worth incurring Nicolae’s wrath. “There are some things I can give you for pain, and we do have that serum.”

“What serum?” I asked.

“We’ve been working on a drug that utilizes the venom injected by a werewolf bite,” she explained. “The experimental concentration only possesses as much venom as our saliva naturally contains when we’re not biting. It has healing properties. It’s worth a try.”

I gulped. Yeah, I knew all about that. Intimately. “Great. I assume it has to be injected painfully?”

“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“I’m good,” I said, rolling up my sleeve. “Just get it over with.”

Kel hesitated, looking up at Nicolae for permission. Because I belonged to him and if anyone in this damn building went two seconds without reminding me, they’d explode.

He nodded reluctantly, but I knew the arguing was far from over. One broom-sized needle in the arm later and I was actually starting to feel like I wasn’t dying. I’d forgotten how nice that was.

“I’ll give you a moment,” Kel said, giving me another pitying smile before she left the room.

As soon as the door shut, Nicolae opened his mouth to argue and I knew I had to shut him up somehow. “I’ll marry you.”

His jaw hung open for a second and he gave me that perplexed frown I knew so well. “What? You already agreed to that.”

“Yeah,” I said, reaching out to hook my finger around his belt loop and pull him closer. “Except this time I’m not saying it so you’ll stop embarrassing me. I mean it.”

I could see the irritation in his gaze, but it faded fast and he snorted in amusement. “What changed your mind?”

“You,” I admitted, smoothing down the collar of his shirt. “My whole life, I’ve been taking care of other people. My mother, my family, my employees. I’m not saying I need you to take care of me or that it’s going to do any good in the long run—“

He rolled his eyes.

“—but, it means a lot that you want to.”

“Not enough for you to let me do my job and keep you home.”

“You know we can’t get out of this, Nicolae.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, wrapping his arms around me. It was unexpected, but I relaxed into him like I belonged there. Maybe I did. “I know,” he answered. “And I think I prefer it when you call me Nick. Except in the bedroom. In that case, I like listening to you trying to say it.”

I smiled into his shoulder, squeezing him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”