Weeks became months and I sucked the marrow out of every last moment of it, but around the seven-month mark, I felt my body slipping even if my spirit remained strong. I’d always imagined that dying would be something sudden that happened without you realizing it, but it felt more like it creeping up on me. Death was the approaching shadow of a storm overtaking a summer field. Every minute, it was just a little bit darker. A little harder to see the sun.

The fear of fading out was the only thing that outweighed the fear of letting go. I knew it was time. So did Nicolae. And so did Ellie. Even Andrei had lingered that morning on his way to class, which wasn’t like him now that he loved school and had friends to see. Leonie had given me a hug that morning for no reason at all when I’d passed her in the hall.

A hundred years wouldn’t be enough to spend with the people I loved, but the only chance I’d ever have that I’d get to experience half of them was going to pass me by if I waited any longer. I just had to find a way to say the words. To say I was ready.

That morning, rather than going out to deal with the pack’s latest problems like he usually did, Nicolae was still there when I came back from dropping Andrei off at school. He was sitting at the kitchen table with an untouched cup of coffee in his hand and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

He’d banned smoking in the building altogether when I was diagnosed, and the fact that he was doing it himself meant something was different. Today was either an end or a beginning and the rules no longer applied. Not in this liminal space between life and death, hoping and fearing, relief and regret.

“We’re taking a trip,” Nicolae announced, putting his cigarette out in his coffee before he stood. “Get ready.”

I nodded and went into the bedroom to grab a jacket. What else were you supposed to bring to your death? Sensible shoes seemed like a given. I decided I didn’t need my wallet, or my phone. Whatever happened, Nicolae would tell the people who needed to know in the event that I wasn’t there to, and it wouldn’t come as any surprise.

We’d kept the others from the truth about our plan, both because it felt unfair to give them false hope and because I’d had so many hard conversations with Ellie that I hadn’t wanted to sour the last time I might see her. Instead, we’d talked for hours just like we used to, and I wanted that moment to remain if I didn’t.

I followed Nicolae out of the condo and downstairs to the parking garage. He was silent on the drive and made no attempt to tell me where we were going. I didn’t ask.

The sky was clear blue, which was a rare thing in the land of stony castles and endless rain. It almost looked like the Tennessee sky I’d grown up under. I stuck my hand out the open window and let the air drift through my fingers just like I’d always done as a kid, when my grandmother would take me with her on the long drive down the mountain to the only market in town.

I realized we were heading toward the mountains on the horizon outside the city skyline. My heart ached the same way it always did whenever that old country song that had always put Ellie to sleep as a baby came on the radio. The mountains were full of memories both good and bad. For better or for worse, those razor-sharp ridges were the element of my soul, and if I had to die anywhere, I couldn’t imagine a better place. And I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather have holding my hand.

I looked over at Nicolae when he finally pulled the car to a stop on the side of a slender dirt road once we’d driven as far into the mountains as we could. He didn’t say a word. He just got out of the car and opened my door before I had time to do it myself. He was fast, and I was a lot slower these days. I winced as he helped me out of the car. My body had been aching lately on top of everything else, and there weren’t many parts of me that weren’t in pain. At least the crisp mountain air filling my lungs made it a little easier to breathe.

I held Nicolae’s hand as we walked up the mountain path and the forest grew thicker and darker around us. Nicolae seemed to anticipate when I needed a moment to rest before I did and he’d stop, giving me time to catch my breath. The weakness that had come over me recently, overtaking my body confirmed that I’d made the right decision, whether he thought so or not. Maybe he was okay with narrowing the focus of his life to caring for me, but I wasn’t. I was a human, an omega. I was already weak in every way that he was strong, and I wanted to be able to walk beside him until the end, even if it killed me.

“Just a little further,” Nicolae promised, as if he knew I was close to shutting down. He was already doing most of the work keeping me on my feet, but I’d refused to let him carry me and warned him that I’d be biting him if he tried again. I knew it was selfish to refuse to let him help as much as he wanted to, but if I was about to lose everything, I at least wanted to hold onto my pride.

The sunlight that had almost vanished in the most densely forested part of the trail suddenly broke through the leaves in shining splendor. I stared in awe at the mountaintop clearing and the view that stretched on as far as the eye could see. Glorious mountains, green and blue and white, cutting a breathtaking silhouette against the sunset. Just like the ones I remembered, not the depleted, flattened peaks I’d left behind.

The moon was full, her light already illuminating the trees against the shadow steadily creeping over us. For once, it didn’t feel ominous. It was more like a blanket gathering softly over me.

Nicolae stood beside me, his face impassive and immune to the beauty before us. I took his hand and his eyes met mine. I didn’t have to speak, and neither did he. I just needed him to know that if this was it, if this was the last thing I ever saw, it was enough.

He sat down in the grass, pulling me with him and into his lap. I sat between his legs, my back against his warm chest, and realized that for once, even in heat, my body temperature was lower than his. He wrapped his arms around me and I felt his steady heartbeat against my back as we watched the sun sinking into the horizon. The sky was cloaked in royal blue and the full moon stood out like a giant pearl broach above the mountain’s peak. We were so far from the city that the stars all clustered together in streams of hazy white light rather than the pin pricks I was used to seeing from my window.

Maybe the wolf in me was no more than a sliver, but when the moon was full, I felt her lunar pull so strongly. I felt the shards of her light embedded deep in my soul, soothing the scars left by the loss of Francesca and my family and my dead-end town. All the painful things that had worked their way into me, leaving my heart tender and bleeding from the inside.

One way or another, this night would put an end to me—to my humanity, or to my life itself—and all the wounds left on my soul. Either way, I’d be free. I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t enough to keep the tears back.

God, I wished the mark on my back was enough to bind me here forever. In his arms, as his mate, as his pet. Anything.

Nicolae must have smelled the salt of my tears because he turned me just enough to kiss them away. He touched my neck and my flushed skin tingled, because even though the fire in me was quickly burning itself out, he was still capable of rekindling it. A spark, a flare, a moment stolen with a kiss that tasted like heaven and felt like hell. I’d already lost my breath, but he didn’t let me go and I made no attempt to escape. He kissed me harder, like he planned on suffocating me himself. I wouldn’t have complained, but when he finally pulled away, I caught just a glimpse of the grief in his eyes before he pressed his lips to my throat.

I smoothed my fingers through his midnight hair. “It’s okay,” I whispered.

He let out a choked sob that he muffled in my neck as his fangs sank into my flesh. He held me tightly, and I was glad, because my reaction to the blinding pain of his bite—nothing compared to his venom—was to writhe and try to escape. He crushed me against his chest, barely allowing me room to breathe, let alone move.

My heart raced, spreading his toxin through my veins like wildfire, and God, it burned. My body lost strength and gave up the fight, and I stared up at the moon watching over us as he bled me until my consciousness was fading.

When Nicolae’s fangs finally left my neck, he pulled away. His lips were painted with my blood and his pupils were wide, sucking in the light, and he looked like an animal as he watched me. My heart felt like it had been doused in kerosene and lit with a match, but I was too weak to show my agony.

Maybe it was better to let him think I’d slipped away peacefully. He didn’t need to live with the truth. He held me, stroking my hair as he came back to himself.

“Jack,” he whispered pleadingly, holding me and rocking me, every movement endless torture. “Please, baby… stay with me.”

I felt my body shutting down organ by organ, my spirit slipping with each hoarse breath. I was fading, not because of his venom but because that last struggle had sapped me of the few drops of energy I had left in my veins.

Then something else began to stir. A new fire. A new pain. My lungs filled suddenly, a shot of adrenaline that sent me surging upright and out of his arms. I caught myself face-down on the grass before him. I saw him watching me fearfully. Saw him reaching for his gun. I’d made him promise to put me down if I went feral so I would never suffer that kind of indignity.

As I coughed up blood and felt the venom bubbling under my skin, rage wiping out every other subtle shade of emotion I’d once been capable of, I realized it was too much to ask him. I had to take the gun and do it myself before my mate let me tear him apart, but I was in too much pain and my body was no longer mine to control.

There was another spirit in me, and it seemed to rise up from within, going from a voice so faint I’d never consciously heard it to a howl so loud it felt like war drums shaking the mountains. Did he hear it, too? I clutched my head to drown the sound out and my own screams almost did the trick.

The pain was beyond comprehension. The light of the moon was no longer soothing but glaring, mocking, maddening. I wanted to tear it out of the sky myself and rip it open until the gooey white substance of its light slid down my throat like blood.

Nicolae touched me and I struck him away automatically, sending him flying. I was still just myself enough to turn and run, ignoring his pleas for me to stop. I felt him close behind me and the sound of his footsteps doubled. He let out a roar of warning and my foot slid on the side of the mountain. I went tumbling, ribs cracking as I hit the rocks over and over again, but it was nothing compared to the sensation of my bones shifting beneath my skin. When I finally rolled to a stop, caught in place by a small tree stuck in the mountain, my flesh seemed to melt as I groped to claw my way up the earth.

Claws. Big ones. Sharp and white, just like Nicolae’s fangs. I pulled myself up with a body I didn’t recognize, staring down at fur as reddish brown as the earth that sifted beneath four paws that wouldn’t work the way I wanted them to.

The beast I knew so well appeared before me, eclipsing the moon, and pulled me up with hands far more human than my clumsy paws. He kept me in his arms and only collapsed once we reached a plateau, his chest heaving as laboriously as mine. He was far stronger, but he was exhausted. The past months had taken their toll on him, too.

We stared at each other as his clawed hands explored the foreign slope of my head, thick finger pads sweeping over my fur and taking in every strange new angle. He was so far from human, but I could still read the look in his eyes. Relief. Shock. Love. He held me so close it felt like he’d crush me and his growl instinctively made my wolven self shudder, but I was still myself enough to know that he would never harm me.

My ability to think like a human was beginning to fade, but as it did, other instincts and modes of being came in to take its place. Touch and scent suddenly meant so much more than they ever had. As he shifted back, clutching me to his bare chest, his rushing words of gratitude wouldn’t have made any sense to me even if they were in English. But his hands in my fur… that, I understood fully.

I had survived. I was a wolf now, his wolf, and I was going to live.