Chapter 6

The guards hesitate, exchanging wary looks.

"What are you waiting for?" Shawn's voice is sharp. "If anything happens to her, you'll answer for it."

They reluctantly take my leg, trembling as they draw out the venom. I watch Shawn, focused on Quinn, and a bitter smile tugs at my lips.

Even in life-or-death moments, he draws the line so clearly.

The healer rushes in with one antidote pill, saying another needs to be mixed on the spot. "Give it to Quinn," Shawn says without hesitation.

He turns to me, voice flat. "Hold on a bit longer."

My body shakes, venom still coursing through me, pain like fire in my veins. I bite my lip until blood fills my mouth, then pass out.

I wake up the next evening, the poison gone but the room empty except for a villa maid. "You're awake!" she says, offering warm water. "You were out all day."

My voice is hoarse. "Where's Shawn?"

Her face stiffens. "He's… with Quinn."

I close my eyes, saying nothing.

Outside, dusk settles, the mountain wind howling like my frozen heart.

We spend the following days at the villa to recover. My injuries slowly knit together, yet Shawn never crosses the threshold of my room. Through the glass I watch him walk the garden paths with Quinn or tilt a spoon of medicine to her lips; each gentle gesture feels like a splinter driven behind my eyes.

But I don't care anymore.

When we prepare to return to Belmor Town, a guard hurries in. "Shawn, a plague's hit the pack. The gates are sealed. We can't go back."

Shawn frowns, then nods. "Fine. We stay here. No one leaves without my say."

My fingers pause. I remember this deadly, relentless plague from my last life. I'm not about to risk it.

But that evening, as I feed fish by the pond, I spot Quinn sneaking back through the rear gate, arms full of goods, her maid trailing behind.

"Where were you?" I demand.

Quinn brushes me off. "Got bored. Went for a walk."

"There's a plague out there, and you're sneaking around? If you get sick..."

"I'm fine!" she snaps, shoving past me.

"Mind your own business."

She turns, and without another sight of her back, uneasiness begins to annoy my stomach.

True enough, on this night I am burning with fever, body quaking and throat a mass of fire. I curl up on my bed, and hear hurried footsteps outside.

The door is thrown open. Shawn rushes within, and literally drags me forth in a mass of covers. "The pack has the plague and you go off! And now Quinn has the fever on account of you!"

I try to explain that it was Quinn that was outside and not I and she has passed her foul breath upon me, but my throat is too raw to speak a word.

He takes my silence for a confession of guilt, and he drags me away to Quinn's chamber and drives me into the healer. "Do you still require some one to test the plague cure?" he asks in a mechanical tone. "Then have her."

I raised my eyes and looked into his. I could not believe, but in past days I had been sleepless because of terrible dreams of his eyes. And now, they were only white ashes.

I want to give vent to my feelings and scream, but my body is too weak to let me move.

The healer hesitates. "The work is ghastly. She might—"

"Do it!" interrupts Shawn. "Quinn is suffering."

The ordeal is appalling. Each dose brings horrible convulsions and the inner parts of my body feel as if they are burning, and I am spitting blood upon my clothes.

Shawn looks at me sometimes with feelings of uncertainty, but the moment there comes a moan of Quinn's and he roars out another order to the healer to increase the dose.

I lie on the floor soaked from head to foot in life-washing perspiration, while the tears are mingling with blood upon my clothes.

Shawn.

If you should ever learn the full extent of the truth, I hope you will be torn to pieces by it as it is now tearing me to pieces.

I trail behind, watching them up the stairs, Shawn's possessive hand on Quinn's waist, as though she were a fragile prize.

Over lunch, he gets her everything she enjoys, every dish greeted with a happy squeal from her.

When my own turn comes, he pauses, then says, "Pick what you'd like."

I smile, more hideous than a sob. I have told him my favorite foods a thousand times, and yet he never remembers. Quinn says hers once, and it's memorized in his head.

We finish eating as a crash echoes outside our door. A wall breaks and a figure comes crashing towards us.

Shawn thrusts Quinn aside, stepping out of the way. I am not so lucky—the figure smashes into me, a broken table cutting into my shoulder. Blood seeps through my clothes.

During the chaos, guards lift me to my feet and carry me toward the carriage; Shawn is intent on Quinn, calming her and covering her shoulders with his cloak, not paying attention to blood still seeping from my wound.

It is only as I jump, getting out of the carriage, that he notices. "What's wrong?"

"Behind the tavern, the table cut across my shoulder when I was hit," I reply practically.

His brow furrows, a gleam of something—guilt, maybe pity—in his eyes. "Come on in. I'll bandage you."

In my room, he bends toward the salve, but Quinn is there, intervening. "Shawn, let me. It hurts less between she-wolves."

He hesitates, then steps back. "Fine." He hands the salve to her. "I'll wait out here."

Behind the smile, Quinn's face goes stiff. She spoons a dallop of salve and labors in silence in a pinch of salt. "Hold still, sister," she breathes, then plunges the mixture firmly into my wound.

I cry out, batting her away instinctively. She drops with a melodramatic shriek.

"What happened?" Shawn comes rushing in, picking her up.

Water wells up in Quinn's eyes. "I was just trying to dress her wound, but she pushed me down. Maybe she's upset you've been paying attention to me."

"That's not true!" I gasp, aching with pain. "She rubbed salt in my wound!"

Shawn's face turns angry. "Quinn's trying to help, and you're blaming Quinn for it?"

He draws her in, the sobbing stifled against his chest. "Ever since I claimed her as an equal, you have wounded her repeatedly. No matter your actions, I am bonding with her."

He storms out, Quinn in his arms, not sparing me a glance as I slump on the bed, blood dripping from my shoulder, my heart shattered worse than ever.