Chapter 24 The Breaking Point

• "Stay with me." I kept saying it, over and over, as I dragged him through corridors I barely recognized in my panic, Riven's weight heavier against my shoulder with every step, his blood soaking warm through my shirt. "Stay with me, Riven. Don't you dare leave me now."
• His breathing had gone shallow, wrong, silver poison spreading dark beneath the skin around the wound in patterns that looked too much like frost creeping across glass. The bond fractured further with every labored breath he took, threads of it snapping loose one by one, and I felt each severed strand like a physical wound of my own.
• Wolves scattered from our path as I carried him, some reaching to help before I snarled them back, some too stunned by the sight of their alpha bleeding out in my arms to do anything but stare. I didn't have time to explain. I didn't have time for anything except the growing certainty that every second spent in these corridors was a second closer to losing him entirely.