Chapter 464: Giving up...

Adrein.

"Maria!" I screamed, my voice cracking in pure, unadulterated terror as her head rolled limply back against the pillows.

My heart plunged straight into a freezing abyss. Her body went completely weightless in Damien’s arms, her dark eyelashes sweeping shut as the color drained from her face for the second time in less than an hour.

The newly formed mate bond inside my chest flared with a sickening, violent panic, sending a harsh shockwave through my entire nervous system.

"Damien, what happened?!" I cried out, dropping to my knees right beside the mattress, my hands trembling uncontrollably as I reached for her ice-cold fingers. "Why did she faint again?! She was just talking to us!"

"I don’t know!" Damien panicked, his usual terrifying Alpha composure completely shattering into pieces. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frantic as he cradled her head against his chest. "She was breathing, and then—and then her wolf just shut down! The stress... her heart was beating too fast!"

I snapped my head toward Aidan and Davian, my voice rising into a sharp, desperate yell. "Look at her! What did we do?!"

Aidan’s cold facade cracked instantly, his face turning stark white as he stared down at Maria’s motionless body. Davian looked like he had been struck by lightning, his massive hands hovering uselessly over her, his jaw hanging open in utter horror.

"Her bond!" Davian growled out, his voice shaking with a terrifying edge. "Damien, what if her body is rejecting your mark?! What if her system is reacting violently to the final bond being forced onto her while she was weak?!"

The words hit the room like a physical blow.

"No... no, no, no!" Damien stammered out, tears overflowing from his eyes as he pressed his hand over the fresh, warm bite on her neck. "It stabilized her! You all saw it! Her heart was surging back to life!"

"We aren’t healers, Damien!" Aidan shouted, his Alpha authority completely giving way to raw, naked fear. "We don’t know what the hell is happening to her internal energy!"

Damien didn’t say another word. He gently laid Maria’s head back down on the pillow, scrambled off the bed so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet, and threw the bedroom doors wide open.

"I’m getting the healer!" Damien roared down the corridor, his heavy footsteps echoing frantically off the stone walls as he sprinted out into the hallway like a madman. "Hold her! Just hold her!"

The bedroom door slammed shut, leaving the three of us in a suffocating, horrifying silence.

Davian fell to his knees at the foot of the bed, burying his face in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking with silent, desperate sobs. Aidan dropped beside me, desperately trying to feel her pulse against her wrist, his teeth grinding together so hard I could hear the enamel straining.

"Come on, Maria... stay with us," Aidan whispered, his voice broken, weeping openly now. "Please... just hold on until Damien gets back..."

I sat on the cold floor, holding her tiny, lifeless hand against my cheek, staring at her pale, beautiful face. The world around me faded into a dull, distant blur. The sound of Davian’s heavy breathing, Aidan’s desperate prayers, and the distant shouting in the hallways all dissolved into absolute background noise.

A heavy, crushing realization settled deep into the pit of my stomach, turning my insides completely hollow.

’This is our fault,’ I thought, a bitter, agonizing pain slicing through my heart. ’We did this to her.’

My mind spiraled back to her desperate, tear-filled eyes right before she lost consciousness. She had been begging us. She had been screaming for Noah, her heart breaking into pieces because she believed he had walked away, while we stood over her like stone walls, suffocating her with our possessive silence.

We had pushed her straight over the edge. We had used our Alpha authority, our lies, and our overwhelming pressure until her fragile, exhausted body simply collapsed beneath the weight of it all.

I looked at the fresh mark on her neck, resting right beside the ones Aidan, Davian, and I had left on her skin.

We were so obsessed with keeping her. We were so terrified of losing our mate, so blinded by our primal, territorial greed, that we were literally killing her just to claim ownership of her soul.

’What if... what if she can’t survive with us?’

The thought entered my mind like a drop of poison, spreading rapidly through my entire chest, making it hard to breathe.

What if her heart was truly tied to Noah?

What if her wolf was rejecting the complete bond not because of the physical bite, but because her soul was suffocating under our grip?

What if the only way for Maria to actually live, to breathe, to laugh, and to be healthy again... was if we let her go?

"Adrein?" Aidan’s raspy, tear-filled voice broke through my frantic inner turmoil. He was staring at me, his eyes filled with sheer panic. "Adrein, her pulse is getting faint again. Talk to her! Say something to her!"

I swallowed hard, a painful, suffocating lump forming in my throat as tears blurred my vision. I squeezed her cold fingers tighter, leaning in close to her ear, but the words caught in my chest.

’I prefer her to be alive,’ I thought, my heart shattering into a million sharp, agonizing pieces. ’I love her. Sweet goddess, I love her more than my own life. But what good is having her as our mate if she’s lying cold and lifeless in our arms?’

A violent conflict raged inside my soul, tearing me apart from the inside out. Every single Alpha instinct buried in my blood screamed at me to fight, to lock the doors, to hold her close, and never let anyone take her away from us. But as I looked at her pale, peaceful face, completely motionless against the dark sheets, the love I felt for her completely eclipsed my selfish desires.

If it came down to a choice between her dying here with us as our mate, or her living a long, beautiful, healthy life somewhere else—even if that meant she was in Noah’s arms—I knew what I had to choose.

’I have to let her go,’ I realized, a fresh wave of quiet, agonizing tears spilling down my cheeks. ’If she wakes up... if the healer stabilizes her... I can’t keep doing this to her. We can’t keep doing this to her.’

"Adrein, what’s wrong with you?!" Davian barked from the end of the bed, wiping his bloody nose with the back of his hand, his eyes wild with terror. "Why are you just sitting there staring at her like that?! Help us keep her warm!"

"She’s dying because of us," I choked out, my voice barely a raspy whisper as I looked up at my brothers through my tears.

"Don’t say that!" Aidan snapped, though his voice cracked violently, betraying his own sickening realization. "Don’t you dare say that, Adrien!"

"It’s the truth, Aidan!" I sobbed, looking back down at Maria’s delicate face. "Look at her! We are suffocating her! We marked her, we locked her up, we drove away the only person she was begging for, and now her body is giving up!"

Aidan froze, his hands trembling over her wrist, unable to offer a single word of defense.

I closed my eyes, leaning down to press a soft, lingering, devastating kiss onto her knuckles. My heart felt completely torn out of my chest, bleeding away every drop of happiness I had ever dreamed of having with her. I was ready to give up my own happiness. I was ready to surrender my claim, to fight my own brothers, and to tear my own soul apart if it meant giving Maria a chance to breathe, to smile, and to stay alive.