I Left Before He Could Watch Me Break

Damaris POV “Damaris, I can’t keep this from progressing much longer. Your body needs the bond to complete. I have done what I can with herbs and rest, but herbs don’t fix what only he can fix.” Emmeline’s voice was still in my ears from that afternoon. I nodded like it was information and not a countdown. The ring felt heavier than it should have in my pocket. It was small, gold, worn thin at the band from years on Jayce’s mother’s hand before she passed it to me, well, not to me exactly. But to him, for whoever he chose. He had given it to me the night the bond first sparked between us, laughing, saying “Hold onto this for when we’re ready.” That was eleven months ago. I had been carrying it in a cloth pouch ever since, waiting for a readiness that never quite arrived. Tonight I was making it arrive. So I walked to his cabin with the ring in my pocket and a speech in my head I had rehearsed about forty times. Jayce, I need to tell you something, and I need you to just listen before you say anything. Very simple and honest. I would hold his hands so he would feel steady instead of afraid. I will tell him about the sickness, about Emmeline, about how none of it was his fault, how I just needed him to complete the binding soon, that’s all, nothing he wasn’t already going to do eventually. The porch light was on as I got there. I could hear voices through the door, and for one stupid, hopeful second I thought maybe Brian had stopped by, or Nolan, someone ordinary, someone who wouldn’t matter. Then I heard her laugh, Rosie’s. Her laugh had a particular pitch to it, high and easy, the kind of laugh that made people around her relax without meaning to. I used to like that laugh. I used to think, good, he has someone who makes him lighter when I can’t. I should have turned around. I know that now. Some small part of me, my wolf was already sensing what my heart wasn’t ready to know, it pulled at my chest, telling me to leave, go home, try again tomorrow. I opened the door instead, they were in the front room. Rosie’s back was against the wall, Jayce’s hand braced beside her head, close in a way that wasn’t accidental, wasn’t friendly, wasn’t anything I could explain away this time. I didn’t say anything. My mouth wouldn’t work. I just stood there in the doorway they hadn’t heard open, and I listened. “She’s getting worse, you know,” Rosie was saying, her legs was wrapped around his waist with a finger down his collar like she had every right to it. “Half the pack’s noticed, she looks like she’s aged five years in five months.” Jayce huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She won’t eat properly, says she’s not hungry. Then she’s dizzy on patrol and acts surprised.” “Maybe she’s just fragile.” Rosie’s mouth curled. “Some wolves aren’t built for this life, Jayce. Not everyone can keep up.” “I know.” He rubbed his face, and God help me, some pathetic part of me wanted him to sound sad saying it. He didn’t. He sounded tired, the way you sound tired of a chore, not a person. “I’m exhausted, Rosie. I feel like I’m babying a mate instead of standing beside one. Every day it’s something. Headaches, fatigue, this hollow look in her eyes like she’s already given up. I didn’t sign up to nurse someone.” “You didn’t,” Rosie agreed softly. “You signed up for a Luna who could stand beside you, not fall apart every other week.” I felt the ring pouch in my pocket like it had turned to stone. “I keep thinking,” Jayce said, quieter now, “that the bond picked wrong. Is that a terrible thing to think about?” “It’s not terrible,” Rosie murmured. “It’s honest.” My hand had gone to my chest without my permission, pressing flat against my sternum, because something in there had started to hurt in a way that wasn’t logical, a real, physical ache, spreading cold through my ribs the way it did when Emmeline’s herbs wore off too early. My wolf, who usually paced and growled and made herself known even in quiet moments, had gone utterly, terrifyingly silent. Not sleeping. Silent the way a room goes silent when someone’s just died in it. The pouch slipped from my fingers. I didn’t even feel myself drop it, I just heard the small, soft sound of the ring hitting the wood floor and rolling, once, twice, before it wobbled to a stop against the leg of a chair. Both of them turned immediately. Jayce’s face did something complicated, surprise, maybe the beginning of guilt, gone before it fully formed. Rosie’s face did nothing complicated at all. She just looked at me the way you would look at something spilled on the floor. “Damaris.” Jayce straightened, stepping back from Rosie like the distance now would undo what I have already seen. “How long were you standing there?” I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My legs had started shaking, a fine, humiliating tremor I couldn’t shake away, and I grabbed the doorframe to keep from swinging. Rosie tilted her head, and there was something almost curious in the way she watched me struggle to stay upright, like I was a specimen confirming a theory she had already written. “See,” she said, not even bothering to lower her voice, not even bothering to sound sorry, “she can’t even stand right.” The room tilted or maybe I did. I couldn’t tell anymore where the sickness ended and the heartbreak began, they had started to feel like the same thing, twin hands squeezing from both sides of my chest, and for the first time since Emmeline’s warning, I understood with total, bone-deep clarity that I might not survive this. I opened my mouth to say something, anything and the only sound that came out was my own breath, ragged and thin, before my knees finally gave.