Chapter 26 Breaking Point
POV: Mina
I woke up on the floor.
Not in my bed. Not on the cushions I'd arranged beside it. On the actual cold stone floor of my dorm room, curled into a ball with my arms wrapped around my chest, my body shaking so hard my teeth were chattering.
The binding had cut through my skin overnight. I could feel the warm dampness of blood soaking through the wrapping, the fabric having dug into the flesh beneath my ribs where I'd been cracked weeks ago and never properly healed.
This had been happening more frequently. The shifts I couldn't take, the wolf I couldn't release, the power I couldn't fully contain—all of it was collecting in my body like pressure in a sealed container. Building toward something inevitable.
Seven days. I just needed seven more days.
I pressed my forehead against the cool stone floor and breathed through the pain. In the bed across the room, Lyro was still asleep, his quiet snoring the only sound.
I'd fallen out of bed during another episode. The second one this week.
My wolf was getting aggressive. Every night it threw itself against the seal with increasing desperation, and every night the seal cracked a little more. I could feel it fracturing through my whole body, the magic my mother had woven into my very bones slowly giving way.
The physical symptoms were getting impossible to hide.
I stood carefully, gripping the bed frame for support, and made it to the bathroom. In the mirror, I barely recognized myself.
My face was thinner, drawn tight with exhaustion and pain. Dark circles had settled permanently under my silver-grey eyes. My skin had taken on a faint luminescence that no amount of concealing cream could fully mask, like moonlight was living just beneath the surface.
I unwound the binding with shaking hands, wincing as the fabric peeled away from where it had cut into my skin. The wounds weren't deep, but they bled freely, and the silver tinge to my blood made my stomach clench with anxiety.
Normal wolves didn't have silver-tinged blood.
I cleaned and rebandaged the wounds, then rewrapped my chest as tightly as I could stand without losing feeling in my ribs. Put on two layers of uniform to help hide the outline. Took three suppressant pills instead of two, knowing I was burning through my supply faster than I could replace it.
Then I looked myself in the mirror and said what I'd been telling myself every morning for weeks.
Seven more days. Just survive seven more days.
The scent was the biggest problem.
Even military-grade suppressants had limits, and I'd apparently exceeded them. Lyro had stopped pretending he couldn't smell the difference two days ago.
"Sterling," he'd said quietly, not looking up from his book. "Your scent is breaking through. I can smell it clearly right now. If I can smell it, they can definitely smell it."
How bad?
"Bad enough that if any of the Trio gets within five feet of you, they'll know something is fundamentally wrong. The suppressants are masking the specifics but they can't hide that you smell..." He'd paused, choosing his words carefully. "Sweet. Wrong for a male wolf. Distinctly, undeniably wrong."
I'd doubled my dosage that day. It had helped marginally.
But today, walking to my morning class, I felt the shift in the air the moment Logan fell into step beside me.
He didn't say anything at first. Just walked too close, his shoulder nearly touching mine, his head tilting slightly in that way predators did when they were scenting prey.
I kept walking. Kept my breathing even. Kept my face neutral.
"Sterling," Logan said quietly, his voice rough. "What the fuck are you wearing? You smell like a—"
"Like a wolf who doesn't want to be bothered," I wrote quickly without breaking stride, holding up the notepad.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.
Through the forming bond, I felt his wolf going absolutely insane. Responding to my proximity, to my scent, to something primal and overwhelming that his human mind couldn't process.
"Something's wrong with you," Logan said, his grip on my arm tightening. Not violently, but with something closer to desperation. "Every time I get near you, my wolf loses its mind. I'm having dreams I don't understand. I'm going insane thinking about what you're hiding."
His blue eyes were wild, more wolf than human in that moment.
I pulled my arm free and wrote fast.
Your obsession with me is your problem, not mine.
"It's not obsession," Logan snarled, but his voice cracked slightly on the word. "I don't WANT to be obsessed. I want it to stop. But it won't stop until I figure out what you are."
I walked away and didn't look back.
Through the bond, I felt his frustration following me down the hallway like a physical thing.
Asher cornered me in the library that afternoon.
He was more controlled than Logan, always more controlled, but the control was slipping. I could see it in the slight tension around his eyes, the way his jaw was set, the barely perceptible tremor in his hands when he sat across from me.
"You look terrible," he said by way of greeting.
I wrote without looking up from my work.
Thank you for your concern.
"I'm not concerned. I'm observing." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, bringing his face too close to mine. "You're deteriorating. Whatever you're hiding, it's costing you physically. You're in pain. I can see it."
Mind your own business.
"You are my business," Asher said, and there was something raw beneath the words that surprised me. "I don't understand why. I hate that I don't understand why. But you are."
Through the bond, I felt the truth of it. Genuine, agonized confusion. His wolf recognized me as mate, was driving him toward me, was making him feel responsible for me. And his human mind was fighting it every step of the way.
"Let me help you," he said quietly.
I stared at him.
The last time you helped someone, you destroyed them, I wrote. No thank you.
Something flickered across his face. Pain, maybe. Or guilt.
"I know what I've done," he said quietly. "I'm not pretending otherwise. But this is different. Whatever is happening to you, whatever you're going through—I can see it killing you. And I can't..." He stopped. Looked away. "I can't watch that."
I gathered my books and left before he could say anything else.
Behind me, I heard him exhale slowly, the sound of someone fighting a battle they didn't know how to win.
Jax called me to his private study room that evening.
Not a request. A Sterling family summons, delivered formally through the Academy's internal messaging system. The kind that couldn't be refused without creating official incident.
I went, because refusing would cause more problems than attending.
He was waiting for me alone, seated at a desk covered in his meticulous notes. The same notes I'd glimpsed weeks ago. There were more of them now, pages and pages of observations and analysis.
He studied me as I entered. Not with Logan's desperation or Asher's barely concealed need, but with cold precision. A wolf who had decided to solve a problem by gathering enough data to make the answer undeniable.
"Sit down," he said.
I sat.
"You look like you're dying," he said matter-of-factly.
I wrote: Flattering as always.
"I'm not trying to be flattering. I'm stating an observable fact." He turned one of his pages toward me. "I've been documenting your deterioration over the past two weeks. The weight loss. The pallor. The way you move differently, like something inside you is fighting to get out. The scent changes. The eye incidents."
He tapped the page. "You're not sick. This isn't illness. This is transformation."
My blood ran cold. He was too close. Too perceptive.
I don't know what you mean, I wrote.
"Yes you do." Jax's ice-blue eyes met mine, steady and certain. "Something is changing in you. Something your body is trying to become. And whatever it is, you're holding it back. Forcing yourself to stay as you are through sheer will." He paused. "And it's destroying you."
Why do you care?
The question hung between us. Through the bond, I felt him struggle with the answer.
"My wolf won't let me not care," he finally admitted, and from Jax Sterling, that admission cost something real. "I despise that fact. But it's true."
He stood and moved to the window, turning his back to me. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.
"Whatever you're hiding, it's bigger than Academy politics or pack hierarchy. I've felt things through whatever connection exists between us that I don't have words for. Dreams I can't explain. A pull that's getting stronger every day." He turned slightly, just enough to show his profile. "I need to know what's coming. Not to hurt you. To prepare."
I stared at the back of his head and said nothing. Wrote nothing.
Through the bond, I felt his wolf pacing frantically. Felt the cold analytical exterior cracking around the edges.
Seven days. I just needed him to not figure it out for seven more days.
I stood, picked up my bag, and headed for the door.
"Sterling." His voice stopped me. "My wolf dreams about submitting to something it's never submitted to in its life. If that doesn't tell you how serious this is, nothing will."
I left without responding.
But the words followed me all the way back to my dorm room.
My wolf dreams about submitting.
Seven days until the ceremony. Until the seal broke. Until they'd all understand exactly what their wolves had been trying to tell them.
Seven days until everything changed.
I just had to survive that long.
I was still awake at two in the morning when the bond suddenly flared with something I hadn't felt from them before.
Not obsession. Not confusion. Not the usual cocktail of possession and frustration.
Guilt.
All three of them, simultaneously, experiencing something that felt like guilt.
Through the bond, I felt them dreaming. All three having the same dream again, the silver light and the female voice and the power that made their wolves want to kneel.
But this dream was different. This time, the female in the dream was in pain. Real, physical, bone-deep pain. And through whatever connection existed between us, they were feeling it.
Feeling what I'd been feeling for weeks.
The binding cutting into skin. The wolf throwing itself against the seal. The exhaustion of constantly suppressing power that demanded to be released. The grief sitting permanently in my chest where the twin bond used to live.
I felt them wake up, one after another. Felt their shock. Their horror.
Felt Logan sit up in his bed across the building and say out loud, to no one, "That's what he's been going through? That whole time?"
Felt Asher press his hand against his own chest like he was trying to feel what I'd been feeling. His mental voice through the bond a single word: "Christ."
Felt Jax go completely still, lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling. Processing. Calculating. Arriving at conclusions his data hadn't fully supported until now.
Through the bond, his thought came through clearly.
The binding. The suppressants. The way he moves like something is fighting to get out. The scent.
His next thought made my stomach drop.
He's not deteriorating. He's becoming.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding, and threw up every mental wall I had against the bond. Blocking it as much as I could. Hoping he hadn't followed that thought to its logical conclusion.
Seven days. I just needed seven more days.