Chapter 242: The Man Who Came Back to Me 3

Chapter 242: The Man Who Came Back to Me 3
Elara Campbell’s POV
The venom tried to crawl into me through the light. Sira shouted my name. My heartbeat skipped again. For one long second, the room disappeared.
I saw Jaxson’s wolf. Not standing. Falling.
A huge dark shape dragged through black water by threads of venom wrapped around his throat and chest. His eyes were dim. His claws tore at nothing. Around him, his blood called from one side and his spirit from another, splitting under royal poison. No.
My wolf lunged. I followed. We did not burn him.
Every instinct wanted to. Every piece of sunlight in me screamed to destroy the darkness, destroy the venom, destroy anything that smelled of Dorian. But Jaxson’s wolf was tangled in it. His spirit had venom wrapped around it like wire. So I softened the light.
That was harder than burning. I made sunlight into fingers instead of flame. Into threads. Into careful warmth. I slid it under the poison hooks one by one, lifting them from his wolf without tearing him open.
The venom fought. Black fire lashed back. My own wolf cried out through the bond.
Pain burst behind my eyes. Blood filled my nose and spilled over my lips. My heartbeat stumbled again, weaker this time. I felt something in my solar current strain so hard it might snap.
“Elara!” Philip shouted.
I could not answer. If I opened my mouth, I would scream and lose the thread. Jaxson’s wolf lifted his head. There. There.
He saw us. My white-gold wolf pressed her forehead to his. Not leaving you, she told him without words. His dark wolf shuddered. The bond flared.
The mark at my neck burned like sunrise. I pulled. Not him. The venom.
I separated it from his living blood, from the place his wolf and body met. The poison came away in black threads, hissing, clinging, fighting to drag pieces of him with it. I held the sunlight steady until my own body went cold. Then Philip was there.
His magic moved around mine, guided by Orren’s old notes and Helena’s ledger. Sira opened a channel through the wound at Jaxson’s neck with a silver-clean tool. Doctor Marven caught the expelled venom in a warded vessel that immediately smoked and cracked.
“Now,” Philip said. “Elara, now!”
I burned the separated venom. Not Jaxson. Not his wolf. Only the poison. White-gold light flashed through his veins.
Jaxson’s body arched off the bed one final time. His mouth opened on a sound that began as a snarl and ended as a human gasp. The dark veins stopped moving. For a moment, I thought I had killed him. Everything went silent.
Even the machines seemed to hesitate. Then the black lines began to retreat. Slowly. Painfully.
They drew back from his chest, from his arms, from his jaw. The wound at his neck still looked terrible, black at the edges and torn deep, but the spreading veins faded to grey, then bruised purple, then angry red. His heartbeat steadied. Weak. But human.
Wolf. Alive. The bond trembled. Jaxson’s wolf was not strong. He was barely standing inside the bond, exhausted and wounded, but he was there.
Present. His. Mine. I sobbed once. My hands were still wrapped around his.
I could not feel my fingers properly. “Elara’s pulse is failing,” Sira said.
Someone touched my shoulder. Maybe Kael. Maybe Malric. Maybe no one. I could not look away from Jaxson’s face.
His eyelids moved. Once. Twice. His lips parted.
“Elara,” Jaxson breathed.
My name came out broken and barely there. But it was his voice. His voice. Only then did I let go.
The world tilted violently. The white-gold wolf inside me cried through the bond and collapsed beside Jaxson’s dark wolf, not dead, not gone, but drained so empty I felt the edge of something permanent waiting in the dark. Jaxson tried to tighten his fingers around mine.
He did not have strength. I smiled because he tried. Then my body failed.
I heard shouting as I fell. Arms caught me before I hit the floor. Kael’s voice roared for healers. Malric cursed in a way that sounded almost like a prayer. Tobias said my name once, broken with the same guilt that had brought him into the room.
Jaxson’s breathing continued. That was all I needed. Sira’s voice came from far away, sharp, frightened and refusing to break.
“There is no remaining sign of vampirism in him,” she said.
Someone exhaled like the room had been holding one breath together. Then Philip answered, grave and close. “But neither Jaxson nor Elara is out of danger yet.”