Viola grimaced hard at the pain it sent through her back but still managed to work her arm free and reach for the doorknob. Just because she had brought Sebastian here didn’t mean she trusted the people in this orphanage with his life. They had done something to her sister and the idea of staying away from her husband while he lay in there at their mercy didn’t sit right with her at all.

She hadn’t planned to fall unconscious and leave him to them in the first place. Her exhaustion and blood loss must have taken a greater toll than she had realized to knock her out the way it had.

Viola reached for the door handle again but just then the door opened from the inside and Miss Lara stepped out looking completely worn through, her hands stained dark with blood and her face carrying the expression of someone who had been fighting a losing battle for hours.

Viola pulled her arm fully away from Julia and turned to the older she-wolf. "How is he?"

Miss Lara lowered herself heavily onto the bench and let out a slow breath before she said, "I am sorry. I truly tried my best but those bullets are unlike anything I have ever encountered before. I managed to remove one from his left thigh and then I quickly realized what they do after removal. They dissolve the surrounding bone and tissue, killing every muscle and nerve in the area. If I attempt to remove the remaining nine bullets from his body the same thing will happen on a far larger scale and he will not survive it. He cannot survive it now unless we find out exactly what those things are made of and find a way to counteract it first. I am so sorry."

Viola felt her insides turn over as the world tilted around her. She staggered and caught herself against the wall, staring at the kerosene lamp hanging there with her blue eyes glistening and her arms wrapping around her own middle like she was trying to physically hold herself together.

"Are you telling me he is going to die?" She asked, and her voice came out quieter than she intended it to.

Miss Lara could see how devastated she looked and couldn’t bring herself to soften it with a lie. "Eventually...yes. Without knowing what those bullets are made of, there is nothing more I can do for him tonight."

A sound came from Viola’s throat, something between a sob and a whimper, but she swallowed it back hard and bit down on her bottom lip until she felt the sting of it. She couldn’t stop the tears though. They came anyway, sliding silently down her cheeks as she stood there staring at nothing.

Why did it seem like everyone she ever allowed herself to care about ended up being taken from her? The only person she had ever truly cared about was lost to her, gone to who knows where, and now the man her heart had been warming up to, no, the man her heart was already falling madly for, was also slipping away from between her fingers like a grain of sand she couldn’t hold onto.

Silently, Viola walked past them and pushed the door open. Julia reached out to stop her but Miss Lara raised her hand and Julia fell back.

"She has every right to be in there with him at his last moment. The man is barely holding on at this point." Miss Lara said quietly, shaking her head with a tired sigh. She still couldn’t fully reconcile the powerful and intimidating man who had stood in her orphanage just yesterday with the broken body lying on her floor now.

She couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them.

Julia subtly gritted her teeth as she stared at the door Viola had walked through. She couldn’t help thinking that had she been the one married to a man like that, wealthy enough to take her far away from the suffering of Nightshade, she would never have let anything happen to him.

What a waste of a good man. Julia thought to herself with a bitterness she couldn’t quite shake.

Inside the room, Viola moved carefully toward the body lying on the floor. The room was dim, lit only by two kerosene lamps set on the small table being used as a nightstand, casting a low and flickering orange glow across the walls.

The man lying on the floor was so completely still that a stranger walking in might have taken him for already gone, if not for the faint and strange sound working its way out from deep within his throat.

Viola’s arms tightened around herself as she stepped closer. Moving as quietly as she could, as though she was afraid of disturbing whatever fragile thread was still keeping him here, she lowered herself soundlessly to the floor beside him and took one of the lamps from the table to bring closer to his face.

He was lying on his stomach with his head turned in her direction. His face was pale in a way that didn’t look like him at all, and his lips had turned a faint bluish color, parted slightly with that cracked and broken sound pushing out through them with every shallow breath.

Even his silver hair had lost its usual luster and lay flat and dull against his skin like something already fading. She felt a needle sharp pain in her chest at the sight of it.

"Sebastian..." She called gently, her voice quivering at the edges. She got no reply. "Seb?" She tried again, reaching out and carefully touching his hair.

His eyes cracked open the slightest sliver and then shut again, and he made a louder sound deep in his throat that tore at something inside her chest.

"Can you hear me?" She asked, but there was no reply. Not even a flicker of movement. His body was weakening with every second.

Viola reached out slowly and lowered the blanket to look at the bullet wounds, but what she saw turned her stomach completely over.

The wounds had darkened and deepened since she last saw them, each one looking less like a wound now and more like a hole being eaten into his skin from the inside out. She squeezed her eyes shut and the blanket slipped from her trembling grip as a sob made it’s way up her throat.

"No... please no..."