Flashback
It was only a few days after the werewolf ambush and massacre. Derek lay in his royal bedroom, his skin pale against the white sheets, and his breathing shallow. He was only a teenager.
The heavy curtains were drawn against the daylight, which he could not stand. The room felt dim and airless. The pack doctors, Adah and Lorenzo, moved around him in silence, checking the bandages on his arms and the shallow cuts that still stung across his chest.
Nana, Ruby, and Declan stood by the bedside. They all looked hollow, like ghosts wearing the faces of people he once knew. The bedroom was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that felt heavy with death.
Ruby's eyes were so puffy she could barely see, and her lips were bitten raw and swollen from trying to keep her cries inside.
She kept whispering the same thing over and over, staring at Derek as if he might disappear too.
"Is he going to be okay? Is he going to die too?"
