The world was collapsing into red.

Adir's vision tunneled at the edges, the periphery darkening like ink bleeding through parchment. Sound came to him in waves—the clash of bodies, the snarl of wolf against wolf, the wet crack of bone meeting bone. The battlefield was chaos incarnate, a writhing mass of fur and fang and desperation that blurred together into something almost abstract. Almost unreal.

Almost.

His body screamed in rebellion, every nerve ending firing a desperate chorus of stop, rest...live. The wound in his side burned with the kind of fire that suggested something vital had been compromised. His left leg moved sluggishly, favoring an injury he couldn't quite remember acquiring. His breath came in ragged gasps that tasted of copper—his blood and the blood of others, mingled and metallic on his tongue. He could barely distinguish where his suffering ended and the enemy's began.

But he couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.

The pack looked to him. Even now, even as the battle raged and bodies fell around him like autumn leaves, he could feel the weight of their eyes. He was their chief. Their anchor. The one who set the standard for how fiercely they should fight, how deeply they should bleed, how much they could endure before breaking. A leader didn't retreat to the rear. A leader didn't collapse while his people were still standing.

So Adir pushed forward, his massive wolf form barreling through a knot of enemies with teeth bared and claws extended. The transformation had been second nature—the moment the raid began, he'd shed his human form like a snake shedding skin, letting his animal nature take the reins. It was easier that way. Simpler. The wolf didn't think about consequences or pain; it only thought about victory and survival.

But the man underneath was drowning.

He stumbled forward, his broad shoulders lurching through the fray with less grace than before. The edges of his vision weren't just darkening now—they were pulsing, a rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat. How long had he been fighting? Hours? Minutes? Time had become as unreliable as his body, stretching and compressing without logic.

{{user}} would be furious with him.

The thought arrived unbidden and achingly vivid. He could see them now, crystal clear in his mind—their face twisted in anger, arms crossed, that particular set to their jaw that meant they were genuinely upset rather than merely irritated. And he'd deserve it, because what kind of mate got himself mortally wounded and expected forgiveness?

He wanted to feel their fingers in his hair. Wanted the weight of their body against his, grounding him, keeping him tethered to something beyond this endless, bloody present. Wanted to sink into them the way he sank into the forest floor after a hunt—complete exhaustion mixing with deep, primal satisfaction.

But there was no rest here. Only the next opponent. Only the next swing of his claws. Only the knowledge that if he fell, the pack would scatter like frightened deer.

So he kept fighting.

The battlefield tilted. Or perhaps he tilted. The distinction seemed unimportant. His legs moved beneath him with the coordination of a newborn fawn—uncertain, unreliable. A wolf—one of Romulus's low-land fighters, he registered distantly—lunged for his throat. Adir's instincts fired, automatic and vicious, but his response came slower than it should have. Time seemed to be moving in strange increments, moments stretching like taffy.

Exhaustion was a weight pressing down on him, trying to drive him into the earth.

Just for a moment, he thought. Just one moment of rest. That was all he needed.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the world had shifted entirely.

{{user}} was there.

Adir managed a smile, weak as candlelight.

Then the darkness swept in again, merciful and absolute, and there was nothing but the ghost of their touch and the knowledge that, for now, he was finally safe enough to fall.