Rise Of A Shattered Luna (Natalie) by Kave Derry novel Chapter 27

Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

Baron’s POV

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I stood just outside the OR, my back against the wall, blood seeping through the bandage at my side despite the rushed work someone had done on me earlier.

The pain was there if I acknowledged it–a dull, persistent heat under the skin, a reminder that flesh had limits.

Raze was still.

Just watching.

He had tried to lend his strength, but the fire took a lot from him.

Finn stood a few feet away, arms crossed, jaw locked so tight I could hear his teeth grind. Shauna was speaking to a medic in low tones, already organizing things three steps ahead of everyone else like always.

No one dared touch me.

Not because they didn’t see the blood but because I told them not to.

And in Blackridge, when the Alpha is conscious and still standing, you don’t drag him onto a table unless you want to die trying.

I watched the door.

Minutes passed… maybe more. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of something bad happening.

Then the sound changed.

It wasn’t loud at first.

A hitch in the rhythm of the machines on the other side of the wall.

Raze snapped fully awake.

“That’s her.”

My body moved before my mind finished the thought.

A nurse’s head snapped up from the desk. “Wait”

“She’s crashing,” someone else said sharply. “Vitals are dropping-”

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Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

I was already there.

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Finn grabbed my arm, fingers digging into muscle hard enough to bruise. “Alpha, wait. You just came out; you’re bleeding through the bandage.”

“I know.”

“You can’t go back in there.”

“I can.”

“You’ll die.”

I looked at him then, really looked. His eyes were red–rimmed, wild with a fear he was too disciplined to name.

“Then I’ll die working,” I said.

I tore free of his grip and shoved through the doors as they sealed open again, alarms now getting louder.

The smell hit first.

The burned flesh, sterilizer, and blood that hadn’t finished drying.

She was still on the table.

She was slipping.

The monitors screamed.

Her heartbeat was wrong, too slow. Then too fast. Then dropping again like it couldn’t decide whether to stay.

Raze pressed hard against my spine, a physical weight inside my chest.

“She’s letting go.”

“No,” I said.

Out loud.

To him. To the room. To her.

A nurse was talking rapidly, calling out oxygen levels, blood pressure, and words meant to guide and inform me about her condition.

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Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

I tuned them out.

I stepped up to the table and put my hand on her chest.

She was cold…colder than she should have been.

Her body had stopped fighting.

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I’d seen it before–that exact moment when the body shuts down and it decides it’s done trying.

I leaned closer. “Don’t.”

Her lashes didn’t move.

Her mouth stayed slack.

No response.

Raze growled, low and sharp.

“You promised.”

“I know.”

The lead surgeon looked at me, eyes tight. “Alpha, we’re losing her.”

I looked at the monitor, then at her face.

Barely recognizable now as the woman I’d carried out of the fire. Skin wrapped, hair gone, features softened by swelling and trauma. And still, I knew her. I felt her.

She was slipping.

The pill needed wasn’t on me; it never was.dk

I kept it locked in the wardrobe adjoining the operating wing, behind seals no one else could open. If I had carried it, I would’ve used it too easily. And nothing about that formula was meant to be easy.

I stepped into the wardrobe and shut the door behind me.

Three pills had once existed.

Two were gone.

I unlocked the inner panel and took out the vial

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Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

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Raze went still. “That pill isn’t meant for this.”

“She won’t make it without it.”

“You don’t know what it’ll do to her.“.

“I know exactly what it might do.”

There was only one left.

I made them myself.

The first had gone to a warrior crushed in a cave in years ago. Bones turned to dust, organs ruptured. The pill had forced his body to live.

It succeeded.

It also took his wolf.

He survived, but he never shifted again. His connection severed cleanly, like something cut with surgical precision, but he thanked me anyway.

The second had gone to a child poisoned by silver. Too small to survive it, too young to understand what was happening. The pill burned through her system like wildfire.

She lived.

She screamed for days afterward, night terrors. Memory fractures: she forgot her mother’s face for months, and her mind never fully settled right again.

This was the third.

The last.

Raze went very still.

“If you use it-”

“I know.”

There would be no more after this; the formula required compounds I no longer had access

1. to.

This pill didn’t just heal.

It forces the body to choose life.

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Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

And it always took something in return.

I uncorked the vial.

“Get me a syringe,” I said. “Now.”

The room hesitated.

“I said now.”

They moved.

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I crushed the pill between my fingers and dissolved it myself; my hands were steady despite the tremor starting in my arm. I injected it directly, slowly enough not to shock her system.

Her body arched.

The monitor spiked violently… then dropped.

She wasn’t conscious, but her mouth moved. Barely. A sound slipped out, rough and broken, dragged from somewhere deep.

“… Jensen…”

The name cut sharper than it should have.

My hand paused mid–motion.

Raze felt it too.

She said his name.

Jealousy flared.

I acknowledged it and locked it down where it belonged.

“She still wants him,” Raze said flatly.

“I know.”

It didn’t change what I was doing.

I leaned in close, my voice low. “Listen to me, you don’t get to leave. Not like this.”

Her fingers twitched.

Barely.

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Chapter 27 Ashes Don’t Stay Dead

Enough.

The monitor steadied again.