Goodbye, My Mate

Chapter 228

Leah's POV

The sterile stench of antiseptic clawed at my throat as I stood beside Liam's Nonna. Her arm lay bloated on the mattress, purple veins snaking beneath skin stretched thin as rot-stained parchment.

"A carrot," Liam had choked out earlier between sobs, "it's swollen like a goddamn carrot."

Talia hovered at the foot of the bed, her knuckles bone-white where they gripped the metal rail. Humans always held onto things when their world frayed — rails, hands, lies.

Liam's crying cut deeper than any wolf's snarl. Not the proud, wounded howls of my kind, but wet, shattered noises that made my gums ache. When the doctor came, he collapsed on his knees, fingers twisted in the man's lab coat, begging in a broken voice -

"Do something. Anything. Please."

The doctor's eyes slid to mine once, quick and guilty, before he murmured platitudes about pain management. I tasted the lie before he spoke it.

"Weakness." My wolf bristled under my skin, disdainful. "This is why they die squalling in their own filth."

"This is not the time," I warned her in my mind.

But when the old woman's howl ripped through the room — a sound no lupine throat could mimic, all shattered dignity and animal terror - even my claws pricked my palms.

The raw desperation made my gums ache - that primal urge to bite through throats when pack members whined too loudly. How strange that humans bared their necks through weeping instead of teeth.

I felt suffocated and stormed out of the room.

Humans built temples to their fragility. Sterile white corridors humming with machines that breathed for them, pumped their blood, filtered their poison. All to stretch a single threadbare life a few more fraying weeks. At the slave markets, Finn would break strong backs for sport - but these soft creatures would hemorrhage from a lover's harsh word.

The image of Nonna's swollen arm haunted me. Not the rot, but the care they took not to touch it. As if gentleness could outwit entropy. Wolves cauterized silver bullet wounds with burning brands; humans dabbed antiseptic and called it mercy.

"Pancreatic cancer," the doctor had told me later in the hall, voice low as a confessional whisper. "If they'd brought her sooner…" His gaze flickered to Liam's shuddering shoulders through the glass. The rest dissolved into statistical mush, but I understood. Poverty was the true cancer here, eating her alive cell by cell while coin-heavy vultures circled.

Nonna's howl shattered the corridor. I watched Liam stumble outside, lighter clicking like a dying insect in his fist. The wolf wanted to laugh at his trembling hands, the pathetic click-click-click of his futility.

My palm engulfed his to steady the flame. Firelight danced in his wet lashes as he inhaled, smoke curling around his confession. "I... I just want it to stop."

"I know. I know." I patted gently on his shoulders. I knew what to do. I knew it way before I stepped into this frantic human world.

He leaned over and buried his head over my shoulder, weeping like a kid.

-

Talia still clung to the old woman's bedside when I returned, sponging her forehead with water that evaporated before it could soothe. Her persistence stank of desperation, yet something primal stirred in my chest - the same awe I'd felt watching termites rebuild a shattered mound after the pack trampled it.

I was buffled. Humans clung to dying embers with bare hands, blistering themselves to prolong the inevitable. Yet they'd snap each other's necks over whispered slights. Fragile, foolish creatures- burning so brightly they blinded themselves to extinction.

"Go to Liam. He needs you now." I told her. The command vibrated with alpha resonance, subtle enough to bypass human awareness. She obeyed, exhaustion dragging her footsteps.

Alone now with the dying, I studied Nonna's face - a roadmap of wrinkles leading nowhere. Her hand seized mine with shocking strength. The stench of necrosis retreated momentarily as her milky eyes focused.

"Are you Liam's...friend?" she rasped.

I nodded. Her thumb brushed my face. "He cried for hours... skinned knee at six..." A wet chuckle. "Too soft... Too gentle... for this cruel world..."

"Softness isn't weakness. You've raised him well. You made him kind. He's the best human being that I've ever known," I said, throat tightening. Her pulse fluttered against my palm, a moth beating itself bloody against glass.

Her smile revealed gaps where chemo had stolen teeth. "Are you here to... end my life?"

I leaned closer. "I'm here to seek your forgiveness."

Cold fingertips grazed my cheek - a benediction. "Tell Liam... I'm so proud... to be his Nonna..." Her chest hitched, machines screeching their mechanical protest. One twist of the oxygen tube silenced them. Her sigh smelled of rust and relief.

Then alarms shrieked - modern howls for modern deaths.

Chaos erupted. Footfalls, shouted codes, Talia's scream slicing through sterile air. I walked through the scrambling nurses like mist, their shouts dissolving against my back.

The lobby TV blared its carnival of human folly. "…billionaire ex-mobster restaurateur found frozen in own meat locker… family claims final word was 'wolf'…" A widow sobbed for cameras.

I finally understood their cursed brilliance: They'd turned mortality itself into an art form, painting masterpieces with trembling hands and broken hearts.

"Human beings are fools," my wolf growled.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I said. "They turn mortality itself into an art form, painting masterpieces with trembling hands and broken hearts. Don't you think there's something poetic in this?"

"You and I need to have a longer conversation over this topic," my wolf grumbled. "Anyway, I don't know why you risk everything to meddle with that human being's life. This kind of exposure is deadly. Humans build monuments for their own kind. They build pyres for creatures like us."

"Let them come," I said as the shadow swallowed me whole. "It'll spare me some effort to go look for them."

Somewhere behind me, Liam's wailing split the air.

I didn't look back.

Wolves never do.