Juan's Pov.

I'd shrug off his touch. I'd reply bitterly, "Tell them not to waste their energy. Their future Alpha is nothing but a broken shell now."

I forgot to count days. I felt like a prisoner between four high walls. I couldn't jump off the walls and escape.

Time lost all meaning. Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. I stopped trying to track time at all.

I was soon trapped between my confused thoughts. I even thought of ending my meaningless life.

The darkness wasn't just physical. It had spread into my mind. It filled every corner with no hope and sadness.

"What's the purpose of continuing like this?" I'd whisper to myself during endless nights. Sleep wouldn't come.

"I'm just a burden to everyone now."

My once bright dreams of leadership had died. I'd dreamed of guiding the pack into a new era. Now those dreams had dried up like autumn leaves. Nothing was left but empty branches of possibility.

"You know," my brother Ekon said during one of his visits. His voice was unusually gentle. "There are blind wolves who still help their packs in meaningful ways. There's this Alpha three territories over who lost his sight in battle. He still leads well."

I laughed harshly at his attempt to encourage me. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? I'm half the wolf I used to be. I can't shift. I can't hunt. I can't even find the bathroom without bumping into walls. Some future Alpha I turned out to be."

My mother heard this from the doorway. Later I heard her crying in the hallway. This only made my shame and sadness deeper.

And the only one who could make my heart flutter and bring tears of joy was Sunny. Without her, even my younger siblings couldn't do anything for me.

They tried. God knows they tried. Jennifer would bring her favorite books and read to me for hours. Akon would describe the pack politics in detail. He tried to keep my mind busy.

But their voices couldn't break through the thick fog of sadness that covered me like a blanket. Their voices were familiar and loving, but they couldn't reach me.

I decided to shut myself away and stop talking. I didn't join them for meals. I refused to go downstairs in a wheelchair. I wouldn't be around them.

"Juan, please," my mother would beg. "Just come down for dinner. Everyone misses you at the table."

I would respond with silence. I'd turn my face to the wall.

When my father tried a stronger approach, I'd pull the covers over my head. "Son, I understand you're struggling, but staying alone isn't helping your recovery."

I'd stay under the covers until he sighed and left the room.

My siblings tried different ways to reach me. Jennifer would bring me little treats from the kitchen. She'd describe each one in mouth-watering detail.

"Cook made your favorite blackberry cobbler today, Juan. It smells amazing. I brought you the biggest piece!"

Akon tried logic. "Studies show that social interaction helps recovery rates by thirty-seven percent. Your self-chosen isolation is working against your healing."

Even little Ekon, usually so loud and playful, would sit quietly by my bed. He'd say, "I miss playing chess with you, Juan. Maybe we could try it with special pieces?"

But I rejected all their efforts with cold silence or harsh words. I regret those words now.

I didn't allow servants or guards to step inside my room! My own jail.

"Get out!" I would roar when I heard an unfamiliar footstep near my door. "I don't need your pity or your help!"

The poor staff was only trying to do their jobs. They learned to leave trays outside my door. They'd retreat quickly before I could yell at them.

I set my boundaries. Sooner than I expected, after a few months maybe, I decided to stop eating.

I would hear my mother's desperate begging through the door. "Juan, please, you have to eat something. You're wasting away before our eyes."

My father was more direct. "This is foolishness, son. Starving yourself won't change your condition. It will only add to our family's pain."

One hard day, my little sister Jennifer slipped into my room while I was asleep. When I woke to find her sitting beside my bed, tears were streaming down her face.

She whispered, "Are you trying to die, Juan? Don't you care that we love you?"

Her innocent question broke through my armor for a moment. I actually ate the soup she'd brought, just to stop her crying.

But the next day, I went back to refusing food.

"What's the point of feeding a useless body?" I would mutter when they left the untouched food. "Better to let it fade away."

Few months! That's what I thought. I really believed I'd only been refusing meals for a short time. But in my depressed state, time had become even more twisted.

What felt like days were actually weeks. What I thought were weeks had stretched into months of dangerous self-neglect.

My body, once strong and athletic, had begun to waste away. My muscles were shrinking from not being used and not eating enough.

"You've lost so much weight," my mother would say. Her voice would break. "Please, Juan, just a few bites. For me?"

But even her tears couldn't break through the wall I'd built around myself.

My mom did most of the work. My dad helped her. She cleaned my body every day. She read books to me. She fed me with her hands.

My mother's care was endless. She showed up every morning with fresh towels and warm water.

"Let's get you cleaned up, sweetheart," she would say with such tenderness. It made me feel like a child again. "I brought that soap you always liked. The one with pine and cedar."

She would carefully wash my hair. Her fingers would massage my scalp with such gentleness. Sometimes this brought unwanted tears to my sightless eyes.

"Remember when you were little," she'd talk while working. "You'd insist on taking your own baths at four years old? You'd end up with soap in your eyes every time. But you were so stubborn about doing it yourself."

My father would help with the harder physical parts. His strong arms would lift me with surprising gentleness.

"Alright, son, let's turn you over so your mother can wash your back," he'd say. His voice was deliberately matter-of-fact to keep my dignity. "The pack council meeting went well yesterday. We're using that border patrol rotation you suggested last year."

He'd talk about pack business as if I were still actively involved. Not like I was a broken shell of the future Alpha.

She even slept next to me. I'd often wake in the night to find her asleep in the chair beside my bed. Her hand would still be holding mine.

I never regretted calling her mother! If my real mom was alive, she would never love me like Isabella.

"You know," Isabella said one night when she thought I was sleeping. "From the moment they placed you in my arms as a baby, I never once thought of you as anything but my son. Blood means nothing compared to the love in my heart for you."

But I was only giving her pain. I was the reason for her tears.

I could hear her crying in the hallway after hard days. Her muffled sobs hurt my heart more than any knife.

"I don't know what else to do," I heard her telling my father late one night. "It's like he's given up completely. I don't know how to reach him anymore."

My father's response was gentle but worried. "We can't force him to want to live, Isabella. He has to find that desire within himself."

Their conversation weighed heavily on me. It added guilt to my already heavy emotional burden.

I wanted to make everyone stop caring about me.

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" I shouted one day when my mother insisted on opening the curtains. "Go focus on your other children. The ones who actually have a future!"

The hurt in her silence was clear. I immediately regretted my outburst but couldn't find the words to apologize.

I hated hearing them cry because of me.