The summons came three days after the snow. Three days of bleeding into folded rags Marlee smuggled from the laundry. Three days of the bond link sealed shut from Sterling's side, a wall of nothing where warmth should have been.
*Luna Riley, report to the healer's quarters immediately.*
The command rode the bond like a fishhook. My body moved before I finished reading the words.
I walked slowly. Each step pulled at something inside that had not finished tearing yet. The suppressant vial was a small, hard shape in my pocket. I had taken the dose an hour ago. Sable was quiet underneath it, but I could feel her—a low vibration, like a generator running in a basement I had never been allowed to enter.
I told myself he had learned. Someone had told him. He was calling me to the healer because he finally knew what had happened in the snow and he wanted to—
I stopped that thought at the door.
The healer's quarters smelled like antiseptic and fear. Sterling stood beside the examination table with his arms crossed. Nyla sat on the table itself, her legs dangling, her right shoulder bare and blistered in a vivid, weeping burn the size of a man's palm.
She looked up when I entered. Her eyes were wet.
"Riley," she whispered. "Why?"
I stared at the burn. The edges were too clean. The blistering too uniform. I had seen enough training accidents to know what wolfsbane oil looked like when someone painted it on their own skin and held a heated poker to it for exactly long enough.
"I didn't—"
Sterling's voice cut across mine. "The healer has confirmed second-degree burns. Nyla says you used a fire poker from the main hall. Unprovoked."
"That's not true."
"She has no reason to lie."
"She has every reason."
His eyes flashed gold. The bond pulled tight.
"You will submit to a tissue graft," he said. Flat. Final. "Your skin will repair hers. The healer will perform the procedure now."
The Alpha tone came down the bond like a landslide.
My knees locked. My throat closed. My body turned toward the second examination table without consulting me. I felt my hands reach for the edge. I felt myself lie down.
The healer's face was grey.
"Alpha," he said quietly. "A graft of this size—without sedation—"
"She will endure it conscious," Sterling said. "So she remembers."
The healer's hands shook as he prepared the instruments. A scalpel. Gauze. A curved needle already threaded. No anesthetic. No numbing agent. Nothing but the steel tray and the command holding my body flat against the table.
Nyla watched from across the room. She had stopped crying. Her mouth was a small, private line.
The first cut opened along my ribs like a seam splitting.
I did not scream. The command had my throat. I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist hard enough to feel bone and I breathed through my nose in short, shallow bursts that fogged the air.
The healer worked quickly. He had to. The longer he took, the more I bled, and if I bled too much Sterling would notice and then the healer would have to explain why the Luna's body was already weakened and then someone would ask the right questions and the healer would break.
So he cut fast. He peeled the tissue in one piece and laid it on the sterile cloth. He moved to Nyla and began the graft before my side had stopped bleeding.
I lay on the table and I watched the ceiling and I felt something underneath the wolfsbane ceiling press upward.
Not whimpering. Not weak.
A low, resonant fury that was qualitatively different from anything I had ever felt before.
Sable did not break through. The suppressant held. But she spoke.
Not in words. In a vibration that moved through my bones like a second pulse.
*I see this.*
*I am recording this.*
*We will not forget.*
The healer stitched my side with hands that would not stop shaking. He used too many stitches. He pulled them too tight. He was terrified Sterling would notice the existing damage, the evidence of what the snow had taken, so he covered everything with gauze and tape and he did not meet my eyes.
When he finished, Sterling walked to Nyla's side. He touched her hair. He murmured something I could not hear.
He did not look at me.
The command released. My throat opened. I sat up slowly, one hand pressed to the bandage at my ribs, and I looked at the man the Moon Goddess had called my mate.
He was still touching Nyla's hair.
I slid off the table. My legs held. Barely.
"You're dismissed," Sterling said without turning.
I walked out. I made it to the corridor before my knees buckled. I caught myself on the wall and I stayed there, breathing, until Marlee's small shape appeared at my elbow.
"Up," she said. Same tone as the snow. "Now."
She took me back to the storage room. She redid the healer's bandaging with clean cloth and gentler hands. She did not ask what happened. She had seen the instruments on the tray when she passed the open door.
She pressed another suppressant vial into my palm.
"Keep taking these," she said again. "You'll understand why soon."
I looked at the vial. Then at her.
"How long have you known?"
"That you're stronger than they think?" Marlee's mouth curved, dry and humorless. "Since the day you didn't break in the snow."
I swallowed the dose. Inside my chest, Sable went still again—but this time the stillness felt different. Not hidden.
Waiting.
I pressed my hand to the bandage at my ribs. The scar would remain long after my wolf healed everything else. I knew that already.
I wanted it to remain.
Let it stay, I thought. Let it be proof.
Sable's vibration answered me, low and certain.
*Proof,* she agreed. *Evidence. Testimony.*
*When the time comes.*
