I woke up on fire.
Not real fire. Worse. The kind that lives under your skin, in your blood, burning through every vein like someone poured acid into your marrow. I tried to move and my body locked. Muscles seized. My back arched off whatever surface I was lying on and a scream tore out of my throat.
Hands pressed my shoulders down. Gentle. Firm.
"Easy." A woman's voice, low and calm. "You're safe. You're in Silvercrest."
Silvercrest. The word floated through the haze. Patrick's paper. The coordinates. I'd walked until my legs gave out and then I'd—
Another convulsion ripped through me. The scar on my neck went ice-cold, then burning hot, then cold again. The phantom bond clawed at the empty space where Corbin used to be, trying to find something that wasn't there anymore, and the absence felt like drowning.
I gasped for air that wouldn't come.
"Breathe," the woman said. "In through your nose. That's it."
I forced my eyes open. White ceiling. Pale walls. Medical equipment humming softly in the corner. A healer's room. The woman leaning over me had silver-streaked dark hair pulled back in a braid and the kind of steady gaze that said she'd seen worse than me.
"I'm Dara," she said. "Head healer. You collapsed on the highway. Our scouts brought you in."
I tried to speak. My throat was raw.
"Don't." She pressed a cup of water to my lips. "Small sips."
The water tasted like metal. I swallowed twice and turned my head away.
"How long?" My voice came out as a rasp.
"Two days," Dara said. She set the cup down and pulled a scanner from the table beside the bed. "You've been in and out. Mostly out. Bond-sickness hit you hard."
Bond-sickness. The clinical term for what happened when a fated mate bond was severed. I'd heard of it. Heard it could kill you if the bond was strong enough. If the rejection was sudden enough.
I looked at the ceiling and felt nothing.
"We ran blood work," Dara continued. Her tone stayed calm, but something shifted in it. Something careful. "There's wolfsbane in your system. A lot of it."
I went very still.
"Not a recent dose," she said. "This is accumulated. Years of micro-dosing. It's built up in your tissues, your bone marrow. It's why your wolf never surfaced."
The room tilted.
Patrick had said it. At the border. But hearing it from a healer—from someone who'd run the tests, seen the proof in my blood—made it real in a way I hadn't let myself feel yet.
My mother had poisoned me.
For years.
Deliberately.
"Can you purge it?" I asked.
Dara hesitated. "Yes. But it won't be easy. The wolfsbane is deep. Flushing it will take weeks, maybe months. And it's going to hurt."
"More than this?"
"Different," she said quietly. "Your body will fight the purge. You'll feel like you're being torn apart from the inside. But if we don't do it, your wolf stays caged. Permanently."
I closed my eyes. Somewhere inside me, buried under years of poison and a dead mate bond, my wolf stirred. Faint. Furious. Alive.
"Do it," I said.
Dara nodded once. "I'll prepare the protocol. But there's something else you should know."
I looked at her.
"The Lycan Prince requested the blood panel personally," she said. "He's the one who authorized the purge. Full resources. No restrictions."
My chest tightened. "Why?"
Dara's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes. "You'll have to ask him."
She left before I could respond.
I lay there in the silence, staring at the ceiling, feeling the bond-sickness burn through me in waves. The scar on my neck throbbed. The empty space where Corbin used to be ached like a missing limb.
And underneath it all, faint but growing stronger, my wolf paced.
---
I didn't see the Lycan Prince for two days.
Dara came and went. She brought water, broth, medications that dulled the worst of the convulsions but never quite stopped them. She explained the purge protocol in detail: herbal infusions to break down the wolfsbane, physical therapy to keep my muscles from atrophying, pain management that would only do so much.
I listened. I nodded. I didn't ask about the Prince again.
On the third day, I woke to the scent of winter frost.
It cut through the medicinal smell of the room—sharp, clean, cold in a way that made you think of snow on pine trees and frozen rivers under moonlight. I turned my head toward the door and saw him.
He stood in the hallway just outside the open doorway. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair, gray eyes, the kind of presence that didn't need to announce itself because you felt it the moment he entered a space.
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the wall beside the door, his hands loose at his sides, his posture still.
Then he turned.
Our eyes met.
The scent hit me again—winter frost, but underneath it something else. Something wild and green and alive. Honeysuckle in winter. The combination shouldn't have worked. It did.
My wolf slammed against the cage.
The Prince's eyes flashed gold. Just for a second. Then gray again.
He took one step toward the door. Stopped. His jaw tightened.
Then he turned and walked away.
I stared at the empty hallway.
Dara appeared a moment later, carrying a tray. She set it down without comment, checked my vitals, adjusted the IV drip.
"That was him," I said. My voice was hoarse.
"Yes."
"Why didn't he come in?"
Dara looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, very quietly, "Because you flinched."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
She was right. I had flinched. The moment he'd stepped toward the door, my body had recoiled—an instinct I hadn't even been aware of, born from a bond that had been used as a weapon.
Dara finished with the IV and straightened. "He's been standing in that hallway every night since you arrived. He doesn't come in. He just… stands there. Then he leaves."
She walked out before I could ask why.
I lay there in the dark, feeling the bond-sickness burn, feeling my caged wolf rage, feeling the faint ghost of winter frost linger in the air.
And for the first time since the rejection, I felt something other than pain.
I felt curious.
