The Lycan Healer's Institute smelled like antiseptic and old parchment. Clean. Impersonal. Safe.
I moved into the residential quarters on the third floor the day after I left Silvercrest's territory. Two rooms. A small kitchen. A window that faced east so Lochlan could see the sunrise. It was not the Luna's suite I had lived in for three years. It was not draped in silk or lined with mahogany. But it was mine. Every corner of it. Mine.
I unpacked slowly. Lochlan's clothes went into the dresser by the window. His toys — the few I had taken — went into a basket near the bed. The leather folder with Rhodes' diagnosis went into the locked drawer of my desk. I did not open it. I did not need to. I had memorized every word on that page the night I wrote it.
Then I went back to work.
The first week, I saw forty-three patients. Routine diagnostics. Post-shift recovery assessments. Two emergency consults from allied packs whose healers could not explain why their wolves were rejecting standard treatments. I worked twelve-hour days and came home to Lochlan with my hands steady and my mind clear. At night, after he fell asleep, I sat at my desk and wrote.
I had kept detailed records during the three years I stabilized Rhodes' wolf. Not in any official file. Nothing that could be traced. Just my own private documentation — symptoms, treatments, energy expenditures, the slow erosion of his aura that only I could measure because I was the one holding it together. I had buried that research the moment I realized Rhodes would never acknowledge what I was doing for him. Now I pulled it back out.
I stripped every identifying detail. I anonymized the case. I restructured the observations into a clinical framework and wrote the paper I should have written three years ago, if I had not been too in love to see what my silence was costing.
*Aura Decay Syndrome in Alpha Wolves: Diagnostic Markers, Intervention Protocols, and Long-Term Prognosis.*
I submitted it to the Lycan Medical Council Journal on a Tuesday morning. Three weeks later, they accepted it for publication. A month after that, I received a formal commendation from the Lycan King's Chief Medical Advisor.
I did not celebrate. I filed the letter in my desk and went back to work.
The Institute's Director, an older healer named Callum, called me into his office six months after I returned.
"You've restructured half our diagnostic protocols," he said. He was not angry. He sounded impressed. "The council wants to know if you're planning to run this place."
I looked at him carefully. "Are you retiring?"
He smiled. "Eventually. But that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if you want to."
I thought about Lochlan upstairs, playing in the common room with two other healer pups. I thought about the work I had been doing — quietly, methodically, without asking permission — to rebuild the Institute's systems into something sharper, something better.
"Yes," I said.
Callum nodded. "Good. I'll recommend you to the council."
Three months later, I was appointed Director of the Lycan Healer's Institute. The youngest in its two-hundred-year history.
I did not cry. Not when they handed me the ceremonial seal. Not when Callum shook my hand and told me I had earned it. Not when I went upstairs and told Lochlan, who looked up at me with his serious dark eyes and said, "Does that mean we can stay?"
I knelt in front of him. I smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
"Yes," I said. "We can stay."
That night, after he fell asleep, I sat at my desk and looked out the window at the dark outline of the forest beyond the Institute's walls. Somewhere past that treeline, two hours south, Silvercrest's pack house stood lit and warm and full of wolves who had watched me walk away with nothing.
I pressed two fingers to my wrist. Pulse. Steady. Mine.
I did not cry.
***
I heard about the Mate Ceremony three days before it happened.
Mariana called. She did not ask if I was okay. She just said, "It's happening Saturday. Five allied Alphas confirmed. Edmund's making it a whole damn spectacle."
I was at my desk, reviewing a treatment protocol for a Gamma who had torn his rotator during a border skirmish. I set my pen down.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?" Mariana's voice sharpened. "Taylor, are you —"
"I'm fine."
"You don't sound fine."
"I am fine." I picked my pen back up. "Thank you for telling me."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I can come up there. If you want."
"I don't need you to."
"I didn't ask if you needed me to. I asked if you wanted me to."
I closed my eyes. I thought about sitting alone in these rooms while Rhodes marked another woman in front of everyone who had watched him reject me. I thought about Mariana driving two hours just to sit with me while I pretended I was fine.
"I want to be alone," I said quietly.
Mariana sighed. "Alright. But I'm one call away. You hear me?"
"I hear you."
I hung up. I went back to the treatment protocol. I finished it, filed it, and moved on to the next case.
On Saturday, I took Lochlan to the Institute's rooftop garden. We planted herbs. Rosemary. Thyme. Lavender for the healing salves I made in the lab downstairs. He helped me press the seeds into the soil, his small hands careful and precise.
"Mama, why are we planting today?" he asked.
I looked at him. At his dark curls and his serious eyes and the way he watched me like he was trying to understand something I was not saying.
"Because it's a good day for it," I said.
He nodded. He did not ask anything else.
That night, after he fell asleep, I sat at my desk and did not look south. I reviewed Lochlan's medical developmental charts — height, weight, early markers of wolf awakening potential. Everything was progressing normally. Better than normally. His bloodline, I noted with clinical satisfaction, was strong.
I did not think about the Mate Ceremony.
Or I told myself I didn't.
