The hospital corridor smelled like antiseptic and blood. My blood, metaphorically speaking—three years of my career, my reputation, everything I'd built in this pack, bleeding out across the polished tile while Marlee Burns coughed theatrically into a silk handkerchief.
"Luna Leah poisoned me," she gasped, her voice carrying perfectly to the cluster of visiting dignitaries from the Silver Ridge Pack. "Out of... out of jealousy."
I stood frozen, my healer's bag still in hand, watching the performance with a clarity so sharp it felt like my wolf had finally woken up after years of forced sleep. Marlee's collapse had been textbook—too controlled, too perfectly timed for maximum audience impact. The Wolfsbane extract I'd explicitly forbidden her to touch was still on her lips, the faint purple residue visible if anyone bothered to look closely.
No one was looking closely.
"Explain this." Wylder's voice hit the corridor like a physical force, his Alpha aura dropping every wolf present to their knees. Everyone except me. I'd stopped responding to his aura sometime around the second false accusation, my body finally recognizing what my heart had refused to admit: this man was not my protector. He was my warden.
"She ingested Wolfsbane extract against medical advice," I said, my voice steady, clinical. "The toxicity profile is consistent with deliberate consumption, not poisoning. If you examine her personal quarters, you'll find—"
"Enough." His Alpha tone cut through my explanation like it was nothing, like I was nothing. "You are hereby stripped of your Luna title and your Healer certification. Effective immediately, you are demoted to Omega status and exiled from the pack house."
The visiting dignitaries gasped. Someone's phone camera flashed. Marlee's theatrical coughing subsided just enough for her to meet my eyes over Wylder's shoulder, and the smile that flickered across her face lasted less than a second. But I saw it. Finally, I saw it.
"Gamma Silas will escort you to collect your belongings," Wylder continued, already turning back to Marlee, his hand gentle on her shoulder in a way it hadn't been with me in months. "You have one hour."
Silas Monroe appeared at my elbow, his expression carefully blank. He'd always been good at following orders without asking questions—a quality I'd once respected and now recognized as complicity.
The walk to what had been my shared bedroom felt longer than it should have. Pack servants lined the hallways, their faces ranging from pity to poorly concealed satisfaction. I kept my spine straight, my healer's bag clutched against my chest like armor. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me break.
The bedroom was exactly as I'd left it this morning—my medical journals stacked on the desk, Wylder's territorial scent still clinging to the sheets, the lyre I hadn't touched in three years gathering dust in the corner. Silas stationed himself at the door, arms crossed, while I pulled my single battered suitcase from the closet.
I packed methodically. Clothes. Toiletries. My grandmother's silver pendant. My medical certification—the original one, before Wylder had just publicly revoked it. My hands were steady until I reached for my journals, and that's when I knocked over the stack of Wylder's old financial ledgers on the edge of the desk.
They hit the floor with a sound like thunder. Papers scattered. And from a hidden compartment in the oldest ledger's spine, a single document slipped free and landed face-up at my feet.
I knew the letterhead before I even bent to pick it up. The Lycan Royal Seal. The International Fellowship Committee.
My hands shook as I read.
*Dear Ms. Leah Wallace, it is our honor to inform you that you have been selected for the Lycan Medical Fellowship...*
The date was three years ago. Three years. The same month I'd been told, apologetically, by a junior administrator, that my application had been unsuccessful. That another candidate—Marlee's cousin—had been chosen instead.
At the bottom of the page, two signatures authorized the transfer.
Wylder Wallace, Alpha, Black Moon Pack.
Marlee Burns, Beta, Black Moon Pack.
I stood there, the letter trembling in my hands, while the last fragile thread of loyalty I'd been clinging to—the belief that maybe, somehow, Wylder had been deceived rather than complicit—snapped cleanly in half.
He hadn't been fooled. He'd been the architect.
"Time's up," Silas said from the doorway.
I folded the letter carefully, precisely, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Then I zipped my suitcase closed, picked up my healer's bag, and walked out of the pack house for the last time.
I didn't look back. There was nothing left behind me worth seeing.
