The poultice took four days to prepare.
I started with the base—yarrow root and comfrey leaf, ground fine in the mortar I'd kept from my first year in the workshop. The silver-wound aftercare compound required precision. Too much heat and the active compounds would break down. Too little and they wouldn't bind. I worked in the kitchen after midnight when no one would interrupt, measuring each ingredient twice, checking the texture against the reference notes I'd copied from the pack library's restricted medical texts.
The rare ingredients had been harder. Moonpetal extract, which only grew in the high forest three territories north. I'd traded two of my own silver pieces to a traveling merchant for a single vial. White willow bark, aged at least five years. I'd found that in the Healer's personal stores and left a formal request note, which she'd approved without comment.
By the fourth night, the compound was ready—a pale cream that smelled faintly of mint and something deeper, earthier. I transferred it into a ceramic bowl, one I'd thrown myself in the workshop, and wrapped it in clean linen.
I told myself it was practical. Silver poisoning left aftereffects—muscle weakness, nerve damage, lingering pain. Leland needed to be strong. The pack needed him strong.
I didn't let myself think about the other reason. The one that made my wolf press against the suppression every time I ground another root, the one that whispered that maybe if I could just help him heal, the bond would remember what his conscious mind had forgotten.
I brought the poultice to his office on a Tuesday afternoon.
The door was open. Leland sat behind his desk, the Healer standing beside him reviewing something on a tablet. Beta Rowan leaned against the far wall. Gamma Farris occupied one of the chairs across from Leland. Two senior Deltas—Wren and Cormac—stood near the window, their postures formal.
A recovery consultation. I should have checked first.
I hesitated in the doorway, the wrapped bowl in my hands, and Rowan's gaze flicked to me. Something moved behind his eyes—concern, maybe, or warning—but he didn't speak.
Leland looked up.
For half a second, I thought I saw recognition. Then his expression closed.
"What do you want?" His voice was flat.
I stepped inside. Set the bowl on the edge of his desk, careful not to let the linen touch any of his papers.
"Silver-wound aftercare," I said quietly. "The compound in the medical texts. It helps with nerve recovery."
The Healer glanced at the bowl, then at me. Her face gave nothing away.
Leland stared at the wrapped ceramic for a long moment. Then he looked at me.
"You made this."
It wasn't a question. I nodded anyway.
He reached out. I thought he was going to unwrap it, check the contents, maybe ask the Healer to verify the ingredients.
Instead, he backhanded it off the desk.
The ceramic shattered on the stone floor. Pale cream splattered across the dark rock, across the leg of Gamma Farris's chair, across the edge of the rug I'd helped Jocelyn choose three years ago.
The room went silent.
Leland's voice, when it came, was not Alpha tone. It was colder than that. More deliberate.
"Your scent on anything you touch disgusts me," he said. Each word precise. Measured. "You are not to bring things into my space again. Do you understand?"
I understood that everyone in the room was looking at the floor now. I understood that Rowan's hand had curled into a fist against the wall. I understood that Delta Wren's face had gone very pale.
I understood that my wolf was clawing at the suppression hard enough that I could taste blood in the back of my throat.
I went very still. The way you do when you're caught in something and you know that struggling will only make it worse. Conserve your strength. Wait for the pressure to ease. Survive the next sixty seconds.
Then I crouched and began picking up the broken ceramic.
The pieces were sharp. One of them cut my palm. I watched a thin line of red well up and didn't feel it.
I gathered each shard carefully, setting them in my apron pocket. The cream was already soaking into the stone. Four days of work. Two silver pieces. Five years of believing that care mattered.
I stood. Turned. Walked out.
Behind me, I heard nothing. No one spoke. No one moved.
I made it to the corridor before my hands started shaking.
By evening, Delta Wren had submitted a transfer request to the Clearwater Pack, two territories east.
Rowan told me in the hallway outside the kitchens, his voice low, his eyes on the floor.
"He's not the only one thinking about it," Rowan said quietly.
I looked at him. "Don't."
"Ashlyn—"
"Don't leave because of me." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "The pack needs you. Leland needs you."
Rowan's jaw worked. "What Leland needs," he said finally, "is to remember who the hell you are."
He walked away before I could answer.
I went back to my quarters—the small room in the east wing I'd moved into the day after Leland woke, the day he made it clear I was no longer welcome in the Alpha's suite. I sat on the narrow bed and pulled the ceramic shards out of my apron pocket one by one, lining them up on the windowsill.
Seven pieces. The bowl had broken into seven pieces.
I counted them twice to be sure.
Then I lay down, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling until the sky outside went dark and my wolf finally, mercifully, went quiet.
