The purge began on a Monday morning.

Dara brought the first infusion at dawn—a dark liquid that smelled like burnt herbs and something metallic I couldn't name. She poured it into a cup and handed it to me without ceremony.

"Drink it fast," she said. "It tastes worse if you sip."

I drank it in three swallows. It burned going down, left a bitter coating on my tongue that made my teeth ache.

Then I waited.

Nothing happened for the first hour. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the window, feeling the bond-sickness pulse through me in familiar waves. The scar on my neck throbbed. The empty space where Corbin used to be ached like a bruise that wouldn't heal.

Then the cramping started.

It began in my stomach—a tight, twisting pain that spread outward through my ribs, my spine, my limbs. My hands curled into fists. My breath came short and sharp.

"Lie down," Dara said. She was already moving, pulling the blanket back, guiding me onto my side. "This is the wolfsbane breaking down. Your body's trying to expel it."

I pressed my face into the pillow and bit down hard.

The pain got worse.

It felt like my bones were grinding against each other, like every muscle was being pulled tight and twisted. I couldn't stay still. I curled up, stretched out, curled up again. Nothing helped.

Dara stayed. She didn't speak. She just sat in the chair beside the bed, one hand resting lightly on my shoulder, a steady presence that kept me tethered when the pain tried to pull me under.

I don't know how long the first wave lasted. An hour. Maybe two.

When it finally eased, I was drenched in sweat. My hands were shaking. My throat was raw from the sounds I'd been making—not screams, exactly, but close.

Dara pressed a cool cloth to my forehead. "That was the easy part," she said quietly.

I laughed. It came out broken.

---

The next three weeks blurred together.

The infusions came twice a day. The pain came in waves—sometimes sharp and sudden, sometimes slow and grinding. I learned to recognize the signs: the tightness in my chest that meant a convulsion was coming, the ice-cold burn in my veins that meant the wolfsbane was breaking loose, the bone-deep ache that meant my body was trying to rebuild itself from the inside out.

I stopped sleeping through the night. The pain woke me every few hours, and even when it didn't, the nightmares did.

I dreamed about the rejection ceremony. About Corbin's blank face. About my mother's hands folded calmly at her sides while the bond tore through me.

I dreamed about my wolf—caged, clawing, screaming.

Sometimes I woke up calling Corbin's name.

Not in longing. In rage.

The first time it happened, I came awake with my fists clenched in the sheets, his name on my lips like a curse. Dara was there—she was always there during the worst nights—and she didn't say anything. She just handed me water and waited until my breathing steadied.

The second time, I didn't call his name. I just lay there in the dark, feeling the fury coil tight in my chest, and thought: *I hope you feel this. I hope the ghost of the bond hurts you every single day.*

Then I went still.

Because underneath the rage, underneath the pain, something else was stirring.

It wasn't my wolf. Not fully. Not yet.

But it was there.

A flicker. A heartbeat that wasn't entirely my own.

I pressed my hand to my chest and felt it—faint, furious, alive.

---

By the fourth week, the worst of the purge had passed.

The pain was still there, but duller now. Manageable. I could move without feeling like my bones were going to shatter. I could eat without my stomach rebelling. I could think clearly for the first time in weeks.

Dara cleared me to leave the healing ward.

I didn't go far at first. Just the hallways. The courtyard. I walked slowly, testing my balance, relearning what it felt like to move without pain.

Silvercrest was bigger than Thornridge. Cleaner. The wolves I passed nodded at me—polite, distant, not unfriendly but not warm either. I was a stranger here. A bond-sick refugee with no pack and no wolf.

I didn't mind.

On the fifth day, I found the healing ward.

It was busy—wolves coming and going, minor injuries from training, a pup with a sprained ankle. I stood in the doorway and watched Dara work. She moved with the same calm efficiency she'd shown me, her hands steady, her voice low and reassuring.

She looked up and saw me. Raised an eyebrow.

"You need something?"

"Can I help?" The words came out before I'd thought them through.

Dara studied me for a moment. Then she nodded toward a cabinet in the corner. "Bandages need rolling. Supplies need sorting. You know how to do that?"

I did. I'd run Thornridge's pack house for years. I knew every medical supply by heart.

I rolled bandages. I sorted supplies. I didn't speak unless spoken to.

Dara didn't ask why I was there. She just let me work.

I came back the next day. And the day after that.

On the eighth day, a man appeared in the doorway. Tall, lean, with sharp eyes and the easy confidence of a wolf who knew exactly where he stood in the pack hierarchy. He watched me for a moment, then crossed to where Dara was checking inventory.

They spoke in low voices. I couldn't hear the words, but I saw Dara glance at me once, then nod.

The man left without saying anything to me.

Later, Dara told me his name was Owen Hale. Henrik's Future Beta.

"He noticed you," she said.

I kept sorting bandages. "Is that a problem?"

"No." Dara's tone was neutral. "He told Henrik you're going to be extraordinary."

I went very still.

Dara didn't elaborate. She just went back to her work.

That night, when I returned to my quarters, I found the room had been changed.

Not the furniture. Not the layout. Just the assignment.

I was in a different room now. Same size. Same simple furnishings.

But this one had a window facing the forest.

I stood at the window and looked out at the trees—dark pines stretching toward the sky, their branches swaying in the wind. I could hear them. The rustle of leaves. The creak of wood.

I'd mentioned it once. To Dara. In passing. A throwaway comment about missing the sound of trees.

I pressed my hand to the glass and felt something tight in my chest loosen.

Then I caught the scent.

Honeyed cedar and iron.

Faint. Drifting through the hallway outside my door.

I turned and stared at the closed door.

The scent lingered for a moment. Then it was gone.

I stood there in the silence, my hand still pressed to the window, and felt the thing inside me stir again.

Not my wolf.

Something else.

Something I refused to name.

I didn't think about Corbin much anymore.

That wasn't entirely true. I thought about him the way you think about a scar—aware it's there, aware it shaped you, but not dwelling on it unless something pressed directly on the wound.

What I didn't know, couldn't have known, was that he was thinking about me.

Dara told me later—months later, when the truth finally came out—that Thornridge was falling apart. Rogue attacks on the borders. Warriors deserting. Resources drained by a Luna who cared more about the title than the pack it was supposed to protect.

And Corbin, haunted.

Not by guilt. Not by regret. Not yet.

By my scent.

The phantom of it, anyway. Honeysuckle. Faint and fleeting, surfacing without warning during meals, during training sessions, during the nights he spent beside Lilith in the bed that should have been mine. A biological punishment his own wolf inflicted on him for severing a bond the Moon Goddess had ordained.

I didn't know any of this at the time.

I was too busy learning how to breathe again.

---

The healing ward became my anchor.

I wasn't officially assigned there. Dara never asked me to stay. But I kept coming back—rolling bandages, sorting supplies, cleaning instruments after the day's cases were done. The work was familiar. Grounding. It gave my hands something to do while my body finished purging the wolfsbane and my mind tried to make sense of everything that had broken.

I stayed late one night. A young pack member—barely eighteen—had come in with deep gashes across his ribs from a training accident. Dara had stitched him up, but the wounds needed dressing, and he was too shaken to do it himself.

I stayed. I cleaned the wounds. I wrapped the bandages carefully, the way I'd learned years ago in Thornridge's pack house. The boy thanked me in a quiet voice and left.

I was washing my hands at the sink when I felt the presence behind me.

Not heard. Felt.

The scent hit me first—honeyed cedar and iron, winter frost underneath. I turned.

Henrik stood in the doorway.

He didn't step inside. Just stood there, hands loose at his sides, his gray eyes steady on mine. He looked tired. Not physically—Lycan Princes didn't get physically tired the way regular wolves did—but something in his expression was worn.

"How are you sleeping?" he asked.

The question was so plain, so direct, that I almost laughed. Not as a prince. Not with any authority. Just as a man asking a question he actually wanted the answer to.

"Poorly," I said.

He nodded. Didn't try to fix it. Didn't offer empty reassurances.

He crossed the room—not quickly, not slowly, just with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was allowed to be—and sat in the chair beside the sink. Not close enough to crowd me. Close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off him.

We sat in silence.

It wasn't uncomfortable. It wasn't charged. It was just… quiet.

I dried my hands on a towel and set it down. My fingers were still shaking slightly—a lingering side effect of the purge that Dara said would fade eventually.

Henrik noticed. Of course he noticed.

But he didn't comment.

"The boy you helped tonight," he said after a moment. "Owen told me you stayed three hours past shift end to make sure he was stable."

I shrugged. "He needed help."

"You didn't have to give it."

"Yes, I did."

Henrik looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, "You're going to be extraordinary."

I went still.

Those were Owen's words. Dara had told me. But hearing them from Henrik—spoken in that low, certain voice—made them land differently.

I didn't know what to say.

Henrik stood. He didn't touch me. Didn't step closer. Just stood and looked at me once more, his gray eyes holding mine.

Then he left.

The honeyed cedar scent lingered long after he was gone.

This time, I didn't retreat from it.

---

I didn't see Henrik again for two weeks.

But I felt him.

In the room reassignment that gave me a window facing the forest. In the medical supplies that appeared in the healing ward before Dara even realized we were running low. In the quiet efficiency with which Silvercrest ran—no drama, no cruelty, just wolves doing their jobs and taking care of each other.

This was what a pack was supposed to feel like.

I'd forgotten.

On a Tuesday morning, Owen Hale appeared in the healing ward doorway. He watched me work for a moment—I was restocking bandages, my hands moving on autopilot—then crossed to where Dara was reviewing patient charts.

They spoke in low voices. I caught fragments: "…message from Thornridge…" "…Alpha jurisdiction…" "…Henrik's already handled it…"

Dara glanced at me once. Her expression didn't change.

Owen left without speaking to me directly.

I kept working.

Later, when the ward was empty and the evening shift had taken over, Dara sat down beside me at the supply table.

"Corbin tried to contact Silvercrest," she said. No preamble. No softening. "He sent a formal message requesting your return to Thornridge. Said you were still a pack member under his Alpha jurisdiction."

My hands stilled on the bandage I was rolling.

"Henrik replied," Dara continued. "Single sentence. You're a resident of Silvercrest under the Lycan Prince's personal protection. Any further correspondence will be treated as a territorial provocation."

I looked at her.

"He didn't tell you," Dara said. "Because he didn't think you needed to know. But I'm telling you now, because you deserve to know that Corbin tried, and Henrik shut it down before it ever reached you."

I sat there in the quiet healing ward, feeling something tight in my chest loosen and tighten at the same time.

Corbin had tried to reclaim me.

And Henrik had refused to let him.

Not because Henrik wanted to possess me. Not because he was staking a claim.

Because he'd meant what he said that night in the hallway.

*You're under my protection.*

I pressed my hand to the scar on my neck—the dead-white mark that would never glow gold again—and felt the phantom ache of the severed bond pulse once, faintly.

Then it faded.

And underneath it, something else stirred.

Not my wolf. Not yet.

But close.

So close I could almost hear her breathing.