VIOLA'S POV

The breakfast tray came at seven. It left at seven-oh-two.

I'd barely pushed myself upright when a kitchen aide in a gray apron walked in, set it on the rolling table, and then lifted it right back off again as a guard leaned through the doorway and said something I didn't catch. Oatmeal, toast, a paper cup of orange juice. All of it disappeared down the hall.

"Hey," I called. "That was mine."

The guard didn't bother looking at me. "Orders. You're on standby for the next session. No food."

The door clicked shut. The rolling table sat there, empty, with a faint ring of condensation where the juice had been.

My stomach cramped. I hadn't eaten since I'd woken up in this body, and Viola's body hadn't been eating much before that.

Nell came in twenty minutes later with a blood pressure cuff and the bedside nursing log tucked under her arm. She took one look at the bare table and frowned.

"Did they already take it?"

"Someone said I'm supposed to fast. For the ritual."

She opened the log and ran her finger down the page, then flipped back two more. "There's no fasting order. Nothing from Silas, nothing from the Alpha. You're actually flagged for low blood sugar." She tapped a line. "I wrote that myself on Tuesday."

"Then write this down too." I nodded at the log. "Write down who ordered it."

Nell hesitated, pen hovering. "Viola, if I put a guard's name in here, it goes in front of Silas."

"Good. Put the time. Put the reason he gave. Put that I asked for food and didn't get any."

She looked at me for a second longer than she needed to. Then she wrote it, neat and small, and turned the book so I could read it.

*0702. Breakfast removed by order of guard on duty. Stated reason: standby for session. No fasting order on file. Patient requested meal. Denied.*

The door opened before she could close the log.

Derek came in fresh from a shower, hair still damp, a pressed shirt under his dark coat. He looked at the nursing log before he looked at me.

"What are you writing?" he asked.

Nell closed the book halfway. "Her breakfast was taken, Alpha. There isn't an order for her to fast."

"She's supposed to be ready when Silas calls."

"Then Silas can give me a written reason," I said. "So far nobody has."

Derek held out his hand for the log. Nell gave it to him. He read the entry, then looked at the bare rolling table.

"You could have asked me," he said.

"I did. Yesterday I asked for Chloe's diagnosis. You locked the door. This morning I asked for breakfast. Your guard took it away."

"I'm trying to keep Chloe alive."

"I know what you're trying to do. I'm telling you what it's costing me."

He set the book on the counter. For a moment I thought he might actually read the page about low blood sugar. Instead he turned it facedown.

"I'll have them bring you another tray," he said. "When you cooperate with Silas. One session, Viola. Then you can eat and rest all you want."

Nell's pencil stopped moving.

"You hear yourself, right?" I asked.

"I'm offering to help you."

"You're offering me my own breakfast in exchange for more blood."

He went very still. Then he stepped closer and reached for the strap at my wrist. I jerked before he touched it. My arm ached from the old punctures, and the leather was still buckled tight enough to leave a mark.

Derek's hand paused over the buckle.

"You used to trust me," he said.

I wanted to. That was the problem. Somewhere inside this body, a girl was still holding a caramel wrapper and remembering the boy who'd sat beside her when her mother died. Ceci stirred at the memory, weak and frightened.

"Then give me a reason to," I said. "Let Nell take the strap off. Let her give me food. Show me what Chloe actually has."

He looked at Nell.

"Leave it on," he said. "Silas will decide when she's fit to move."

The little hope I'd felt went cold.

"Write that down, too," I told Nell.

"Viola." Derek's voice sharpened.

"His name. His order. The time." I looked at him instead of the strap. "If you're sure it's right, you shouldn't mind having it on paper."

He walked to the door and opened it. A guard straightened in the hall.

"No one takes her out of this wing without my permission," he said. "And I want her at the pack breakfast tomorrow. She needs to remember she's still part of this family."

He left without waiting to hear what I thought of that.

---

Nell stayed until the sound of his boots had gone. Then she turned the log over and finished the entry.

"Did he mean it?" I asked. "About tomorrow?"

"He told the kitchen to set the family table before he came here." She glanced toward the door. "I don't know what he's planning."

"Neither do I."

I watched her take the blood pressure cuff off my arm. There was a fresh bruise where it had pressed against the older ones.

"Will the clinic get my transfer request?" I asked.

Nell hesitated. Then she lifted the corner of a small receipt tucked into her pocket, just enough for me to see the neutral clinic's stamp.

"The referral pouch was collected last night. I got a receipt when they took it. It's outside Silverpine's filing system now."

I let out a breath I'd been holding since the guard turned the lock.

"Keep that receipt," I said.

"I will."

She checked the door, then went to the counter and filled a paper cup with water. She held it where I could reach it without pulling against the strap.

"I can't get an unauthorized meal past that guard," she said quietly. "But I can record what happened. And the outside evaluation request is already on its way."

"That's more than anyone else has done."

Her mouth tightened. She didn't look pleased by it.

"It shouldn't be," she said.

I drank slowly. My stomach hurt, and my arm hurt, and none of it made me want to turn the gray stone on again. The monitor beside the table stayed dark.

Tomorrow he'd make me sit with the pack as though this was a family disagreement. Tonight his order still held the door shut.

I watched Nell put the nursing log under her arm. She took her receipt with her when she left.

At least one request he'd tried to block had made it outside his walls.

VIOLA'S POV

Derek didn't come to drain me that morning. He came to collect me.

"Breakfast," he said, holding the door open. "The pack's waiting. You're coming."

Two guards walked me down the corridor with Nell trailing behind, the nursing log hugged against her chest. My legs felt like wet paper. By the time we reached the dining hall, the long oak table was already full, and every conversation dropped at once.

My chair sat at Derek's right hand, the way it had for three years.

A folded place card rested on the plate. Cream stock, gold ink, careful handwriting.

*Chloe.*

Derek stood before I could say anything. He didn't look at me. He looked at the table.

"While Viola recovers, Chloe will handle Luna duties. Events, visitors, the council calendar. I expect everyone to support her."

Chloe rose from the seat beside his, pale and soft-eyed in a cream sweater. Derek reached into his pocket and took out a small silver brooch shaped like a crescent moon.

His mother's brooch. The one he'd pinned on my collar the night of our engagement, telling me it had been waiting for the right Luna.

He fastened it to Chloe's sweater with careful fingers. Someone started clapping. Then everyone did.

An older she-wolf from the kitchen staff slid a silver tea tray across the table until it bumped my hip. Teapot, sugar bowl, a single porcelain cup.

"Go on," she said, not unkindly. "Pour for the acting Luna. She shouldn't have to strain herself."

The room waited. Old Viola would have smiled, poured, and called it an honor.

I picked up the tray and set it back on the table, harder than I meant to. The cup rattled on its saucer. I closed my hand around the back of the nearest chair until the dizziness passed.

"She can have the chair," I said. "She cannot have my blood."

Nobody clapped for that.

Chloe was already moving toward me, her hands lifted, her eyes shining.

"Viola, please don't be upset. I never asked for any of this." She wrapped her arms around me before I could step away. "I just want us to be okay."

Her fingers slid down my left arm and pressed, right through the sleeve, on the inside of my elbow.

On the fresh scab.

Pain shot up to my shoulder. I jerked back. It wasn't a shove. I simply took my arm out of her hands.

Chloe stumbled like I'd thrown her. She fell sideways into Derek, who caught her by the waist.

"Chloe." His voice went low and furious. He turned it on me. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I didn't answer him. I turned to Nell, who was standing closest, and rolled up my sleeve.

The cuff was damp. A dark red spot had soaked through the cotton. Underneath, the puncture mark had split open again, a thin line of blood running toward my wrist.

"Write this down," I told her. "Left arm, inner elbow. The site from my last session. It was closed when I woke up."

Nell's eyes went from the wound to Chloe's hand and back. She opened the log.

"You pushed her," Derek said. "In front of everyone. She can barely stand."

"She hugged me and pressed on this." I held my arm up, so the whole table could see it. "I moved away. That's what happened."

"She was trying to apologize to you."

"Then she can apologize to the healer who has to close it again." I didn't lower my arm. "Look at my arm before you ask me to apologize."

For three years, I'd said sorry for everything. For being in the way. For being tired. For crying where he could see it. Every apology had been a coin I paid for one more day of being believed, and I'd never once been paid back.

I wasn't buying anything today.

Derek's gaze dropped to the blood. Something flickered across his face, too quick to name. Then Chloe made a small, shaky sound against his chest, and it was gone.

"Sit down," he said. "Wait until she's calm. Then we'll talk about this like adults."

"There's nothing to wait for."

I twisted the ring off my finger.

It stuck at the knuckle. My hands had gotten thinner since he'd put it there. When it finally came free, the skin underneath was pale and dented, like the ring had left a shape of itself behind.

I set it on the edge of the silver tray, beside the teacup nobody had filled.

"From now on, take Luna business to the acting Luna," I said. "The calendar, the visitors, all of it. Don't send it to me."

The room went so quiet I could hear the radiator ticking.

Derek moved fast. His hand closed over the ring and swallowed it into a fist, as if he could undo the moment by hiding the evidence.

"Don't do this, Viola." His knuckles were white. "You want me to back down about Chloe, fine, we can discuss it. But not like this. Not in front of the pack."

He thought it was a move. A threat. A way to make him come running.

"I'm not asking you to back down," I said. "If you want her in my place, stop asking me to fill it."

His fist didn't open. He stared at me like I was speaking a language he used to know.

I didn't need his shock. I didn't need anyone in this room to witness what I'd decided. My thumbprint was already sitting in a canvas pouch somewhere downtown.

"Take her back," Derek said to the guards, without taking his eyes off me.

The walk back felt twice as long. Nell stayed at my elbow, close enough to catch me. I didn't let her have to.

We turned the last corner into the treatment wing and stopped.

Two strangers stood outside my door.

The woman was in her forties, short silver-streaked hair, a battered leather medical case at her feet with the corners worn white from travel. The man next to her was tall, broad through the shoulders, in a dark jacket with road dust on the hem. He didn't move like a guard. He moved like someone the guards should be worried about.

My skin prickled. Alpha. Not ours.

Derek's footsteps came up fast behind us. He must have followed.

The woman didn't greet anyone. She walked straight past the guards, into the room, and looked at the treatment table. At the leather restraint still hanging open from the rail, stained dark at the buckle.

"I'm Mira Lowell. Clinic referral." She turned to me, her eyes going to my bleeding sleeve. "Was this used on you?"

"Every session."

"Take it off the table," Mira said to the nearest guard. "Now. My patient doesn't go near that again."

The guard looked at Derek.

"She's not your patient," Derek said.

The tall man reached into his jacket and held up a folded document. A wax seal was pressed into the bottom corner, deep green, stamped with a mountain and a river.

"Rowan Hale, Alpha of Greyhaven. This is a border passage seal under the neutral medical corridor agreement." His voice was calm and unhurried. "Your council signed it twelve years ago. Any patient who files for outside evaluation gets safe transport and an independent healer. No pack can block it."

The guards stepped back from the door. One of them actually lowered his eyes.

Derek's jaw tightened. "This is a pack matter. She's my mate."

Rowan didn't argue with him. He didn't even look at him. He looked at me.

"I'm asking Viola," he said. "Do you want to leave with us?"

The question hung there.

Nobody had ever asked me that. Not in this body, and from everything Viola remembered, not in hers either. Questions about me were always asked over my head. Decisions about me were always signed against walls.

Rowan waited. He didn't rush me, and he didn't fill the silence for me.

*Yes,* Ceci whispered, faint but sure. *Yes.*

I nodded.

Beside me, Derek's hand came up, reaching for my elbow the way he used to when I stumbled on stairs, a long time ago.

It stopped in midair, an inch from my sleeve.

And for the first time, I watched him realize he didn't get to decide where I went next.

VIOLA'S POV

Mira's examination room was a converted supply office at the end of the treatment wing. It had no restraints and no stone wired into needles, just a folding cot, a desk lamp, and her leather case open on a chair.

She pressed a moonstone gauge to the hollow of my throat. It was the size of a coin, set in tarnished brass, and a hairline crack ran straight through the middle.

"It was like that when I bought it," she said, catching my look. "Still reads true."

The stone stayed milky and dull. Mira waited a full minute. It never warmed past a faint gray.

"Your wolf is running on fumes." She took the gauge away and wrote something on a pad, tore the sheet off, and signed it with a hard slash. "Stop-treatment order. Effective immediately. No transfers, no sessions, no healing output of any kind."

She set it on my knee. The ink was still wet.

"Your wolf needs rest. She does not owe anyone another treatment."

I read it twice. Ceci stirred, slow and heavy, like someone rolling over in their sleep.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"Honestly? I don't know yet." Mira sat on the edge of the desk. "Your mate bond is sitting on top of the damage like a bandage. I can see some of it, not all. I'll only get an accurate picture when that connection starts to loosen."

"And if I break it?"

"Then you do it my way." She held my eyes. "A protective circle first. Stabilization before and after. If anyone tries to force a rejection on you in front of a crowd, you refuse. In your condition, a public severing could tear her apart."

I thought of the dining hall. The brooch on Chloe's sweater. A whole table watching.

"Okay," I said. "Your way."

Mira nodded once, like that settled something, and picked up a fresh sampling kit.

"Now let's see what's actually wrong with Miss Chloe."

---

Chloe sat on the cot twenty minutes later with her arms wrapped around herself.

"I'm not doing this alone," she said. "Not without Derek."

"It's one vial," Mira said. "Thirty seconds."

"I don't know you." Her voice wobbled. "For all I know, she sent you."

"Your Alpha's guards confirmed my seal at the gate." Mira didn't raise her voice. "But I'll wait."

Derek arrived fast, like he'd been standing at the end of the hall. Chloe reached for his hand, and only then did she hold out her arm.

Mira drew the sample, capped it, and pressed a red wax seal over the top. She wrote a number on the label, read it aloud, and had a guard initial it.

"Full review takes until tomorrow," she said. "Nobody touches this vial but me."

Derek watched it go into her case. Then he looked at me.

"Tomorrow, then," I said. "Will you wait for the results?"

Mira held out a warning sheet, a copy of the stop-treatment order with a list of risks typed underneath. Derek took it, glanced at the first line, and turned it face-down on the desk without reading the rest.

"Chloe doesn't have until tomorrow." His thumb pressed the paper flat. "One more session, Viola. The last one. After that, you can go do whatever this is."

The last one. Viola had heard that before. Three times, according to her memories, each time sounding just as reasonable.

"If you trust the diagnosis, you can wait for someone else to confirm it," I said.

"Silas already confirmed it."

"Silas didn't sign anything."

His jaw worked. "You'd really let her suffer one more night to prove a point?"

I used to think his impatience meant he was scared, that it meant he cared too much to slow down. I looked at the sheet under his hand, the words he wouldn't turn over, and understood. He just didn't want to hear no.

"Read the warning," I said. "Then ask me again."

He didn't read it. He helped Chloe off the cot and walked her out.

---

I made it four steps into the corridor before my knees went soft.

The wall caught my shoulder. Then a voice did.

"Viola." Rowan had stopped a careful distance away. He didn't grab me. "Tell me where it hurts before I touch you."

"Left arm," I managed. "The elbow."

"Can I take your right side?"

I nodded. His palm settled under my good elbow, warm and steady, and his other hand hovered near my back without landing. I leaned in because I had to.

His jacket smelled like cedar and clean wool, like somewhere cold and far away from here. I was suddenly very aware of how close he was, of the solid width of him, and my pulse picked up in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss.

That was ridiculous. I was still wearing another man's mark.

I straightened the moment my legs held and pulled my arm back. He let it go without a word. No hand lingering, no "are you sure," no tug back toward him.

Instead, he hooked a plastic chair with his foot and slid it behind me, close enough that I could sit without reaching.

"Thanks," I said, sinking into it.

"You did the work." He stepped back and leaned against the opposite wall, giving me the whole hallway. "I just moved furniture."

I laughed, short and surprised. It hurt my ribs. It still felt good.

---

By evening, the plan was written down.

Mira confirmed the transport. The neutral corridor van would leave from the east gate at nine the morning after the Moon Ceremony. Rowan's people would drive behind it to the border.

Nell brought the property claim form. I signed it in real ink this time, my hand steadier than it had been in days, authorizing the clinic to collect what was legally mine from the pack house.

"One more thing," I told Mira as she packed her case. "When I'm ready to cut the bond, I want you there. Watching. Nobody else decides when."

"I'll be there," she said. "When you ask. Not before."

An hour later, a guard knocked and handed me a folded note on Derek's letterhead. Two lines, his slanted handwriting.

*Reconsider before the Moon Ceremony. After that, I won't ask again.*

I read it and set it on the empty rolling table.

Nell was folding my sweaters into the small travel case the clinic had sent. There wasn't much. Three years in this house, and most of what Viola owned fit into one bag.

"I could talk to him," Nell said quietly. "Tell him what Mira said. Maybe if it comes from me..."

"Don't." I zipped the case and wheeled it to the door, standing it upright by the frame where I'd see it first thing. "You've done enough. You don't have to beg for me."

"He might listen."

"He had a whole sheet of paper to listen to. He turned it over."

Nell's mouth tightened, but she didn't argue.

I sat on the edge of the cot. My chest ached, a deep, stupid ache that had his name on it. Sixteen years of keeping that caramel wrapper didn't disappear because I'd signed a form. It was going to hurt for a long time.

That was fine. It could hurt in Greyhaven.

*Tomorrow?* Ceci asked, so faint I almost missed it.

"Tomorrow," I said out loud.

Nell looked up.

I glanced at Derek's note on the table, then at the case waiting by the door.

"Whatever he decides at that ceremony," I said, "I'm taking my wolf with me."