The Last Pureblood Healer

Chapter 3 The Systemic Exile

I hadn't reached the outer hall when pack magic carried Kaelen's voice across the territory.

“Let it be known: Seraphina, former Luna, is declared a traitor to the Shadow Pack. For attempted murder and theft of sacred knowledge, she is exiled. Anyone who helps her will share her fate.”

The guards at the main gate opened the doors without touching me. Rain soaked my scorched tunic before I crossed the courtyard, and mud closed over my bare feet.

At the apothecary, Garris saw me coming and slammed his shutters. I had saved his son from bone-fever last winter. The baker's wife, who had shared tea with me a week ago, spat at my feet.

Fresh bread still cooled behind her window. I kept walking while rain carried the smell down the street after me.

One order from the Alpha had wiped out every favor they owed me.

It was a long, cold walk to the border. He was waiting for me.

Kaelen waited by the ancient border stone with a black umbrella. Elara stood dry beneath it, tucked under his arm. She held the Luna's silver wolf-head seal in one hand. My seal.

“One last chance.” Kaelen watched me stop in front of them, rain running into my eyes.

“Kneel. Beg forgiveness for your crime and hand over your family's true manuscript. You may remain in the outer villages. A pariah, but alive.”

Elara tightened her fingers around my seal.

I looked from him to the woman under his arm.

And I laughed.

The laugh came out rough enough to hurt my throat.

Kaelen’s face hardened. “You find this amusing?”

“I find *you* amusing.” I wiped the rain from my face. “You're offering me scraps from my own table.” I pulled a thick, leather-bound book from the last pocket of my tunic. Kaelen's eyes fixed on it.

“The manuscript,” he breathed.

“You want it? You think you deserve the knowledge my ancestors bled for? You can't tell a diamond from a shard of glass.”

I called up the last dregs of my innate magic and struck a spark against the book's corner. The dry pages caught at once.

I held it above the puddles while it burned. The heat reached my frozen fingers.

“Never.” I dropped the smoking remains into a puddle. “You will get nothing from me again.”

Kaelen stepped toward me, but I crossed the border stone before he could reach me.

The moment my foot touched unclaimed soil, a pulse of magic ran back through the Shadow Pack lands. I kept walking and never felt it.

Miles away, hundreds of glass vials shook on the shelves of the Alpha's warded storerooms. Their faint pureblood glow went out.

My magic had kept those mixtures stable for years without anyone noticing the work it did. Once the glow vanished, sediment gathered at the bottom of every vial.

The cures for bone-fever, antidotes for silver-poison, and balms for curse-rot all began to curdle.

Black streaks spread through the potions. One vial cracked, then another.

At the border, Kaelen watched me disappear into the rain. He never looked toward the storerooms.