The Seven-Day Severance

Chapter 2 The Stolen Sanctuary

The guards opened my door the next morning. Elara came in before I could step out. She wore my deep emerald robe, the one Caleb had given me after I saved his beta's life.

Two omegas followed with armfuls of pastel dresses. They opened my wardrobe and began moving my clothes aside.

My medical notes still covered the desk. A mortar sat beside the bed with dried blueleaf around its rim. Elara set a jeweled comb beside it.

I had spent years studying in that room until candle smoke blackened the ceiling above the desk. Now an omega folded Elara's lace nightgowns over the chair where patients usually sat.

"Serena, Caleb thinks I should have the main chambers," she said. "The Luna needs to be easy for the pack to reach. You understand, don't you?"

She smoothed the emerald silk over her hip and watched my face.

Her sympathy stopped at her mouth. The robe still carried a small burn near one cuff from the night I had saved Caleb's beta, and Elara rubbed at it as though it were dirt.

Caleb appeared in the doorway with his arms folded. "It's a room, Serena. We prepared the small chamber at the end of the hall for you. Don't make this difficult."

"And don't be childish," he added when I did not answer. "Elara has duties now. She needs the space."

Ten years of treating his warriors, and he expected me to argue over a bed.

I crossed to the healer's satchel lying on the quilt. Caleb shifted his weight when I picked it up, as though my silence left him with no fight to win.

A young warrior rushed through the open door and nearly slipped on the floorboards. Blood had soaked the side of his tunic, and one hand was clamped over the wound.

His breath came in short pulls. When he moved his hand, fresh blood ran between his fingers and dotted the floor near Elara's dresses.

He looked straight at me.

"Lady Serena! Rogues hit the western patrol. Joric's down. He can't breathe properly."

"Serena, get your kit." Caleb took a step toward me.

The order came without thought. For one second, he was already planning around the healer he had trusted in every emergency.

Then Elara made a small sound. Her hand went to her chest, and Caleb stopped.

"No. Elara will handle it," he said. "She is the Luna now. Serena can assist."

His phrasing turned stiff, meant for the omegas and the wounded warrior to hear. Elara nodded as if she had been waiting for the responsibility.

The warrior glanced at Elara, then back at me. Everyone in the room knew she could not tell a healing salve from a death cap mushroom.

I left them to settle it.

At the base of the old stone hearth, my fingers found the loose block my grandmother had shown me. I eased it out and reached into the hollow behind it.

Stone scraped softly against stone. Elara was asking the warrior where Joric had been injured, and no one behind me noticed the sound.

Her leather-bound journal came first, every page filled with her narrow handwriting.

The binding was worn smooth at the corners. Generations of women in my family had added remedies, warnings, and corrections to those pages.

Beneath it were my silk-wrapped scrolls, including the formulas I had created for plagues and poisons that had killed wolves in other packs.

Those compounds had kept the Red Moon Pack standing through outbreaks that emptied neighboring villages. Caleb had praised the survival rate without asking who designed the cures.

Those records belonged to my family and to me. The pack had never paid for them, copied them, or even asked where the remedies came from.

I carried them past Caleb. His attention caught on the journal, and his arms dropped to his sides. The injured warrior called for him before he could question me.

The chamber at the end of the hall held a cot, a washstand, and the few belongings they had moved. I locked the door and placed the journal and scrolls beneath the cot.

There was no desk and barely enough room to kneel beside the bed. I kept the satchel against my leg until I heard the key turn in the lock.

Cold prickled across my right wrist. Near the tip of the crescent moon, another line of the mate mark broke into silver dust.

Six days.