He Lost the Mate Who Made Him Powerful

Chapter 4 The Master Healer

By the time I finished the last batch of healing tonics, there was no time left to change. I had spent the entire morning bent over a steaming copper kettle, sleeves pushed up, hair coming loose, the hem of my dress stained with crushed herbs and ash. Dust dulled my clothes, and there was nothing elegant about the way I looked. I went to the banquet anyway.

Lance had arranged tonight's event to formally present me to the pack, and he had spared no expense. I could see that before I even stepped inside. Luxury gleamed everywhere, from the line of black cars at the entrance to the crystal lanterns suspended above the courtyard.

I hurried toward the doors, already late, and nearly made it inside. A man stepped into my path.

I frowned and looked up, and my heart gave one hard, sickening thud.

It was Huck. Vivian stood just behind him, her expression sour and watchful as her gaze moved slowly over my clothes.

Huck looked me over too, taking in the ash on my sleeves, the wrinkled skirt, the dust at my hem. One corner of his mouth curled with contempt.

"Lucy," he said, ugly amusement threading through his voice, "if you were this desperate to come see me, you could've at least changed first. You didn't even bother to put on something decent. You look pathetic."

For one stunned second, I could not answer. He thought I was here for him. He thought that after all these days away, I had finally broken and come back to beg.

"Huck, I'm not here to see you." My voice came out quiet, flat, and more tired than angry. "Move. I need to go inside."

Vivian let out a sharp laugh behind her hand. "Lucy, this isn't the kind of banquet just anyone can walk into," she said, her tone bright with malice. "Without Huck, you're nothing. You probably wouldn't even know how to get past the front entrance on your own. A she-wolf ending up like this is honestly embarrassing."

A few werewolves passing through the entrance slowed when they saw us. Some recognized me immediately, and murmurs began to ripple through the hall.

"Isn't that Lucy? Huck's wife? Why is she dressed like that?"

"I heard they had a falling-out. Supposedly, Huck has someone new now..."

Something flickered across Huck's face at that. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Lucy, don't do this here. If you're willing to admit you were wrong, I can take you inside. But looking like this? You're making a scene, and you're making me look bad."

He reached for my wrist.

I jerked away before he could touch me and took a step back, lifting my chin to meet his eyes.

"Huck, I'm going to say this one more time. I am not here for you. This banquet wouldn't even be happening without me."

For half a beat, silence hung between us. Then Huck laughed. Vivian laughed with him. The sound scraped something raw inside my chest.

Huck shook his head, scorn written all over his face. "Now you're lying too? That's almost impressive. Lucy, other than being my wife, you have no standing at all. Why would anyone hold a banquet for you? You sound ridiculous."

I drew in a slow breath. There was no point wasting another word on either of them. I turned toward the entrance again.

That was when Huck grabbed my wrist hard enough to hurt. "Where have you been these past few days?" he demanded. "Do you have any idea what things have been like at home? Arthur's been sick over and over again. Did it never occur to you that your son might need you?"

I tore my arm free and looked at him with a coldness I no longer bothered to hide. "When I was home, you never once said you needed me. You and Arthur made it very clear that Vivian was better than me in every possible way."

By then, more werewolves had stopped to watch, and the whispering around us grew louder. Besides Huck, Vivian's face abruptly drained of color. She shrank behind him as if frightened, and when she spoke, her voice came out thin and trembling.

"Huck, this is all my fault. You shouldn't talk to Lucy like this because of me. I'll make it right. I'll pay for this with my life if I have to."

Before I could make sense of what she was doing, she snatched up a fruit knife from a nearby table. Then she dragged it hard across her wrist. Blood welled at once. Several werewolves screamed.

Huck went pale. "Vivian!" He caught her as she sagged, pulling her against his chest while blood streamed down her hand and onto the floor. She lay limp in his arms, pale and shaking, and turned toward me with wet, pleading eyes.

She whispered, crying now. "Lucy, I hope you can forgive me. I'm sorry. I just... I've loved Huck for too long. We grew up together. I couldn't accept that he married you."

She broke into sobs against Huck's shoulder.

Huck shouted for a pack doctor, his voice hoarse with panic. Several werewolves rushed forward at once. Then he straightened, turned, and slapped me across the face!

The blow landed so hard my head snapped to the side. For a second, I felt nothing but the shock of it. Then the pain bloomed across my cheek, hot, sharp, and humiliating. I lifted one hand to my face and stared at him.

"You hit me?"

His chest was heaving. Rage twisted his features into something I barely recognized. "If you have a grievance, you take it out on me! What kind of werewolf threatens Vivian? You know how timid she is!"

My lashes trembled. My eyes burned. Every breath scraped on the way in.

Huck had humiliated me before. He had neglected me, abandoned me, betrayed me, and made me feel invisible in my own home. But this was the first time he had ever laid a hand on me.

Around us, werewolves were still whispering. A few of them even laughed under their breath, and every sound seemed to go straight through me. I clenched my hands so hard my nails bit into my palms.

After a moment, Huck exhaled and looked at me with the weary condescension of a man who believed he was being generous. "Lucy, enough. Come home now. Take care of Arthur, and I'll pretend none of this happened. If you keep showing up like this and humiliating yourself in public, you're only going to make it worse."

He looked at me as if I were pathetic, as if I were some discarded wife who could not accept that she had been replaced.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but a deep voice spoke behind me first.

"Lucy. You're finally here."

I turned. The head steward stood a few paces away, an elderly wolf with enormous standing in the pack. He bowed to me with formal respect. Behind him stood two attendants holding a velvet tray, and on the tray lay a gown that shimmered like poured light beneath the lanterns. Beside it rested a jeweled tiara.

"Lance has been waiting for you," the steward said. His voice was not loud, but it carried cleanly through the entrance hall. "Please come with me and change."

The words landed like a blow. Huck's expression froze.

Vivian's eyes widened so far that they looked almost unnatural. "You... You must be mistaken." She blurted. "She's nothing. She's a discarded she-wolf. How could someone like her possibly..."

The steward turned to Vivian with a gaze so cool it cut, his tone distant but impeccably polite. "Lucy is the most honored guest of this evening. If you speak to her that way again, I will have no choice but to ask you to leave."

Then he turned back to me and extended his hand with quiet formality.

For a moment, I could not move. My cheek still burned. My wrist still ached where Huck had grabbed it. And yet I straightened and took a deep breath. I did not look at Huck or Vivian again. I followed the steward into the banquet hall with my head held high.

As I passed through the doors, I caught one last glimpse of Huck gathering Vivian into his arms. He bent over her with all the tenderness he had denied me for years and pressed kiss after kiss to her forehead, murmuring for her to hold on just a little longer.

Something inside me tore all over again. My heart felt like it had been ripped apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of it I could ever put back together.

I let out one quiet, bitter laugh and wiped the tears from the corner of my eye. Then I saw Arthur. He was standing just inside the doorway, half-hidden behind a marble pillar.

He had seen everything. For one raw, foolish second, I thought maybe he had come because he was worried about me. I thought maybe the tears in my eyes had finally reached him.

Just when I thought Arthur might finally say something to comfort me, he said the one thing I never could have imagined hearing from him, "Mom, I'm so disappointed in you. If anything happens to Vivian, I'll hate you for the rest of my life. Why couldn't you have been the one who got hurt instead?"

I stared at him. I could not understand how the child I had carried for ten months and brought into the world with my own blood and pain could look at me and say something so merciless.

A hollow smile touched my mouth. "Arthur," I said softly, "this is the first time in my life I have ever regretted giving birth to you."

Then I walked away.

What happened at the entrance spread quickly. By the time I reached the dressing room prepared for me upstairs, the scandal had already made its way to Lance.

A message came through on my phone.

Lance: Huck chose someone else over you again.

I stared at the words for several seconds. Then I set the phone aside and changed. The gown the steward had brought me was pale silk couture from Paris, hand-finished with thousands of tiny diamonds sewn into the skirt. Every inch of it radiated money, power, and deliberate taste. My hair was pinned up to reveal the line of my neck. When I finally lifted my eyes to the mirror, I barely recognized the woman staring back at me.

The exhausted woman from the apothecary was gone. In her place stood a woman who looked like she belonged in moonlight and crystal, the Master Healer they had all come to honor.

By the time the music swelled and the banquet formally began, I was standing on the second-floor gallery above the ballroom.

When I started down the sweeping staircase, conversation below me faltered and then stopped altogether. Every face in the room turned upward. That was when I saw Huck. His expression changed by the second, first disbelief, then confusion, then something far more dangerous, something that looked very much like regret.

Vivian stood beside him, her face drained pale, her lips pressed so tightly together they had lost all color.

I did not spare either of them more than a glance. I walked straight to the center of the ballroom and stepped into the light.

Lance appeared somewhere off to my right. He did not come to stand beside me. He simply lifted his glass from a distance, his gaze steady, warm, and restrained. Tonight was not about him. Tonight was about me.

A server placed a microphone in my hand. I looked out over the crowd, over the curious faces, the shocked ones, the openly hostile ones. Then, at last, I let my gaze settle on Huck.

"Tonight, there is something I want to announce."

The room fell silent.

"I, Lucy, am severing my mate bond with Huck."

For one suspended instant, no one moved. Then the entire ballroom erupted.

Chairs scraped. Voices rose. Gasps broke across the room in waves. Huck shoved back from his seat so violently that it screeched against the floor, then strode toward me with fury blazing across his face. "Lucy," he said through clenched teeth, "have you lost your mind?"

I did not flinch. "Huck, as my husband and my mate, you have failed me in every way that matters," I said, each word clear despite the shaking in my chest. "You betrayed our bond. You carried on with Vivian behind my back. You abandoned me again and again. You let me be hurt, humiliated, and cast aside. When I was taken, you did not even try to save me."

My voice trembled, but I forced it steady.

"And tonight, I am done hiding the truth."

The reaction in the room shifted at once. The whispers sharpened. Heads turned. Werewolves looked from me to Huck, then to Vivian. Suspicion spread through the crowd like the first c***k racing across ice.

Vivian turned pale, but only for a moment. Then, almost visibly, she recovered. Tears filled her eyes so quickly and so perfectly that, even now, even after everything, part of me almost admired the precision of it. She clutched Huck's arm and looked around the room with wounded innocence. "She's lying!" Vivian said, her voice thin and trembling. "Huck and I are innocent! Lucy, how could you say something like that? You're jealous of me. You're jealous because Huck is kind to me. You're jealous because I'm younger than you are, and prettier too, but you can't just stand there and accuse me of something I didn't do!"

Then she turned to the crowd and began to cry in earnest. "Huck and I grew up together. That's all. There is nothing improper between us! Lucy has always been suspicious. She always imagined things. I think... I think maybe she needs help! She should see a doctor!"

And just like that, the mood in the room began to shift. Some werewolves looked at me with pity. Some looked at me with doubt.

"Did he leave her? Is that why she snapped?"

"She always did seem paranoid about him..."

"Did you see the way she looked at the door? She really did look insane..."

I felt my heart sink. Vivian was too good at this. For one brief, terrible moment, I found myself wondering whether the evidence I had would be enough. Whether truth would matter once she had wrapped it in tears.

Then I felt a hand rest lightly on my shoulder.

I turned. Nia stood beside me.

She was the most respected Master Healer in the pack, my mentor, and one of the few werewolves in this world whose presence could still a room without effort.

Her gray hair was pinned back with severe precision, and there was something in her gaze that made even the boldest werewolves look away. She stepped forward and faced the crowd. Her voice was not raised, but it carried with authority.

"Lucy has no reason to slander anyone."

The room fell silent again almost at once.

Then she turned her eyes on Vivian, and the look she gave her was sharp enough to cut. "Lucy is my invited guest tonight. This banquet was held for her. She would not lower herself to invent lies about a she-wolf who has made a habit of intruding on another she-wolf's mate bond."

A stunned hush fell over the ballroom.

All at once, every eye in the room shifted to me.

"Wait... Does that mean Lucy is also a Master Healer?"

"The Master Healer who supposedly created that miracle tonic? She's just a guest, isn't she?"

"I thought Vivian was supposed to be the Master Healer..."

Nia let the silence stretch before she spoke again.

"I am aware that rumors have been circulating through the pack," she said, her gaze never leaving Vivian's pale, stricken face. "I know many of you have been told that a certain she-wolf among us is the Master Healer. And tonight, in front of all of you, I will make the truth known. The woman you have been praising is not Vivian. The true Master Healer is..."