The White Wolf Healer

Chapter 7:NyX'S WARNING

I didn't recognize her at first.

Nyx had always been wild in a way that made her beautiful—dark hair that refused to stay in a braid, laugh that carried across the entire pack territory, movement that was chaotic but joyful.

The woman standing in the ruins entrance looked like a shadow of that. Her hair was matted. Her eyes were hollow. And she smelled like death and desperation.

"Aria," she gasped, and I was moving toward her before my brain even registered what was happening.

"Nyx? What are you doing here? How did you—"

"Your father sent me." She collapsed into my arms, and I realized she was burning with fever. "He said if I could find you, you'd know what to do. That you'd come home."

Behind her, Kael emerged from the shadows. His hand was on his knife, his entire body radiating protective aggression.

"It's fine," I told him. "She's... she was my friend."

Was.

"She's Moonrise Pack," Kael said coldly. "They exiled you. They hunted you."

"Not all of them," Nyx said, raising her head to look at him. Something dangerous flickered across her face—she was recognizing him as a threat, as someone who might keep her from her mission. "Not Aria's father. He never stopped believing in her. He never stopped wanting her to come home."

The words hit me harder than I expected. My father had always been quiet. Always let my mother and the elders make the big decisions. But he'd also been the one to train me as alpha. The one who believed I could be different.

Had he been fighting for me, all these years, in his own quiet way?

"What's happening to the pack?" I asked, helping Nyx to sit. Kael brought water, his movements grudging but present. Even angry, he wasn't going to let someone suffer.

Nyx drank half the flask in one desperate gulp. "Something's wrong. It started two months ago. People got sick—fever, weakness, inability to shift. The pack healers thought it was natural illness. But it's spreading. Faster and faster. And anyone who's been touched by it, anyone who's had it, they're starting to..." She paused, struggling with the words. "They're starting to change. In bad ways. Their wolves are becoming something darker."

I felt my stomach drop. "Daemon."

"That's the thing," Nyx said, and her eyes held something complicated. Something that looked like guilt. "Daemon's been in secret meetings. With someone. We don't know who. But it's like he made a deal, Aria. Like he traded something dark to get power. And now the power is consuming us."

Kael and I exchanged a look. This was what he'd warned me about. This was why we couldn't stay hidden.

"Why would Daemon poison his own pack?" I asked.

"Because he's weak," Nyx said bitterly. "Because he took the throne by turning everyone against you, and he knows—knows—that without a crisis to manage, the pack will realize they made a mistake. They'll ask for you back. So he created a crisis he could only solve if he had... outside help."

"What kind of outside help?"

Nyx shook her head. "I don't know. But there's something living beneath the mountain now. Something that whispers to Daemon. Something that's making him more confident and more desperate at the same time."

I could feel Kael watching me. Waiting to see if I'd fall for it. If I'd let guilt and responsibility pull me back into the cage.

"What does my father want?" I asked carefully.

"For you to come home," Nyx said. "For you to heal people. For you to—" She stopped, realizing how that sounded. "He's not asking you to save the pack, Aria. He's asking you to save the people he loves. Your mother is sick. Your sister is sick. And your father is fighting the change in himself every single day."

That was the weapon, I realized. Not shame. Not obligation. Love.

Because I would walk through fire for my parents, even after they'd failed me. Even after they'd let Daemon turn the pack against me. They'd still raised me. Still loved me, in their own limited way.

Could I let them die when I had the power to save them?

"I can't," I heard myself say. "Nyx, I can't go back. Going back means surrendering to the very system that destroyed my life. It means admitting that I was wrong to leave. It means—"

"It means you're a coward," Nyx said, and the words landed like a slap.

I stepped back like she'd actually struck me. Kael moved forward, his entire body ready for violence.

"That's enough," he said coldly.

But Nyx ignored him. She was looking at me with desperation and anger and something that might have been love underneath it all.

"You think leaving was brave?" she demanded. "You think hiding in the ruins while your pack suffers is strength? You're letting them destroy themselves because you're too scared to face what it would mean to go back."

"That's not fair—"

"Fair?" She laughed, a terrible broken sound. "Aria, your father is dying. And he's spending his last days protecting your secret, keeping people from realizing that the white wolf healer they need actually exists. And you're here, safe and comfortable, living with a rogue wolf who doesn't even care about your pack."

She looked at Kael with real venom. "Do you know what he is? A Nightshade. Last of the Obsidian Clan. His entire family was hunted by our kind. Your pack paid hunters to—"

"Stop," I said, my voice sharp. "You don't get to use his trauma against him."

"I'm just telling the truth."

"You're using the truth as a weapon," Kael said coldly. "Which is what people do when they want to manipulate someone they care about."

Nyx was quiet for a moment. Then, softer: "I don't want to manipulate you. I just... your father is dying, and all he talks about is wanting to see you one more time. All he says is, 'If Aria was here, she'd know what to do.'"

I could feel myself breaking. Could feel the weight of filial obligation settling onto my shoulders like chains.

"If I go back," I said slowly, "I have to be honest about what I am. About my power. About the fact that I was exiled for something that makes me rare, not cursed."

"Then go back and tell them that," Nyx said. "Go back and force them to see you as you really are. Because right now, they're remembering you as the girl they rejected. Maybe it's time they met the woman."

She reached into her coat and pulled out a letter. The seal was my father's—the mark of the Silverstone line.

I didn't open it.

"How long does he have?" I asked.

"Days. Maybe a week."

"And the pack?"

"Falling apart. People are either healing and changing into something wrong, or they're dying. Daemon's losing control of the situation, which means he's getting more desperate. More willing to do darker things."

Kael moved closer to me. Not possessive, not claiming. Just present.

"You don't have to go," he said quietly. "I know she made it sound like an impossible choice, but it's not. You can stay here. You can let your pack figure this out without you."

I looked at him. And I realized that he meant it. That despite everything—despite the fact that meeting Aria meant this—he would let me walk away.

That was love. Not the kind that demanded sacrifice. The kind that offered freedom, even when freedom meant losing each other.

"I have to go back," I said.

"I know."

"Not because of guilt. Not because of obligation. Because there are innocent people dying, and I'm the only one who can save them."

"I know," he said again.

"And because I have to look my father in the eye and ask him why he never fought harder for me."

Kael took my hand. "Then we go back. Together."

Nyx looked between us. "He can't come. The pack will see him as a threat. It'll make everything worse—"

"He's coming," I said. "Because I'm done making choices alone. And because if the pack is going to accept me, they're going to have to accept that I love a rogue wolf. They're going to have to accept that everything they taught me was wrong."

I looked at my oldest friend. The girl who'd stayed loyal when others turned away. The girl who'd risked her own safety to find me.

"And Nyx? Next time you try to manipulate me, remember: I learned from the best. And I'm done letting guilt be my motivation."