Alpha Forbidden Luna

Episode 2: Healing Water

POV: Lena

She was back in Silver Creek.

She knew it the way you knew things

in dreams, not from evidence but from

the specific quality of the dread that

settled over everything like a weather

system that had been building for years

and had finally arrived. The pack house

on Ashwood Lane with its wide front

room and its expensive furniture that

Diana kept immaculate because the

appearance of the household was the

thing she cared most about maintaining

and the reality of it was something

she had never concerned herself with.

Lena was in the kitchen.

She was always in the kitchen in

these dreams. Standing at the counter

doing the things that were required

of her in a house that needed her

labor and resented her presence

simultaneously. The breakfast dishes.

The floor that needed cleaning before

Diana came downstairs because Diana

had opinions about floors and expressed

them in the specific way of someone

who understood that criticism delivered

consistently over years was more

effective than any single dramatic act.

Then Aria came in.

Aria in the dream was exactly Aria

in life. Beautiful in the way that

things were beautiful when they had

been told so consistently enough

that the beauty had become aggressive,

something that announced itself before

anything else could. She was wearing

the expression she wore when she

had made a decision and was going

to deliver it in the specific way

that made it sound like she was

doing Lena a favor.

"Father made the announcement this

morning," Aria said. "The treaty

wolf this year will be from his

own household. A demonstration of

Silver Creek's commitment."

Lena set down the dish she was holding.

"He means me," she said.

"He means whoever in the household

is the most appropriate candidate,"

Aria said. She examined her nails

with the focused attention of someone

who found their own hands more

interesting than the conversation

they were having. "I have been

thinking about it and I believe

you are the most appropriate candidate."

"You are afraid to go," Lena said.

The beauty became something sharper.

"I am thinking about what is best

for the pack," Aria said. "You

are wolfless. You serve no function

here. Going to the Blood Alpha is

the first useful thing you will

Never do for anyone."

In the dream Lena looked at her

stepsister and felt the specific

quality of something that had been

building for twenty one years and

that she had learned to hold at

a distance because expressing it

had never once produced a useful outcome.

She said nothing.

She went.

Not because she agreed. Not because

she believed Aria's framing or her

father's silence or her stepmother's

cold satisfaction when the announcement

was made at the pack meeting and

every head turned to the back of

the room where the wolfless girl

was standing. She went because the

alternative was war and she had

not been built in a way that could

choose herself over that even when

every reasonable argument said she should.

The dream shifted.

The way dreams shifted. Not gradually

but in the specific jump cut of

the unconscious mind moving between

the things it needed to process

without the connective tissue of

ordinary time.

She was at the Blood Moon Pack gates.

Then she was inside them.

Then the chains were on her wrists

and the cold of the pool water was

hitting her like a wall and the

specific laughter of two wolves

who believed they were doing something

righteous was coming from above

her and she was going down and

the light was getting further away

and the amulet was getting warm

against her chest.

Then she was going down further.

Further than the pool had been.

Darker than the pool had been.

The chains are heavier.

The laughter still coming from somewhere

above but fainter now and the warmth

of the amulet the only thing in

the dark that had any quality of

life to it and she reached for

it with her chained hands and could

not get to it and the dark pressed

in and the warm got further away

and she opened her mouth to say

something but what came out was not

a word.

It was a scream.

She came out of the dream with

the scream still in her throat

and sat upright in a bed that

was not her bed in a room that

was not her room and for one

terrible suspended second the

dream and the reality were the

same place and she could not

find the line between them.

Then her vision cleared.

The room was large and warm and

lit with the low amber of a fire

in a grate that had not been in

the dream. The bed she was sitting

upright in was wider and deeper

than any bed she had ever been

in. The ceiling was high. The

window showed darkness outside

which meant she had been here

through the rest of the day and

into the night.

She was not in the pool.

She was not in Silver Creek.

She pressed both hands flat against

the bed beneath her and felt the

specific solid reality of it and

breathed through what was left

of the dream with the discipline

she had been developing since she

was approximately seven years old

and had learned that falling apart

was a luxury she was not generally

afforded.

"You are safe."

The voice came from the chair

near the fire.

She had not seen him. She had

been looking at the room and

the window and the ceiling and

she had not looked at the chair

near the fire and he was sitting

in it with the specific quality

of someone who had been there

for a significant amount of time

and had settled into the waiting

without impatience.

Alpha Caden Black.

Sitting in a chair beside her fire

in the middle of the night.

She stared at him.

He looked back at her with those

dark eyes that she had not been

able to read at the gates and

that she could not fully r******w

either but that were carrying something

she had not expected from the most

feared Alpha in the five territories

sitting vigil in an armchair while

a treaty wolf he had pulled out

of a pool slept off the experience.

He looked concerned.

Not performed concern. The real kind.

She did not know what to do with that.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

she said. Her voice came out rougher

than she intended, scraped raw from

the scream and the water she had

breathed in the pool.

"Since I brought you here," he said.

She absorbed this.

"That was this morning," she said.

"Yes."

"You have been sitting there all day."

"Yes."

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she looked at her wrists.

The chains were gone. Of course

the chains were gone. But the marks

they had left were not gone. She

could see them in the firelight,

dark against her skin, the specific

evidence of iron applied with more

force than necessary by two wolves

who had decided she was not worth

the consideration of applied carefully.

She curled her fingers toward her

palms so she did not have to look

at the marks.

Caden stood up.

He moved to the edge of the bed

and crouched down to her eye level

and she held herself very still

because he was very close and she

had not decided yet what the rules

were about proximity in this room

and until she understood the rules

she defaulted to stillness.

He looked at her wrists.

Something moved through his expression

that was not the concerned version

and was not the unreadable version.

Something that was colder and more

specific and that she understood

instinctively was the expression

that had preceded the quiet two

word command he had issued at the

pool edge that morning.

She did not want to know what had

happened to the two wolves after

that command.

She suspected she already did know.

"I need to take you somewhere,"

he said. His voice was back to

the even quality she was coming

to understand as his baseline.

Not cold. Measured. There was

a difference. "There is a healing

pool in the lower level of the

pack house. The water has properties

that will clear the bruising and

repair the damage to your lungs

from the water you breathed. It

will also help with the marks

on your wrists."

She looked at him.

"A pool," she said.

Something moved in his expression

that might have been the understanding

of why that specific word had

produced that specific quality

in her voice.

"Not like the training pool," he

said. "It is warm. It is contained.

No one else will be present." He

held her gaze. "I will be there."

She was quiet for a moment.

"You will be there," she said carefully.

"Yes."

"In the pool."

"Yes."

She looked at him with the specific

assessment of someone calculating

whether the person in front of them

was telling them the full version

of a situation or the version that

produced the desired compliance.

"Why do you need to be in the pool,"

she said.

He held her gaze without flinching

from the directness of the question

which told her something about him.

"The healing properties of the water

are activated by wolf contact," he

said. "For a wolf who is in contact

with the water the healing is immediate.

For someone who is not shifted and

whose wolf is not accessible the

water helps but more slowly." He

paused. "If I am in contact with

you while you are in the water my

wolf can direct the healing more

precisely. It works considerably

faster and more completely."

She stared at him.

"You need to be touching me," she said.

"Yes."

"In a pool."

"Yes."

She looked at the marks on her

wrists and then at his face and

then at the marks again and thought

about the amulet glowing in the

dark water of the training pool

and this man in his meeting clothes

coming into the water without hesitation

and his eyes going red and the

word he had said that she had

heard even through the water closing

over her head.

Mine.

She had heard that.

She was not going to address that

right now because she did not have

the resources for it in addition

to everything else she was processing

but she had heard it and she had

filed it in the place she kept

things that were too large to

examine immediately.

"If you are using this as an opportunity

to see me without my clothes," she

said very steadily, "I want you

to know that I will find a way

to make you regret it regardless

of the power differential between

an Alpha and a wolfless girl who

arrived here this morning in chains."

He looked at her.

For one suspended moment something

moved through his expression that

was not the concerned version or

the cold version or the unreadable version.

It was the version of a man who

had just been surprised into something

that his face was not entirely prepared for.

"I am not," he said. Carefully.

"Using this as an opportunity to

see you without your clothes."

"Good," she said.

"You can wear the shift that is

on the chair beside you," he said.

"It covers everything necessary."

She looked at the chair beside

her. A light cotton shift was

folded neatly on it. Modest.

Practical. The garment of someone

who had thought about this specific

concern and had addressed it before

she could raise it.

She looked back at him.

He was waiting with the patience

of someone who had decided the

outcome was her decision and was

not going to apply pressure to it.

She thought about the marks on

her wrists.

She thought about the specific

pain of breathing that had been

present since she woke up, deep

in her chest, the evidence of

water in places water was not

supposed to be.

She thought about twenty one years

in a household that had never once

offered her anything without a cost

attached and about this man sitting

in a chair beside her fire for

an entire day while she slept and

not requiring anything from her

for it.

"Turn around," she said.

He turned around without hesitation.

She got out of the bed.

Her legs were less steady than

she wanted them to be and her

chest hurt with every full breath

and the marks on her wrists caught

the firelight in a way she looked

away from deliberately.

She picked up the shift.

"I have a question," she said

while she changed. Her voice was

steady. She had decided it was

going to be steady and it was.

"Ask it," he said. His voice was

directed at the wall. He had not moved.

"The two wolves at the pool," she said.

"The ones you gave the order for."

A pause.

"Yes," he said.

"Are they dead?"

Another pause. Shorter this time.

"Yes," he said.

She finished changing. She looked

at herself in the small mirror above

the washstand. The shift was modest

and the marks on her wrists were

visible below the hem of the sleeves

and her hair was tangled from the

water and the sleep and she looked

like someone who had survived a

morning that had been designed to

kill her.

She supposed that was accurate.

"You can turn around," she said.

He turned.

He looked at her in the shift

with the firelight behind her

and something moved through his

expression that was very quick

and very contained and gone before

she could fully read it.

"The question you actually want

to ask," he said. "Is not whether

they are dead."

She looked at him.

"You want to ask why," he said.

"Why they were executed for throwing

a treaty wolf into a pool when

the expected outcome of your presence

here was already your death."

She held his gaze. "Yes. That is

the question I actually want to ask."

He crossed the room to the door

and opened it and looked back at her.

"Come to the healing pool," he said.

"I will answer it there."

She looked at the open door.

Then she followed him.

Down two corridors and a wide

staircase and through a door that

opened into a lower level room

she had not known existed from

above. The healing pool was smaller

than the training pool. Round.

The water was moving slightly

the way water moved when it was

warmed from below and it was lit

from within with the specific soft

gold that she recognized after

a moment as the same quality of

light that the amulet had produced

in the dark water of the training pool.

She stopped at the edge.

Caden stepped into the water without

ceremony. Still fully dressed. He

stood in it to his waist and looked

at her with those dark eyes that

were carrying the answer to her

question before he said a word.

"They were not executed for throwing

you into a pool," he said.

She waited.

"They were executed," he said quietly,

"for putting their hands on what

is mine."

The healing pool glowed between them.

The amulet against her chest was warm.

And Lena Cross who had come here

to die stood at the edge of the

water and looked at the most feared

Alpha in the five territories standing

in it waiting for her and felt

something shift in the architecture

of everything she had believed this

morning was going to be.

She stepped into the water.