Love Me When I’m Going

Chapter 3 A Convenient Scapegoat

Four full days passed. My body lay between the old apothecary and the border trail while the pack waited for me to give in. Under Callan’s order, no search party left the pack house.

Then the Dark Fever returned. My daily tonics had kept it dormant in the Black Moon bloodline, and the prepared doses lasted only three days.

The young and the old fell sick first. They shook under blankets and sweated through their beds.

Soon the warriors were coughing hard enough to bruise their ribs.

Men who had driven rogues from the border now leaned on one another just to cross the hall. The infirmary filled. So did the benches outside it.

Callan’s Rage Sickness returned with the fever. The pain blurred his sight, and he kept one palm pressed over his eye.

A servant brought him cold water instead of warm. Callan smashed the table between them. The boy dropped the pitcher and fled.

Twice, he went to my rooms. The bed was untouched. My work apron was gone from its hook. Both times, he shut the door without entering and came back in a worse temper.

Lily walked into my abandoned apothecary and announced that she would save everyone with my notes.

Her white dress stayed spotless among the dusty jars. Servants carried sick wolves to the doorway to watch her work.

She tossed ingredients into a cauldron without weighing them.

Every formula changed with the patient’s age, weight, and stage of fever. Lily copied the ingredient names and ignored the measurements beside them.

The mixture thickened into black sludge. Burnt roots fouled the room.

“Here.” She held the bowl to a young warrior who was shaking with fever. “This will give you strength.”

He drank. The bowl slipped from his hands. Black bile poured from his mouth, and his body bucked against the stone floor.

People shouted for help. Lily glanced at the page she had ignored and then at Callan in the doorway. By the time she dropped beside the warrior, tears were already running down her face.

“I don’t understand.” She caught on the words and turned her wet face to Callan.

“I followed her notes exactly! She must have sabotaged them. This is her revenge! Because you showed me kindness, she wants to punish the whole pack!”

Heads turned toward my worktable. The measurements were still written beside every ingredient. No one looked at them.

Zack tore through the apothecary for proof of my “treachery.” Cupboards opened. Baskets overturned. Everything in my desk landed on the floor.

My personal tinctures and research journals were gone, along with the hand-carved wolf that had sat beside the lamp. I had packed them days ago.

A sealed crate remained in the corner, untouched by Lily’s work. Zack pried it open.

Inside were enough measured packets to carry the pack through one full moon. A label in my handwriting was tied beneath the lid.

“Final full-moon supply. No more refills.”

Zack read it aloud and stumbled over the last sentence.

Callan stared from the crate to the bare shelf above it. His hand rose to the empty place over his mate mark. He pressed hard, waiting for an answer from the bond he had severed.

Then he faced the room.

“She has abandoned her duties. She has betrayed her pack. As of this moment, Selene is no longer our Luna.”

Fever had turned his eyes crimson.

“Zack. Take a team to the old apothecary in the back hills. Find her. *Drag* her back here. She will answer for this.”

At last, he was coming to find me. He sent armed wolves. He still expected an argument and a living woman he could punish.