The Alpha's Rejected Healer

Chapter 14 — My Mother's Blood

I caught Mira's wrist before she could vanish into the crowd.

"Say that again."

Her bones felt thin under my fingers. Human thin. Breakable.

"Let go of me, witch."

"Say it again." My voice didn't sound like mine. "About my mother."

The great hall was still loud with shouting warriors and the wet cough of Kael behind me. No one noticed us slip behind the stone pillar. No one saw me drag the false Luna of Shadowfang into the dark like a sack of laundry.

"You're hurting me."

"I will do worse."

Her pretty mouth twisted. "You wouldn't dare. Not here."

I pressed her back against the stone. The silver crescent over my heart burned so hot I thought my dress would char.

"Try me, Mira."

Something flickered across her face then. Not fear, exactly. Calculation. She was always counting, this one. Counting who was watching, counting what a secret was worth.

"Fine." Her smile came back, small and poisoned. "You want to know about your mother, Moonsinger? I'll tell you."

"All of it."

"I was twelve." She tilted her head. "They brought her in through the east gate at midnight. Wrapped in a grey cloak. My uncle said she was a guest."

"Her name."

"Liana. That's what she told the healers. Liana Seren."

My knees went soft. I locked them.

"Keep going."

"She was beautiful." Mira's eyes glittered. "Dark hair like yours. That same mark on her chest. The old women whispered about it. Moonsinger, they said. A true one."

"Why was she there?"

"Because Shadowfang was dying." Mira's voice dropped. "The Blood Rot had taken six of our strongest warriors. Our High Priestess at the time, before Seraphine, she sent riders out looking for a healer. Your mother came. Or was brought. I was young. I don't know which."

"She healed them."

"She healed all of them." Mira's lip curled. "For six months she bled into bowls and sang over cots and saved wolves who should have died. And every morning she looked thinner. Every morning her mark dimmed."

My throat closed.

"Then?"

"Then she was gone." Mira shrugged, like this was nothing. Like my whole life was nothing. "One morning her chamber was empty. The bed was cold. My uncle said she had gone home to her people."

"Liar."

"I was twelve, Elara."

"You were old enough to count." I pressed my forearm against her throat. Not hard. Just enough. "What happened to her."

Mira smiled with all her teeth.

"She begged."

The word landed like a hoof to my chest.

"She was on her knees in the moon garden," Mira whispered. "I saw it from my window. There was a man in a black robe. And a woman in silver. Your mother was holding her own wrist like it was broken. She was saying a name over and over."

"What name."

"Yours."

The world went white at the edges.

Elara.

Not Mira's voice. Not Kael's. Something deeper. Something inside my own ribs, silver-furred and ancient.

Elara, stop.

I didn't stop. I shoved Mira harder against the stone. My palms glowed. I could feel the heat of my gift turning wrong, turning into something that could burn a throat closed from the inside.

Daughter. Listen.

The silver wolf voice had never spoken to me with a name before. I froze.

*If you kill her now, you will never find the rest. She is one page. You need the book.*

"What else," I whispered to Mira. My hands were shaking. "What else did you see."

"Nothing."

"Mira."

"I swear on the moon." For the first time her voice wobbled. She could feel what my hands were doing. The little tongues of heat against her collarbone. "Nothing else. My uncle came into my room and slapped me and told me I had dreamed it. I never spoke of it again. Until tonight."

"Why tonight."

"Because you're winning." Her eyes shone wet and furious. "Because my cousin looked at you tonight the way he has never looked at me. And I wanted you to know what your precious mother was, Elara. A cow. A bled-out cow. And you are going to be exactly the same."

Daughter.

I let her go.

She slid down the pillar, coughing, rubbing her throat where no mark showed because I had stopped in time. Barely.

"Get out of my sight," I said.

She laughed. She actually laughed, soft and broken.

"You're already her," she whispered. "You just don't know it yet."

I walked away before my gift decided for me.

I don't remember crossing the hall. I don't remember climbing the servants' stair. I remember only my own breath, and the taste of copper in my mouth, and the silver wolf inside me pacing, pacing, pacing.

*One page*, she kept saying. *You need the book.*

The corridor outside my borrowed chamber was empty except for a shape in a grey shawl.

Old Bryn.

The kitchen woman who had pressed bread into my hand on my first morning here. Who had looked at my mark and then looked away too fast.

She was waiting for me.

"Child." Her voice was a c***k of dry wood. "Walk past me. Don't stop. Don't look."

I almost stopped anyway. She caught my wrist, quick as a bird, and pushed something into my palm. Folded parchment. Brittle. Old.

"I kept it," she whispered. "Twenty winters I kept it. Burn it after you read."

"Bryn, what—"

"She gave it to me the night before she disappeared." Bryn's eyes were wet. "She made me promise. If a daughter ever came. If a daughter ever came with the mark."

"Bryn."

"Go, child. Go now. He's watching the stairs."

"Who is."

She didn't answer. She was already moving, bent and slow, back toward the kitchen.

I stumbled into my chamber and bolted the door with hands that would not stop shaking. I sank onto the floor. I unfolded the parchment on my knees.

The handwriting was mine. No. Not mine. The curve of the letters was mine because I had learned to write from copying a page like this one, a page my aunt had kept hidden in a bible.

My Elara,it began. If you are reading this, then I did not come home, and they have found you anyway.

My tears hit the ink.

*Listen to me. The one you must never trust, the one who wears the moon but serves the rot, is—*

The next word was torn away.

And under the tear, in fresh wet red that was not twenty winters old, someone had pressed a thumbprint in blood.