The Alpha's Rejected Healer

Chapter 3: Cast Out

The door to my healer's room hung open when I arrived.

They'd already started without me.

Two servant girls I'd known for years—girls I'd brewed fever tonics for, girls whose children I'd held during difficult births—were pulling my dried herb bundles from the ceiling beams and tossing them into a pile on the floor. Behind them, a woman in a wine-colored cloak supervised with her arms crossed and a smile that made my stomach turn.

Della. Mira's personal maid.

"There she is." Della's voice dripped with false sweetness. "The former Luna. Or should I say, the former *healer*." She let the word fall like something rotten. "Alpha Kael's orders. You take nothing that belongs to Shadowfang."

I stood in the doorway, still wearing the thin dress from the rejection ceremony. My fingers were numb. My chest was hollow.

"These are my medicines," I said quietly. "I grew them. I dried them. They don't belong to—"

"Everything in this room belongs to the pack." Della stepped forward and snatched the leather satchel from the hook beside my cot. She upended it. Glass vials shattered against the stone floor, and the sharp scent of yarrow and wolfsbane filled the air. "Alpha's orders."

The servant girls wouldn't look at me.

I didn't blame them.

One of Mira's followers—a tall she-wolf named Petra—shoved past me into the room and yanked open the single drawer of my worktable. She pulled out the folded ceremonial sash I'd worn at my Luna induction and held it up like a trophy.

"Won't be needing this anymore." She tossed it to Della, who caught it with a laugh.

I watched them strip the room bare. The woven blanket my mentor had given me. The clay cups I'd shaped myself. The small wooden wolf figurine a pup had carved for me last winter.

Gone. All of it piled in the center of the floor like garbage.

My throat burned, but I refused to cry. Not in front of them.

Then Petra reached for the shelf above my cot.

My mother's crescent pendant. My healer's journal.

Something snapped inside me.

I moved before I thought—crossing the room in two strides and closing my hand around the pendant before Petra's fingers touched it. The silver was cold against my palm, and the crescent moon pressed into my skin like a brand.

"This was my mother's." My voice came out low. Dangerous. A voice I didn't recognize. "It never belonged to Shadowfang."

Petra's eyes widened. She looked to Della.

Della studied me for a long moment. Something flickered in her gaze—not fear, exactly, but calculation. Then she waved her hand dismissively.

"Keep your trinkets. A dead woman's necklace and a book of weeds." She smiled. "That's all you're worth now anyway."

I grabbed the journal too. Pressed both items against my chest like armor.

Della leaned close. Her breath was warm against my ear. "You have until sunrise to reach the border. After that, any Shadowfang wolf who finds you on pack land has permission to kill."

---

They didn't let me wait for sunrise.

The snowstorm hit an hour before dawn, and Della marched me out through the eastern gate with two guards flanking us. The wind cut through my thin dress like blades. Each step drove the cold deeper into my bones.

I clutched the pendant in one hand and the journal inside my dress against my ribs. The leather cover was the only warmth I had.

The guards walked ten paces behind. Close enough to ensure I kept moving. Far enough to pretend they weren't part of this.

"Faster," Della called from behind me. "Or do you want me to tell Alpha Kael you resisted?"

I didn't answer. I put one foot in front of the other. The snow was knee-deep in places, and the path toward the eastern border wound along the ridge above Ashenveil Ravine. In summer, it was a beautiful walk. Wildflowers. Birdsong.

Now it was a death march.

My wolf was silent inside me. Since the rejection, she'd curled into something small and wounded, barely a flicker of warmth in my chest. I couldn't shift. Couldn't call on her strength. I was just a woman in a thin dress, walking through a blizzard toward nothing.

The ridge narrowed.

I felt Della's presence behind me before I felt her hand.

"Oops."

One sharp shove between my shoulder blades.

The ground vanished beneath my feet.

I didn't scream. There wasn't time. The world tilted—white sky, black rock, white snow—and then I was falling, tumbling, my body slamming against ice-covered stone. Something cracked in my side. Pain exploded through my ribs. I hit a ledge, bounced, kept falling.

When I finally stopped, I was at the bottom of the ravine.

I lay on my back in the snow. The sky above was a narrow strip of grey between the cliff walls. Snowflakes drifted down and landed on my face like cold kisses.

Blood. I could smell it. Mine. Spreading beneath me, melting the snow into pink.

My right leg was bent wrong. My ribs screamed with every breath. The pendant's chain had cut into my palm, but I was still holding it. Still holding it.

*Get up*, I told myself.

I couldn't move.

*Get up, Elara.*

The cold was settling in now. Not painful anymore. Just heavy. Like a blanket being pulled over me, layer by layer. My vision blurred at the edges.

So this was how it ended. Not with a battle. Not with dignity. Pushed off a cliff by a lady's maid and left to bleed out in the snow like a wounded deer.

I closed my eyes.

*I'm sorry, Mother. I couldn't—*

Light.

Even through my closed eyelids, I saw it. Silver-white. Warm. Pulsing like a heartbeat.

My eyes flew open.

Above me—no, *around* me—a shape was forming in the falling snow. A wolf. Massive. Made entirely of light, its edges rippling like moonfire. It moved without sound, lowering its great head until I could see eyes that burned like twin crescents.

My mother's pendant blazed hot against my palm.

The wolf opened its mouth, and a voice poured through me—not sound, but something deeper. Something that resonated in my blood, in my bones, in the place where my wolf had gone silent.

One word.

*"Seren."*

Not my surname. Not the name I'd been given.

A *calling*.

The light grew brighter. The pain grew distant. And somewhere deep inside my chest, something ancient and terrible began to wake.

Then the world went white.

---