To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

I woke deep into the night to find the lamps still lit, soft gold spilling across the room, and my first thought, absurdly, was whether the light would keep Bonnie from sleeping well.

I got up quietly and crossed the room to the nearest one, and when I reached the second lamp, the one closest to the side of the bed where she’d turned her head, she stirred slightly at the shift in the room. I froze, half bent over her, my hand hovering near her hair before I caught myself. If she woke up now and found me leaning over her like that, she’d have every right to call me exactly what it would look like.

I straightened and left her be, moving instead toward the stack of books the sentinels had retrieved from the library earlier that day. Better to occupy my hands with something useful than stand there watching her sleep like some lovesick fool with no self-control.

I opened the first volume and found myself deep in an account of the old grievance between the Drakori and our own people. Nothing violent at first, from what the pages described. Just a slow, corrosive kind of pride. The Drakori apparently held tight to the belief that Selene, for all her celestial standing, had only ever reflected borrowed light. That her power came secondhand from Aureon himself, the way moonlight is nothing more than sunlight bent and softened.

It only worsened when she took a mortal lover and bore him children. Neither the gods nor the Drakori accepted those children as anything worth respecting. Only the wolves did, embracing them fully as their own, and the Drakori grew louder in their scorn, insisting their own god had never lowered himself to plant his seed in anything mortal. Werewolf society had been small then, nothing compared to the sprawling reach of the Drakori, and that imbalance apparently fed a belief among them that Selene would never hold a devoted people for long.

That belief, more than anything, seemed to have wounded her firstborn. Lycaon. And if his own mother wouldn’t be respected willingly, he’d apparently decided the Drakori would learn to fear her instead. Even firebreathers, the book noted, stood little chance against a mortal wielding a celestial’s raw power.

That was when I heard Bonnie moan.

I glanced over, a small, involuntary smile pulling at my mouth. Someone was having quite the dream.

Then I saw the marks.

Two small punctures, unmistakable, blooming dark red against the pale skin of her throat, blood beading and sliding down toward the pillow beneath her.

Every part of me went cold at once.

That wasn’t normal.

I was at her side before I’d consciously decided to move, my hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently.

”Bonnie. Are you alright? Bonnie.”

She didn’t wake. Her breathing had gone ragged, ratcheting up fast, her whole body starting to tremble beneath my hands, and I kept my voice low at first, still trying to reason my way into thinking this was something ordinary. A nightmare. Nothing more.

Then her hand came up in her sleep, and fresh cuts opened across her forearm, thin red lines splitting her skin like something invisible had dragged claws across it.

Yeah... that was definitely not ordinary.

”Retainer!” I shouted, my voice tearing through the quiet room. ”Someone get in here now!”

The door unlocked from outside almost immediately, and the retainer burst through with two sentinels close behind him, Delta trailing just after. The moment they saw her, saw the blood now spreading dark and wet across the front of her red gown, blooming from somewhere beneath her stomach, nobody needed further instruction.

”We need to get her to the infirmary,” the retainer said.

I didn’t argue. I gathered her up myself, as careful as my shaking hands allowed, and we ran.

I kept saying her name the entire way, over and over, some desperate rhythm I couldn’t stop myself from repeating even as they laid her on the stretcher, and for one brief, blinding second her eyes opened. Her hand found mine, fingers curling weak around my palm.

Then her eyes closed again, and her hand slipped free.

The head healer met us at the doors, already barking instructions to the staff behind her.

”We’ll need to take her in for emergency surgery,” she said, her eyes sweeping over the wounds with quick, professional focus. ”The origin of these injuries reads as magical.”

”If that’s the case,” I said, ”you’ll bring in a witch. One you trust completely. I want the source of this identified and dealt with. I am just about such of this shit.”

”Of course, Alpha Lysander.”

They wheeled her through a set of doors that swung shut behind them, and I stood there in the corridor, useless and furious, as I watched the space where she’d disappeared.

Once again. Something had happened that I hadn’t seen coming, hadn’t been able to prepare for, hadn’t been fast enough to stop.

Delta stood beside me, quiet for a moment before she spoke.

”Alpha Lysander. Can I say something?”

”Go ahead.”

”Something similar happened to her before,” she said. ”I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t connect it to anything magical. But while you were with the royal Beta earlier, she seemed to be caught in some kind of dream. Water was coming out of her nose, of all things. When she woke, she was disoriented. She even attacked me.” She paused, guilt flickering across her face. ”I should have said something sooner because it did give magic. I’m sorry I wasn’t more proactive about it.”

”You’re not the only one at fault here,” I said.

My mind had already snapped toward Johann, toward every calculated, self-serving move he’d made since the moment his father’s body hit that library floor. This bore his fingerprints even if I couldn’t yet prove it.

”Watch over her for me,” I said to Delta. ”Please.”

”Of course.”

I turned and started walking, and the retainer fell into step beside me almost instantly.

”Where are you going, Alpha Lysander?”

”The prison cell,” I said. ”Where they’re holding the rogue.”

To see if he was still alive and of course, torture information out of him before whatsoever witch was doing this locked in again.