After My Alpha Killed Our Daughter, I Became Royal

The clinic smelled like antiseptic and dried lavender. I pressed my palms against the metal counter and breathed through my mouth.

Petra, the head healer, watched me from across the supply room. She was old—wolfless, like me now, though hers had been a choice made decades ago for reasons she never explained. Her hands were steady as she sorted bandages.

"You can take the cot by the window," she said quietly. "It gets cold at night, but the blankets are thick."

I nodded. The cot was narrow. The blankets were thin. It didn't matter.

I'd been here two weeks. The border pack was small, maybe forty wolves total, and their clinic served mostly minor injuries—twisted ankles from runs, claw marks from sparring, the occasional fever. Petra's human medical training filled the gaps where wolf healing used to handle everything, and she needed an assistant who could follow instructions without flinching at blood.

I could do that.

I'd managed Shadowvale's entire warrior roster for five years. I knew how to clean wounds, set bones, mix poultices for infection. My hands remembered even if my wolf didn't.

Petra handed me a stack of gauze. "The Alpha's son is coming in tomorrow. Dislocated shoulder. You'll assist."

"Okay."

She studied me for a moment. Her eyes were gray and sharp. "You don't talk much."

"No."

"Good." She turned back to her work. "Talking doesn't fix anything."

I carried the gauze to the storage cabinet and began organizing it by size. My fingers moved automatically. Behind me, Petra hummed something low and tuneless.

At night, I dreamed.

Hope surfaced in fragments—never whole, never speaking. I'd feel silver fur ripple along my forearms, soft and electric, and wake to bare skin. Or I'd hear the ghost of a howl building in my chest, rising toward sound, and it would cut off before it reached my throat. Each time, I woke gasping.

The worst dreams were the ones where I felt her running. Four legs instead of two. Wind in her fur. The ground blurring beneath her paws. I'd wake with my legs tangled in the thin blanket, my chest heaving, and the absence would hit me like a fist.

No wolf. No bond. No scent-sense. No aura.

In a world where your wolf was your self, I was living as a ghost of my own identity.

I pressed my hand to my stomach sometimes, where the pup had been. The skin was smooth. No scar. Just emptiness.

I'd named her Hope, after my wolf. A private ritual. Grief wrapped in a name.

Petra found me awake one night, sitting on the cot with my knees drawn up. She didn't ask questions. She just set a cup of chamomile tea on the floor beside me and left.

I didn't drink it.

The weeks blurred together. I learned the clinic's routines. Mornings were inventory—checking supplies, restocking shelves, sterilizing tools. Afternoons were patient care. Evenings were preparation for the next day. Petra worked with quiet efficiency, and I matched her rhythm.

The border pack's wolves were polite but distant. They didn't ask about the scar on my neck. They didn't ask where I'd come from. I was just the healer's assistant—wolfless, unremarkable, easy to forget.

I preferred it that way.

One afternoon, Petra handed me a folded piece of paper. "Winter Solstice Summit. The Lycan King's hosting this year. They need medical staff. I'm taking you."

I stared at the paper. It was an official summons, stamped with the Lycan royal seal.

"I don't—"

"You're good at this," Petra interrupted. Her tone left no room for argument. "And I need an extra pair of hands. Pack your things. We leave in three days."

She walked away before I could refuse.

I looked down at the summons. The Lycan King's territory. The largest gathering of Alphas in the year. I'd never been to a Summit before—Kayden had always gone alone, leaving me behind to manage Shadowvale.

My fingers tightened on the paper.

Kayden wouldn't be there. Shadowvale was too small to warrant an Alpha's attendance at something this formal. And even if he was, the Summit was massive. Hundreds of wolves. I'd be invisible in gray healer's tunics, bent over medical supplies in some back corner.

I folded the summons and tucked it into my pocket.

Three days later, I packed my supply case and two plain gray tunics. Petra and I rode in silence in the back of a transport van with two Delta escorts. The journey took six hours.

I kept my head down and watched the trees blur past the window.

The Summit hall was enormous. Vaulted ceilings. Chandeliers that caught the light like frozen waterfalls. Wolves everywhere—Alphas in formal dress, Betas in crisp uniforms, Lunas dripping in jewelry that announced their pack's wealth.

I stayed in the far corner, arranging poultice supplies on a medical table Petra had claimed. My hands moved automatically—sorting bandages, labeling jars, checking inventory.

The noise of the reception swelled around me. Laughter. Conversation. The low hum of political maneuvering wrapped in polite words.

I didn't look up.

Petra touched my shoulder once. "You're doing fine."

I nodded.

Across the hall—though I didn't know it yet—Kayden and Vienna entered together. She wore red. He wore the four scars I'd given him.

We were forty meters apart.

Neither of us knew.