I Refused to Save the Luna Who Tried to Kill Me

VIOLA'S POV

Derek didn't come to drain me that morning. He came to collect me.

"Breakfast," he said, holding the door open. "The pack's waiting. You're coming."

Two guards walked me down the corridor with Nell trailing behind, the nursing log hugged against her chest. My legs felt like wet paper. By the time we reached the dining hall, the long oak table was already full, and every conversation dropped at once.

My chair sat at Derek's right hand, the way it had for three years.

A folded place card rested on the plate. Cream stock, gold ink, careful handwriting.

*Chloe.*

Derek stood before I could say anything. He didn't look at me. He looked at the table.

"While Viola recovers, Chloe will handle Luna duties. Events, visitors, the council calendar. I expect everyone to support her."

Chloe rose from the seat beside his, pale and soft-eyed in a cream sweater. Derek reached into his pocket and took out a small silver brooch shaped like a crescent moon.

His mother's brooch. The one he'd pinned on my collar the night of our engagement, telling me it had been waiting for the right Luna.

He fastened it to Chloe's sweater with careful fingers. Someone started clapping. Then everyone did.

An older she-wolf from the kitchen staff slid a silver tea tray across the table until it bumped my hip. Teapot, sugar bowl, a single porcelain cup.

"Go on," she said, not unkindly. "Pour for the acting Luna. She shouldn't have to strain herself."

The room waited. Old Viola would have smiled, poured, and called it an honor.

I picked up the tray and set it back on the table, harder than I meant to. The cup rattled on its saucer. I closed my hand around the back of the nearest chair until the dizziness passed.

"She can have the chair," I said. "She cannot have my blood."

Nobody clapped for that.

Chloe was already moving toward me, her hands lifted, her eyes shining.

"Viola, please don't be upset. I never asked for any of this." She wrapped her arms around me before I could step away. "I just want us to be okay."

Her fingers slid down my left arm and pressed, right through the sleeve, on the inside of my elbow.

On the fresh scab.

Pain shot up to my shoulder. I jerked back. It wasn't a shove. I simply took my arm out of her hands.

Chloe stumbled like I'd thrown her. She fell sideways into Derek, who caught her by the waist.

"Chloe." His voice went low and furious. He turned it on me. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I didn't answer him. I turned to Nell, who was standing closest, and rolled up my sleeve.

The cuff was damp. A dark red spot had soaked through the cotton. Underneath, the puncture mark had split open again, a thin line of blood running toward my wrist.

"Write this down," I told her. "Left arm, inner elbow. The site from my last session. It was closed when I woke up."

Nell's eyes went from the wound to Chloe's hand and back. She opened the log.

"You pushed her," Derek said. "In front of everyone. She can barely stand."

"She hugged me and pressed on this." I held my arm up, so the whole table could see it. "I moved away. That's what happened."

"She was trying to apologize to you."

"Then she can apologize to the healer who has to close it again." I didn't lower my arm. "Look at my arm before you ask me to apologize."

For three years, I'd said sorry for everything. For being in the way. For being tired. For crying where he could see it. Every apology had been a coin I paid for one more day of being believed, and I'd never once been paid back.

I wasn't buying anything today.

Derek's gaze dropped to the blood. Something flickered across his face, too quick to name. Then Chloe made a small, shaky sound against his chest, and it was gone.

"Sit down," he said. "Wait until she's calm. Then we'll talk about this like adults."

"There's nothing to wait for."

I twisted the ring off my finger.

It stuck at the knuckle. My hands had gotten thinner since he'd put it there. When it finally came free, the skin underneath was pale and dented, like the ring had left a shape of itself behind.

I set it on the edge of the silver tray, beside the teacup nobody had filled.

"From now on, take Luna business to the acting Luna," I said. "The calendar, the visitors, all of it. Don't send it to me."

The room went so quiet I could hear the radiator ticking.

Derek moved fast. His hand closed over the ring and swallowed it into a fist, as if he could undo the moment by hiding the evidence.

"Don't do this, Viola." His knuckles were white. "You want me to back down about Chloe, fine, we can discuss it. But not like this. Not in front of the pack."

He thought it was a move. A threat. A way to make him come running.

"I'm not asking you to back down," I said. "If you want her in my place, stop asking me to fill it."

His fist didn't open. He stared at me like I was speaking a language he used to know.

I didn't need his shock. I didn't need anyone in this room to witness what I'd decided. My thumbprint was already sitting in a canvas pouch somewhere downtown.

"Take her back," Derek said to the guards, without taking his eyes off me.

The walk back felt twice as long. Nell stayed at my elbow, close enough to catch me. I didn't let her have to.

We turned the last corner into the treatment wing and stopped.

Two strangers stood outside my door.

The woman was in her forties, short silver-streaked hair, a battered leather medical case at her feet with the corners worn white from travel. The man next to her was tall, broad through the shoulders, in a dark jacket with road dust on the hem. He didn't move like a guard. He moved like someone the guards should be worried about.

My skin prickled. Alpha. Not ours.

Derek's footsteps came up fast behind us. He must have followed.

The woman didn't greet anyone. She walked straight past the guards, into the room, and looked at the treatment table. At the leather restraint still hanging open from the rail, stained dark at the buckle.

"I'm Mira Lowell. Clinic referral." She turned to me, her eyes going to my bleeding sleeve. "Was this used on you?"

"Every session."

"Take it off the table," Mira said to the nearest guard. "Now. My patient doesn't go near that again."

The guard looked at Derek.

"She's not your patient," Derek said.

The tall man reached into his jacket and held up a folded document. A wax seal was pressed into the bottom corner, deep green, stamped with a mountain and a river.

"Rowan Hale, Alpha of Greyhaven. This is a border passage seal under the neutral medical corridor agreement." His voice was calm and unhurried. "Your council signed it twelve years ago. Any patient who files for outside evaluation gets safe transport and an independent healer. No pack can block it."

The guards stepped back from the door. One of them actually lowered his eyes.

Derek's jaw tightened. "This is a pack matter. She's my mate."

Rowan didn't argue with him. He didn't even look at him. He looked at me.

"I'm asking Viola," he said. "Do you want to leave with us?"

The question hung there.

Nobody had ever asked me that. Not in this body, and from everything Viola remembered, not in hers either. Questions about me were always asked over my head. Decisions about me were always signed against walls.

Rowan waited. He didn't rush me, and he didn't fill the silence for me.

*Yes,* Ceci whispered, faint but sure. *Yes.*

I nodded.

Beside me, Derek's hand came up, reaching for my elbow the way he used to when I stumbled on stairs, a long time ago.

It stopped in midair, an inch from my sleeve.

And for the first time, I watched him realize he didn't get to decide where I went next.