I Refused to Save the Luna Who Tried to Kill Me

VIOLA'S POV

Mira's examination room was a converted supply office at the end of the treatment wing. It had no restraints and no stone wired into needles, just a folding cot, a desk lamp, and her leather case open on a chair.

She pressed a moonstone gauge to the hollow of my throat. It was the size of a coin, set in tarnished brass, and a hairline crack ran straight through the middle.

"It was like that when I bought it," she said, catching my look. "Still reads true."

The stone stayed milky and dull. Mira waited a full minute. It never warmed past a faint gray.

"Your wolf is running on fumes." She took the gauge away and wrote something on a pad, tore the sheet off, and signed it with a hard slash. "Stop-treatment order. Effective immediately. No transfers, no sessions, no healing output of any kind."

She set it on my knee. The ink was still wet.

"Your wolf needs rest. She does not owe anyone another treatment."

I read it twice. Ceci stirred, slow and heavy, like someone rolling over in their sleep.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"Honestly? I don't know yet." Mira sat on the edge of the desk. "Your mate bond is sitting on top of the damage like a bandage. I can see some of it, not all. I'll only get an accurate picture when that connection starts to loosen."

"And if I break it?"

"Then you do it my way." She held my eyes. "A protective circle first. Stabilization before and after. If anyone tries to force a rejection on you in front of a crowd, you refuse. In your condition, a public severing could tear her apart."

I thought of the dining hall. The brooch on Chloe's sweater. A whole table watching.

"Okay," I said. "Your way."

Mira nodded once, like that settled something, and picked up a fresh sampling kit.

"Now let's see what's actually wrong with Miss Chloe."

---

Chloe sat on the cot twenty minutes later with her arms wrapped around herself.

"I'm not doing this alone," she said. "Not without Derek."

"It's one vial," Mira said. "Thirty seconds."

"I don't know you." Her voice wobbled. "For all I know, she sent you."

"Your Alpha's guards confirmed my seal at the gate." Mira didn't raise her voice. "But I'll wait."

Derek arrived fast, like he'd been standing at the end of the hall. Chloe reached for his hand, and only then did she hold out her arm.

Mira drew the sample, capped it, and pressed a red wax seal over the top. She wrote a number on the label, read it aloud, and had a guard initial it.

"Full review takes until tomorrow," she said. "Nobody touches this vial but me."

Derek watched it go into her case. Then he looked at me.

"Tomorrow, then," I said. "Will you wait for the results?"

Mira held out a warning sheet, a copy of the stop-treatment order with a list of risks typed underneath. Derek took it, glanced at the first line, and turned it face-down on the desk without reading the rest.

"Chloe doesn't have until tomorrow." His thumb pressed the paper flat. "One more session, Viola. The last one. After that, you can go do whatever this is."

The last one. Viola had heard that before. Three times, according to her memories, each time sounding just as reasonable.

"If you trust the diagnosis, you can wait for someone else to confirm it," I said.

"Silas already confirmed it."

"Silas didn't sign anything."

His jaw worked. "You'd really let her suffer one more night to prove a point?"

I used to think his impatience meant he was scared, that it meant he cared too much to slow down. I looked at the sheet under his hand, the words he wouldn't turn over, and understood. He just didn't want to hear no.

"Read the warning," I said. "Then ask me again."

He didn't read it. He helped Chloe off the cot and walked her out.

---

I made it four steps into the corridor before my knees went soft.

The wall caught my shoulder. Then a voice did.

"Viola." Rowan had stopped a careful distance away. He didn't grab me. "Tell me where it hurts before I touch you."

"Left arm," I managed. "The elbow."

"Can I take your right side?"

I nodded. His palm settled under my good elbow, warm and steady, and his other hand hovered near my back without landing. I leaned in because I had to.

His jacket smelled like cedar and clean wool, like somewhere cold and far away from here. I was suddenly very aware of how close he was, of the solid width of him, and my pulse picked up in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss.

That was ridiculous. I was still wearing another man's mark.

I straightened the moment my legs held and pulled my arm back. He let it go without a word. No hand lingering, no "are you sure," no tug back toward him.

Instead, he hooked a plastic chair with his foot and slid it behind me, close enough that I could sit without reaching.

"Thanks," I said, sinking into it.

"You did the work." He stepped back and leaned against the opposite wall, giving me the whole hallway. "I just moved furniture."

I laughed, short and surprised. It hurt my ribs. It still felt good.

---

By evening, the plan was written down.

Mira confirmed the transport. The neutral corridor van would leave from the east gate at nine the morning after the Moon Ceremony. Rowan's people would drive behind it to the border.

Nell brought the property claim form. I signed it in real ink this time, my hand steadier than it had been in days, authorizing the clinic to collect what was legally mine from the pack house.

"One more thing," I told Mira as she packed her case. "When I'm ready to cut the bond, I want you there. Watching. Nobody else decides when."

"I'll be there," she said. "When you ask. Not before."

An hour later, a guard knocked and handed me a folded note on Derek's letterhead. Two lines, his slanted handwriting.

*Reconsider before the Moon Ceremony. After that, I won't ask again.*

I read it and set it on the empty rolling table.

Nell was folding my sweaters into the small travel case the clinic had sent. There wasn't much. Three years in this house, and most of what Viola owned fit into one bag.

"I could talk to him," Nell said quietly. "Tell him what Mira said. Maybe if it comes from me..."

"Don't." I zipped the case and wheeled it to the door, standing it upright by the frame where I'd see it first thing. "You've done enough. You don't have to beg for me."

"He might listen."

"He had a whole sheet of paper to listen to. He turned it over."

Nell's mouth tightened, but she didn't argue.

I sat on the edge of the cot. My chest ached, a deep, stupid ache that had his name on it. Sixteen years of keeping that caramel wrapper didn't disappear because I'd signed a form. It was going to hurt for a long time.

That was fine. It could hurt in Greyhaven.

*Tomorrow?* Ceci asked, so faint I almost missed it.

"Tomorrow," I said out loud.

Nell looked up.

I glanced at Derek's note on the table, then at the case waiting by the door.

"Whatever he decides at that ceremony," I said, "I'm taking my wolf with me."