I Refused to Save the Luna Who Tried to Kill Me

VIOLA'S POV

The Moon Ceremony started at dusk, in the rain.

Nobody canceled it. The pack never canceled anything for weather. They just set out more torches along the courtyard and let the stone steps of the ritual platform go dark and slick.

I was halfway to the east gate with Nell and my suitcase, hoping Mira would take me early, when a guard stepped into my path.

"Alpha wants you on the platform."

"I'm leaving at nine tomorrow," I said. "He knows that."

"He wants you now."

Nell's hand tightened on the suitcase handle. I looked past the guard. A long black van idled near the gate, the clinic carriage, green corridor seal painted on the door. Mira stood beside it under an umbrella, her leather case at her feet. Rowan leaned against the bumper with his arms crossed. When he saw me, he straightened.

"Okay," I said. "Let's hear it."

Derek stood at the top of the steps in a dark coat, the full moon hidden somewhere behind the clouds. Chloe sat in a carved chair beside him. Someone had draped the acting Luna's cloak around her shoulders, deep blue wool with silver thread at the hem. Three days ago, it had hung in my closet.

The courtyard filled behind me. I felt every eye.

Derek didn't wait for silence. He made it.

"Viola has refused treatment for three days. Chloe has gotten worse every one of them." His voice carried off the stone. "She poisoned Chloe, and now she refuses to help undo it. I'm done asking privately. So I'm asking here, once."

He looked down at me.

"Give her your blood, or leave this pack without me. Engagement ended, bond severed, banished. Your choice."

The crowd murmured. Someone near the front gasped.

I looked at the van. At the open side door, the dry seats inside, Mira's umbrella tilting toward me.

He'd meant it as a cliff. He'd built me a door.

---

The bond yanked.

It was like a hook under my sternum, pulling me toward the platform. My knees bent before I told them to. Viola's memories poured up through it, rain hammering the healing den roof, a boy in a too-big coat pressing a caramel into her cold palm, *I'm here, I'm not going anywhere.*

The words rose in my throat before I could stop them. *Can I stay if I...*

*No,* Ceci whispered. Not angry, just tired. *We already know what staying costs.*

Something bumped my hand. Nell had pushed the suitcase handle into my fingers. The leather was wet and cold, and real.

I closed my grip around it.

"Okay," I said.

Derek took half a step forward, rain running off his jaw. "What?"

"You gave me a choice." I lifted my chin so he could see my face, not just the top of my head. "I'm choosing. Then let me go."

The courtyard went silent except for the rain hitting stone.

"You don't mean that," he said quietly, just for me.

"I mean it exactly." I turned toward the gate. "Mira? We discussed this last night. A protective circle first. Stabilization before and after. Can you do it here?"

Mira was already walking, umbrella abandoned on the van's hood. "I can do it anywhere you ask me to."

"Then please start."

I wasn't going to cry on those steps. I wasn't going to give him one second he could later call a tantrum or a bid for attention. If he wanted a public answer, he could have one in plain words.

Derek's mouth went thin. Then something settled in his expression, something I recognized from a hundred arguments Viola had lost. He thought he knew how this ended.

"Fine," he said loudly. "I accept. Let the healer begin."

He was waiting for me to break halfway through.

---

Mira knelt on the wet flagstones at the foot of the steps and drew a circle in thick white chalk, wide enough for two people. The rain smeared the edges. She went over them again, pressing harder, murmuring under her breath.

"Stand in the center," she told me. "Alpha, you stay at the edge. Don't cross it."

Derek came down the steps. He stopped exactly where the chalk ended, close enough that I could smell his cologne under the rain.

Mira laid her palms flat on the circle. Pale light rose from the chalk lines, enclosing us both in a dome I could barely see.

Then the bond showed itself.

It ran from my chest to his, a cord of gold light that I'd felt every day and never once seen. Mira touched it with two fingers. It split into two strands, slowly unwinding, like a rope losing its twist.

"Slowly," Mira said. "I'm loosening, not cutting. I need to see what's underneath."

The pull in my chest eased by a fraction. I could breathe a little deeper. My eyes stung anyway.

Derek was watching my face, not the light.

"Viola," he said. "You can still stop this. Just say it."

"I'm not saying it."

"Derek."

Chloe's voice cracked across the courtyard. She was on her feet beside the carved chair, one hand clutching her chest, the blue cloak slipping off one shoulder.

"Derek, it hurts. Something's wrong. Please, I need..." She swayed. "Please, help me first."

The guards moved toward her. Derek's head snapped around. The two strands of light trembled.

"Viola." He turned back. "She's collapsing. One transfer. Right now, and then you can walk out of here."

I kept my hands at my sides.

"There's a stop-treatment order on file," I said. "You held it yesterday. You turned it face-down." I looked at the guards, at the crowd, at Nell clutching her nursing log. "Everyone here has been notified. Nobody draws from me. Not tonight, not one drop."

"She could die!"

"Then call her a healer." I turned to Mira. "Continue the examination. I have not changed my mind."

Mira didn't look up. "Continuing."

---

A runner in a clinic jacket pushed through the crowd, soaked to the knees, holding a sealed envelope over his head to keep it dry.

"Review results, Dr. Lowell. Both files. They came in together."

Mira kept one hand on the chalk and held out the other. She tore the envelope open with her teeth and shook out two sheets.

She read the first one. Then she read it again.

Then she looked up, past me, at something inside the circle.

I followed her gaze.

Ceci was standing beside me.

I'd never seen her outside my own head. She was a silver-gray wolf, smaller than I'd imagined, her ears flat. The protective light passed straight through her. I could see the chalk lines through her ribs. Her outline flickered at the edges like a candle in a draft.

"Ceci," I whispered.

She leaned against my leg. I felt nothing. Not weight, not warmth.

Mira was on her feet. Her voice cut through the courtyard, flat and clear.

"Chloe has no wolf poison in her system." She held the sheet up so the nearest guards could see the red stamp. "Negative. Every panel." She turned the second page toward me. "Viola's wolf is dying."

Nobody spoke.

Across the courtyard, Chloe had stopped swaying.

Mira dropped to her knees and pressed both hands to the chalk. "I'm pausing the separation. Nobody touches this circle." The light flared brighter, thickening into a shell. The two gold strands froze mid-twist, still half-joined.

"Viola."

Derek's voice broke on my name. Not a command. Not a warning. Something raw and unsteady I'd never heard from him in ten years.

"Viola, look at me. Viola."

I didn't look at him.

I was looking at Ceci, who'd laid her head across my feet, her gray outline fading softer and softer against the white light, until I could barely tell where she ended and the rain began.