My Former Mate Begged Me to Heal Him

The envelope is heavy cream paper with the Lycan Court seal pressed in silver wax.

I break it at my kitchen table while Buster snores against my feet. Inside is a card with my name printed in black ink. *Ivy Larson. Retained Healer, Ironveil Lycan Court.* Full Summit credentials. Every door, every session, every banquet.

Seven years ago, I couldn't get a pack to let me sleep in their barn.

Under the card is a second sheet. It's an intelligence brief, flagged red by Ellis, Logan's Gamma. I read it slowly.

*Ashvale delegation requests private audience with Healer Larson. Urgent. Alpha Cole Thomas transported to pre-Summit medical briefing by stretcher. Shift duration under four seconds. Aura unstable.*

A stretcher.

I wait for something to happen inside me. A flinch. A pang. Anything.

Nothing comes. My wolf lifts her head, sniffs at the name like it's old meat, and lies back down.

I set the paper aside. Then I hear a thump from the laundry room. Buster is gone from my feet. He trots past the doorway with one of Logan's black socks hanging from his mouth, tail swinging like he just won a war.

I laugh and send the picture straight through the mind-link. The guilty eyes. The sock. The tail.

Logan answers in two seconds. I feel his laugh warm in my chest before the words arrive.

*That's my last clean pair. Tell him he's fired.* A pause. Then softer. *I saw the brief. Your call. Always your call.*

I pick the request up again. I take a pen and write one word under Ashvale's neat signature.

*Declined.*

I seal it and hand it to the courier myself.

---

They don't take no for an answer. They never did.

Two days before the Summit opens, Ellis knocks on my office door.

"Madalyn Thomas is at the east perimeter," he says. "No appointment. She says she'll wait."

Cole's aunt. The one who used to smile at me at pack dinners and forget my name by dessert.

"Then let her wait," I say.

Ellis nods once. He doesn't ask how long. He knows me.

I finish my morning work. I calibrate three elixirs for a Lycan child with fever-bind. I eat lunch. I answer letters. Logan checks in through the link around noon.

*Your back okay?*

*It's fine.*

*Liar.* A moment later, a mug of ginger tea appears on my desk, carried in by a junior aide who blushes and leaves fast.

Four hours after Madalyn arrives, I button my Court jacket. Dark gray, with the Ironveil silver at the collar. I leave the collar open. The scar on my neck shows. I don't hide it anymore.

Then I walk to the antechamber.

---

She stands when I enter. That's new.

Madalyn looks older. Gray at her temples now, lines around her mouth. But her pearls are the same, and so is her smile, polished and practiced.

Then my scent reaches her.

I see it land. Wildflowers, and woven all through it, cedar and winter storm. Logan's scent isn't sprayed on top of mine. It's part of mine. Every wolf can read it. *Claimed. Protected. Untouchable.*

Her nostrils flare. Her smile slips one millimeter. Then she fixes it.

"Ivy," she says warmly, like we're old friends. "Thank you for seeing me."

I sit. I don't answer.

She sits too, and she begins.

She's good. I'll give her that. She talks about the bond first. How the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes. How something that deep can't just vanish. Then Cole. How he can't sleep. How he wakes up screaming for a wolf that won't answer. How his hands shake when he tries to shift, and his fur comes out in patches before it folds back into skin.

"He says your name," she tells me softly. "In his sleep."

I don't blink.

She moves on. Ashvale. The pack that raised me. The healer who trained me. The children I used to treat.

"You took an oath," she says, and now there's steel under the silk. "A healer heals. Refusing a dying wolf because of an old grudge? That isn't justice, Ivy. That's cruelty. Is that who you want to be?"

She slides a folded paper across the table. "Full diplomatic recognition of your new status. From Ashvale. In exchange for one private consultation."

Recognition. Like I need their permission to exist.

She folds her hands and waits.

I let the silence sit. One second. Two. Her thumb starts rubbing her knuckle. Three. Four. She opens her mouth.

Five.

"The bond you invoked doesn't exist," I say. My voice is flat and quiet. "He made sure of that."

I put two fingers on the paper and push it back to her. I never unfold it.

Then I stand and straighten my jacket.

"Ivy—" Her voice cracks on my name. "Ivy, wait. You don't understand how bad it is."

I do. I wrote it down seven years ago. Forty pages.

I walk out.

At the end of the hall, I glance back through the glass door. Madalyn hasn't moved. She's staring at the paper in front of her like it's a dead thing. Her pearls look too heavy for her neck.

She came here to bargain. She just learned she has nothing I want.

Warmth brushes the back of my mind. Logan.

*How'd it go?*

I breathe out. My hands are steady. My heart is steady.

*She knows now,* I tell him.

*And Ashvale?*

I think of a stretcher. A wolf that won't answer. A Summit full of Alphas who will be watching.

*They'll find out in two days.*