CHAPTER 5 – THE BLESSED LUNA OF THE OR[Part 2]

“You…” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “You just Alpha-commanded my wolf.”

That had never happened. Not once.

Not even to his father.

She peeled off one glove with a flick that sent it snapping into the waste container.

“I told him what to do,” she said. “He listened. Congratulations. Your wolf isn’t completely brain-damaged.”

“You’re not my Alpha,” he said, something like wonder and a raw edge of pride bleeding through the words.

“No,” she agreed, sliding the other glove off. “I’m worse.”

His lips twitched despite everything. “Blessed Luna, huh?”

Her eyes flicked to his. “Don’t call me that.”

Too fast. Too sharp.

“It bothers you,” he said quietly.

“It’s inaccurate,” she snapped.

“They do call you that,” he jerked his chin toward the corridor. “Your staff. The nurses. The anesthesiologist earlier.”

“That’s their problem,” she said. “Not mine.”

“It’s not wrong,” he said.

She froze for a second.

“I’m not a Luna,” she said, each word carefully flat. “I’m a doctor. There is nothing mystical about it.”

“You just told an Alpha’s wolf to heel, and it did,” he said. “That’s mystical enough.”

Her shoulders tightened. “Don’t romanticize biology. Your neurological pathways respond to my voice because of an unfinished bond and conditioning, that’s all.”

He seized on the word. “Unfinished.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Don’t.”

“We never unbound it,” he said. “We just…" tore away from it and pretended it wasn’t there.”

She turned away, busying herself with labels and vials. “You’re tachycardic. Of course, your brain is making metaphors.”

“Lyra.”

She didn’t look at him.

“Lyra,” he said again, softer this time.

Her spine stayed straight.

“The way you talked to him,” he said. “My wolf. You know you sounded like—”

“A trainer,” she snapped, spinning back. “You were half-shifting in a sealed medical environment. I contained you. Don’t read anything else into it.”

He held up his hands in a small surrender. “Fine. It’s just… new.”

“What is?”

“Being the one lying there,” he said. “The one barely hanging on, with everyone looking at me like I’m a bomb that might go off. Watching you command a room instead of me.”

Her expression flickered—just once.

“Get used to it,” she said. “For the next few weeks, at least, you’re not the one at the top of the hierarchy. In this wing, I am.”

His wolf growled faintly at that.

He heard it. So did she. Her head tilted slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear.

“You don’t like that,” she murmured.

“No,” he said honestly. “He doesn’t.”

Her gaze dipped briefly to his throat.

“Good,” she said. “Discomfort breeds compliance.”

He laughed once, incredulous. “You always were a little bit terrifying. I just didn’t know how much.”

“That’s because you never paid attention to anything that wasn’t flattering you,” she said.

Gel still glistened faintly on his skin. She reached out with a towel, wiping his chest with efficient strokes.

The touch wasn’t sexual. It was clinical, brisk.

His body didn’t care.

Every nerve lit up under her hand. His wolf pressed closer, fascinated, wanting more.

She finished, dropped the towel into a bin, and picked up the tablet.

“I’m ordering a full neuro series and another round of cardiac imaging,” she said, fingers flying over the screen. “We need better data on how your wolf and your heart are misfiring.”

“And in the meantime?” he asked.

“In the meantime,” she said, setting the tablet aside, “you do exactly what you’re told. Eat when I say eat. Sleep when I say sleep. Shift only when I say shift. You don’t get to play Alpha here, Aiden. Not if you want to walk out.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked quietly. “If I don’t walk out?”

She met his gaze, expression unreadable.

“Then you get wheeled out,” she said. “Or carried. Or… not.”

His chest tightened. “You’re really okay with that? With the idea, you might be the one to cut that close?”

“I’m okay with reality,” she said. “You signed away the right to be precious about it.”

Silence sank between them.

He studied her face, searching for any trace of the woman who’d once lain under him, laughing, whispering promises into his mouth.

She’d carved that girl out of herself and stitched someone new over the wound.

“What did they call you back then?” he asked suddenly. “In residency.”

She frowned at the unexpected shift. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Humor a dying man,” he said. “What was your nickname before you were Blessed Luna?”

She hesitated, then rolled her eyes a little. “Hale the Hail Mary.”

He blinked. “Seriously?”

“Apparently I had a habit of taking hopeless cases and getting away with it,” she said dryly. “Some of us had to work for our miracles.”

He smiled, really smiled, for the first time in a long while. It hurt.

“You always did,” he said.

Her gaze flicked to his mouth, then away.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Look at me like we’re in some nostalgic reunion episode,” she snapped. “This is not a second chance romance, Aiden. This is triage.”

“It isn’t a little of both?” he asked, voice low.

She drew in a breath like she was inhaling fire, then let it out through her teeth.

“Your scans are in an hour,” she said. “Don’t eat. Don’t shift. Don’t die without my permission.”

She turned to leave.

“Lyra.”

She paused at the door, not looking back.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Thank you,” he said. “For… not letting him out. My wolf. It—he—”

“Would have torn your heart apart from the inside against an OR-grade glass wall,” she said. “That’s bad for my flooring.”

A beat.

“And for you,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

She exited, the door sliding shut behind her.

Aiden lay back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the echo of her voice in his bones.

His wolf prowled under his skin, unsettled and strangely… appeased.

He’d always thought a Luna was something you marked and claimed. A soft, shining thing at your side.

Watching Lyra command his wolf with a single word, watching her drag an Elder back from death while everyone whispered Blessed Luna like a prayer—

He was starting to realize he’d never understood what the term really meant.

Out in the corridor, a pair of nurses walked past, voices low.

“Did you see her in there?” one whispered. “I swear, she didn’t even blink when the Elder flatlined. It’s like she knew she’d get him back.”

“That’s why they call her Blessed,” the other said. “If I ever crash, I want her hands in my chest.”

“And nobody else’s?”

They laughed softly, footsteps fading.

Inside the room, Aiden closed his eyes.

His body ached. His pride bled. His wolf paced, confused and wanting.

He wasn’t just in enemy territory anymore.

He was under her control—

and his wolf had already chosen her.