Bitter Medicine

Outside Evangeline's room, I finally breathed again, free from the overwhelming stench of her unnaturally heavy vanilla scent. Just another reason I always left from her presence nauseous and dizzy. It clung to my clothes as I returned to the kitchens, burning in my nose until I had to rush to the bathroom and be sick.

"You better not be planning to stay in the infirmary for the next week, Fumbles," Delta Hester snarled through the bathroom door.

"No, ma'am. It's just a flare." I called back, spitting into the toilet and scrubbing my face with cold water—a much-needed jolt to my overstimulated system.

My reflection in the mirror haunted me.

Gaunt face, dull and pale. Ashen white, like that of a ghost. Truly, everything about me was dull. My limp black hair, my green eyes, even my full lips were cracked and dry. No part of me went untouched by illness and cruelty, and evidence was written on my face. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn't change those features.

So, I stopped trying and returned to my duties.

Delta Hester was a hawk on my shoulder for the rest of the evening and all the next day, too. I could barely stop to eat and take the tonics prescribed by Dr. Andromeda without her shouting at me to get back to work. To straighten my posture. To stop being a dead weight.

I scurried like a rat chased by a cat. When I wasn't in the infirmary or hiding away in my cabin, I was hunched over a basin or tray and every day, crushed under boot and cold word, until I wasn't sure if I was even alive anymore, or just a corpse following muscle memory.

Silently. Secretly. In the quietest part of my heart, I hoped.

Perhaps, if fate were kind and the Moon Goddess forgiving, I would meet my wolf, and everything would change. Perhaps, like Phillipe, I would find a mate within Snow Pointe who would see me and treasure me as his. I would finally be a Snow. I would finally be pulled from this life of servitude and suffering.

It was the smallest flicker of life in my quiet existence, but I clung to it day in and out.

But then I'd hear Evangeline's cruel jeer, her taunting words, No self-respecting wolf would ever accept a bond with something like you.

"No..." I muttered to myself, laid back on my cot the night before my seventeenth. "She doesn't know everything. I will find my mate. And he will love me. And I will be free."

I didn't really believe the words I spoke. They were more a prayer than an affirmation. But I said them to the empty cabin anyway.

A knock on the door startled me upright, and I quickly fumbled into some sweatpants and a jacket to answer it. I half-expected, half-hoped to see Phillipe on the other side. A surprise gift before my birthday, since the next day, all of Snow Pointe would be too busy celebrating Evangeline.

But when I opened the door, it was Dr. Andromeda, her expression dark and unreadable.

"You're here. Good." She thrust a box of medicine into my hand, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. "These are different medicines you'll need to take tomorrow to deal with the symptoms of your first shift as well as your condition."

The doctor turned to leave. No further instructions. Not a kind word or a well-wish.

"Wait-" I reached out. I don't know why. I should have let her walk away, but... something was bothering me. Beyond her cold, clinical treatment of me. "Lately... I haven't been feeling weak between my treatments. I only feel worse after... afterward."

Dr. Andromeda sighed, her posture rigid and face tense. "That's because the treatments are working. If they weren't working, you'd be weak all the time. I've told you this."

"I know, it's just... do I really need to take all of this before I shift tomorrow?" I asked, glancing down at the box in my hands. There were easily twelve bottles of tonic shoved in the crate. Some were the familiar, clear liquid I endured as a young pup. Others were dark and full of that nasty, red, viscous fluid she started treating me with after the start of my fourteenth year.

"Aurelia, don't. I don't have time to deal with your questions and doubts, alright?" she snapped and pinched the bridge of her nose, huffing. "You're alive because of me, you know that? Because of all the hard work and time I put into keeping you alive. And for what? For you to constantly mess up and draw unnecessary attention to yourself? For you to question my methods? Methods that have given you seventeen more years of life than you ever deserved on your own."

It was like being punched in the stomach. Her words sliced through the last kind memories I carried of her. From before Evangeline's tirade and the day everything changed.

"I..." A lump formed in my throat. I couldn't look her in the eyes, couldn't bear to see what kind of expression she wore. I didn't want to replace the warm smile and caring eyes of my memories with this new reality. The one where my only guardian looked at me as a nuisance and burden.

I nodded. "I'm sorry. You're right. I'll... I'll make sure to take them all, just like you said."

Another heavy sigh strained her voice. "Good. Get some rest. You'll need it."

She didn't wait for my reply, storming off into the night.

I waited until she was out of sight to drop the crate of medicines, watching the bottles clang and shatter against the floor of my cabin. The fluids blended and oozed between the floorboards.

"Shit..."

I shouldn't have done that... She's going to be mad at me if I get sick tomorrow because I didn't take my medicine.

I knelt down, picking up a shard of glass, a single droplet of medicine clinging to the edge. It glittered in the low light, and I was tempted to let it drop onto my tongue.

"A single drop won't do any good."

The shard slipped from my fingers as I stood straight. Calm washed over me as I made a choice. A final, difficult decision.

If I got sick, so be it. I wasn’t going to tell the doctor or go in for it. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow, I would stay in my cabin as commanded. I would face whatever sickness struck when I met my wolf. And Doctor Andromeda would never know.

I refused to take that disgusting medicine and, for the first time in my life, I felt stronger. Not physically, never that. But strong enough to make my own choice. Strong enough to accept my wolf when the moon rose. There was hope, and I planned to cling to it like a life raft at sea.

I can survive a day. And when I meet my wolf, everything will be better. I know it.