3: BROKEN YET BREATHING

The scent of antiseptic and blood was thicker than ever.

I shoved open the door to the healer’s ward with more force than I meant to. The wooden frame cracked against the stone wall with a bang. Nobody looked up.

Because nobody cared. That was the way it worked for healers. We were invisible unless someone was bleeding. And even then—if you were an Omega, you were the last one thanked and the first one blamed.

I walked to the table in the corner, dropping my pack with a grunt. My muscles shook as I pulled out herbs, bandages, blades. I needed work. I needed to focus. I needed something to hold on to, because if I let go, even for a second, I was going to scream, or worse—beg.

And I’d rather bleed out quietly than beg.

“Ayla.” Beta Larin’s voice barked from the door. “That gash on Braven’s leg reopened. Fix it before the next patrol.”

I nodded once, he didn’t even say thank you. Just tossed a bloodied tunic on the floor and walked off like I was some low-rank servant. I grabbed the stitching needle, thread, and a roll of bandages, then moved to Braven’s cot. The young warrior was barely conscious, feverish and pale. His thigh was soaked red again.

“I’m going to need you to hold still,” I murmured.

He groaned. “Hurts.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ll be quick.”

But my hands… my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

The needle trembled between my fingers. I gritted my teeth and steadied it against his skin, but even the pressure made my vision blur. The moment the silver hook pierced flesh, a sob ripped up my throat and stuck there. I bit down hard on my tongue until I tasted blood.

No weakness. I finished three stitches before I noticed it.

Braven turned his head, nose twitching. Then he frowned. “You smell… weird,” he said.

I froze.

“What?”

“Not bad,” he said, blinking slowly. “Just… not like you.”

My stomach twisted, I sniffed my wrist. No lavender, no pine, no rain. Nothing that used to be me. Just herbs, metal and ash. My scent was wrong.

He wasn’t the first to notice. I was just the last to admit it. I finished stitching in silence. When I was done, I bandaged the wound and walked into the back room without speaking.

I locked the door behind me, and sat in front of the old mirror nailed to the wall. The candlelight flickered over my face. Hollow cheeks, split lip. Dirt smudged across my jawline.

But my eyes—my eyes weren’t mine. They were dull. Empty. No glow. No edge of silver.

And my wolf—she was still silent. Still hiding. Still afraid.

“Say something,” I whispered. “Please.”

Nothing.

“I need you.”

Still nothing.

I buried my face in my hands and laughed, short, dry, and Ugly.

“What did they do to us?” I whispered into my palms. “What did she take?”

My memories were fogged. I could feel where something used to be. My scent—my signature—had been erased.

And scent wasn’t just perfume. It was identity. It was the thing a fated mate recognized from across a battlefield. The essence that proved you were born to be one thing in a world that wanted to break you into something else.

I was no one now. I pressed my forehead to the cold glass of the mirror, closed my eyes. Then something shifted.

A voice—not my wolf, but a whisper, like wind through bone:

"Seek the stone. The sacred spring remembers what the flesh forgets."

My eyes snapped open. The mirror was the same. The room was still. But something had spoken or maybe I was losing my mind.

Did it matter? I stood. Grabbed my cloak. And walked out the back of the ward, into the trees.

The forest had never looked this empty. I walked alone, deeper into the trees, until the moss grew thick and the air felt heavy with silence. Every step away from the packhouse made it easier to breathe—and harder to think. Above me, the moon carved a perfect circle in the sky, bone-white and watching.

I knew the way to the spring by heart. Every healer did.

The sacred Moonstone spring wasn’t a place for prayers or petty hopes. It was for truths—unwanted ones. I’d only been there twice in my life. Once with my mother—Once alone after she died.

I didn’t remember what I saw the second time. Only that I came back shaking, the trees parted ahead. The spring glimmered like poured glass, surrounded by black stone and silver grass. Steam rose gently from the surface, though the air was cold.

I stepped up to the edge.

The water was perfectly still.

I knelt, heart hammering.

This was where mates saw their bond threads—the threads that shimmered between fated wolves like light on spider silk. This was where the Goddess whispered.

I closed my eyes and dipped two fingers into the water. At first, nothing happened. Then the surface pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

And the vision hit me like drowning. The forest was burning. Wolves were screaming. Blood soaked the roots of a giant ash tree—its bark cracked and glowing, weeping golden sap.

Cassia stood beneath it, veiled in firelight, holding a blade. Darius knelt before her, blood pouring from his mouth. He was dying, and I was watching from the shadows.

No.

I was shifting.

Rising.

Bones cracking, silver eyes glowing, fury like moonlight. Something massive and divine. A figure emerged behind me—hooded, faceless.

Her voice was not a whisper this time. It was a command. “You are not broken. You are stolen. Take yourself back.”

I opened my mouth to answer—And woke up gasping. The spring was still. The forest was silent again. But something clung to my skin—the feeling of fur, of power humming in my chest like a buried drum.

I looked down. The tips of my fingers were glowing faintly. A soft silver light, like moonstone dust. And carved into the stone beside the spring, words had appeared in delicate, curling script.

Blessed, not broken

Luna, not lost.

I stumbled back, heart thudding. Then a twig snapped behind me. I spun but no one was there. Only the wind. Only the trees. Only a wolf’s distant howl—echoing not from the forest, but from inside me.