Chapter 4: The Touch of a Ghost

The infirmary of the Blackwood Pack had once been a place of healing, but now it smelled of stagnant water and old blood. The "Shadow Rot" had turned the sterile room into a tomb.

I stood at the galvanized steel table, arranging my surgical tools. I had sent the triplets to the gardens with Marcus, my trusted assistant and a powerful Gamma warrior I’d hired years ago. I didn't want them seeing this. I didn't want them seeing him like this.

The door groaned open. Killian walked in alone. He had stripped down to a simple pair of black training sweats, his chest bare.

My breath hitched, and for a split second, the "Silver Doctor" vanished. In her place was eighteen-year-old Elena, staring at the man who had been her entire world. Even with the gray veins of the Rot branching across his ribs, he was a masterpiece of masculine power. His muscles were hard-edged, his skin bronzed by the sun, and the thick hair on his chest tapered down into a dangerously low waistband.

Then I saw it.

On the left side of his chest, right over his heart, was a jagged, ugly scar. It wasn't from a claw or a blade. It was a Rejection Scar. When an Alpha rejects a fated mate, his own wolf often tries to tear the heart out of the body in grief.

"Sit," I commanded, my voice cracking slightly before I regained my ice-cold composure.

Killian sat on the edge of the examination table. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off his skin. "The others... they say you use 'human' medicine," he said, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that stirred the Lycan inside me. "They say you don't believe in the Goddess."

"The Goddess gave you a mate, and you threw her away, Alpha," I said, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. The sound was like a whip crack in the silent room. "If I were you, I wouldn't rely on her mercy. Rely on my needles instead."

I moved behind him to inspect the base of his spine, where the Rot usually settled. As my gloved fingers brushed his skin, a literal spark of static electricity jumped between us.

Killian let out a choked sound—half-groan, half-growl. His entire body hummed. "Your touch," he whispered, his head dropping forward. "It... it feels like..."

"It feels like medicine," I interrupted sharply. "Nothing more."

But I was lying. The moment I touched him, my White Lycan began to howl. She wanted to lick the Rot from his skin. She wanted to mark him, to claim him, to punish him. My hands trembled, and I had to grip the edge of the table to stay upright.

"You're shaking, Doctor," Killian said. He turned around slowly, his storm-colored eyes searching my silver mask. "Are you afraid of me?"

"I'm disgusted by you," I retorted. I picked up a silver-tipped syringe filled with a glowing blue serum—a concoction of wolfsbane and Lycan enzymes. "This will hurt. It has to burn out the infection before I can heal the tissue."

I stepped between his knees to reach his chest. The position was compromising, intimate. I could see the pulse jumping in his neck. I could smell the cedar and the rain, now mixed with the sharp, bitter scent of his arousal.

He didn't pull away. Instead, he reached up, his large, calloused hand hovering just inches from the edge of my mask.

"I know you," he breathed. His voice was thick with a sudden, agonizing realization. "I don't know how, and I don't know why... but my wolf is screaming your name. He hasn't roared in five years. He’s been silent since the night I..."

"Since the night you murdered a young girl’s soul?" I finished for him. I pressed the needle into the skin near his heart.

Killian didn't flinch from the pain of the needle. He flinched from my words. He let out a ragged breath, his eyes clouding with tears he refused to let fall. "I did what I had to for the pack. A wolfless Luna would have invited war from the Shadow Pack. I thought I was being a leader."

"And look at you now," I hissed, leaning in close until our foreheads almost touched. "A leader of a dying land. A King of a graveyard. Was it worth it, Killian? Was Sarah worth the rot in your bones?"

At the mention of Sarah, his expression hardened into one of pure misery. "Sarah is not my mate. She is a mistake I have to live with every day. The bond... it didn't transfer. It just... died."

"The bond didn't die," I whispered, the Lycan in me taking over for a brief, dangerous second. "It went to someone who deserved it."

I pushed the plunger. The serum hit his system, and Killian’s back arched. A roar of pure agony ripped from his throat—a sound so loud it vibrated the glass jars on the shelves. His claws extended, digging into the sides of the metal table, leaving deep gouges in the steel.

"Hold him!" I shouted, though there was no one else in the room.

I threw my arms around his shoulders, pinning him down not with human strength, but with a burst of Lycan pressure. For a moment, we were locked together—the rejected and the rejector. His face buried in the crook of my neck, his hot breath searing my skin.

"Elena..." he groaned into my skin.

I froze. The world stopped spinning. He had said my name. Not "Doctor," not "Argentum." Elena.

The bond flared to life like a wildfire. A golden light began to pulse from his chest, meeting the silver light radiating from mine. The room was filled with a blinding, celestial glow.

Killian pulled back, his eyes wide, the black veins of the Rot visibly receding from his neck. He looked at me, his vision finally clearing as the pain ebbed away. He looked at the way my coat had fallen open, revealing a small, star-shaped birthmark on my collarbone.

His hand flew to my mask. Before I could stop him, his fingers hooked under the silver filigree.

"No!" I scrambled back, but I was too slow.

The mask clattered to the floor, ringing against the tiles.

I stood before him, my platinum hair wild, my silver eyes burning with a fury that could level cities. I didn't look like the broken girl from the woods. I looked like a Goddess of War.

Killian fell off the table, dropping to his actual knees this time. Not because I demanded it, but because his legs wouldn't hold him. He stared at me, his lips trembling, his entire body shaking with the force of a thousand regrets.

"Elena?" he whispered, the word a prayer. "You’re... you're alive? But your hair... your eyes... the White Lycan..."

"The girl you rejected died five years ago, Killian," I said, my voice as cold as a winter grave. I picked up my mask and pressed it back to my face, the magnets clicking into place. "I am the Silver Doctor. And you are just a patient."

I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me at the door.

"The boys," he croaked. "Leo and Ace. They have my face. They have my scent."

I paused, my hand on the doorknob. I didn't turn around. "They have my soul, Killian. And that is the only thing that matters. They are not yours. They will never be yours."

"They are my sons!" he roared, a spark of the old Alpha returning through the grief. "They are the heirs to Blackwood!"

I finally turned, and this time, I let my power roll off me in waves, cracking the floorboards beneath my boots.

"They are the heirs to a throne you burned to the ground the moment you chose Sarah over me," I spat. "If you try to claim them, if you even speak to them without my presence, I will not only stop the treatment—I will ensure the Blackwood Pack is erased from the maps. Try me, Alpha. See if your dying wolf can stand against a Lycan Queen."

I slammed the door, leaving him in the darkness of the infirmary.

As I walked down the hallway, I realized I was crying. The ice had cracked. But as I wiped the tears away, they didn't feel like tears of sadness. They felt like blood.

I had waited five years for him to know the truth. Now he knew.

And now, the real war began.