Chapter 5

Marcus's POV：

“You’re finally healed,” Lucia said, standing in the doorway, a genuine smile tugging at her lips. “Now I can go to my trial without worrying.”

I rolled my shoulder. Within a week, my leg wound had completely healed, and the deadly venom had been flushed from my veins. She had done that. With those impossibly steady hands.

Today I would return to the palace, but I was going to miss this shabby little hut. The thought hit me harder than I expected.

"Hey, you want to take her back to the palace with you, just say so," My wolf was mocking me again.

"Shut up," I told him.

I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. These past few days, sleeping on Lucia’s floor, watching her grind herbs with such focus, listening to her hum while she read. She had no idea how much I’d come to look forward to hearing her voice every morning.

She was the first person in years who wanted nothing from me. She just wanted me to live.

I had planned to travel to the capital with her. But then my Beta’s mind-link came through: one of the rogues from the ambush had been caught. The one that got away. I needed to question him myself.

And after days of quiet investigation, I had already narrowed down the suspects. The two people closest to me in the palace. Just as I’d expected.

The palace was a nest of vipers, but I was no longer the unprepared prince from a few days ago. They’d tried to put a blade in my back and failed. Now it was my turn to sharpen mine.

I looked down at Lucia, her backpack slung over her shoulder, the ticket to the capital in her hand. Excitement and nervousness flickered across her face.

“You’ll pass,” I said, holding her gaze. Then, after a pause: “We’ll meet at the venue. I’ll show you around the capital.”

“You’re going there too?”

She still didn’t know who I really was. This wasn’t the time to tell her. She needed to focus on the trial, not worry about me. I wasn't going to let my problems disturb her during the trial. I could always tell her the truth after this was over. No rush.

“Yeah. I have something to take care of first. You just focus on the exam, and then wait for me.”

She opened her mouth—probably to ask why, why not go together, why all the mystery. I didn’t give her the chance.

“Get going. Don't be late. From now on, nobody talks down to you.”

She looked up at me, something bright flickering in her eyes. “You sound awfully sure.”

“I’m sure of you.” The words came out softer than I intended. My wolf let out that smug, low chuckle again.

Her cheeks flushed. She turned and started down the path, but glanced back once.

“I’ll do my best, Marty!” she called out.

Lucia's POV

This was my first time in the capital. White stone towers, banners snapping in the wind, more wolves in one square than my whole pack put together. The testing grounds swallowed all of us, hundreds of hopefuls in clean robes I could never have afforded, milling and nervous.

My satchel held a few of my own remedies, the ones I'd mixed by candlelight and tested on no one but myself. They were better than anything on the supply shelves. I just had to prove it.

I kept to the edge and listened.

"They say it's harder this year," a tall wolf muttered to his friend. "Most of us won't make it past the first round. Ten percent move on. Maybe less."

Ten percent. I rolled the number around. I'd beaten worse odds just staying alive this long.

A black car slid up to the gates, far too fine for a testing ground. The door opened and out came Olivia in deep green silk, her sisters trailing like a comet's tail.

Her gaze swept the crowd, bored, until it landed on me.

"Lucia?" She said my name slowly, savoring every letter. "They let you a wolfless register?"

Heads turned. Until that moment no one had looked at me twice. Now the whispers started, fast and mean.

"A wolfless? Here?"

"For a Healer rank? She can't even shift."

"Sweet of her, really. Every contest needs a stepping stone."

The old shame reached for me out of habit. I let it go.

I'd heard every one of these words a hundred times, and not one of them had ever made me wrong. So I looked Olivia dead in the eye and gave her the only answer that mattered.

"We'll see on the field."

Then the doors opened.

The first task was a field emergency preparation. No scales, no measuring cups. Just a pile of unwashed, whole plants with roots and stems still caked in dirt. We had to identify the correct herbs, extract the usable parts, and compound an ointment with an exact ratio.

Olivia went first. Faced with the raw herbs, she hesitated—academy-trained, used to pre-weighed ingredients. She crushed too hard, guessing the oil drops as she added them. When the examiner tested her ointment, the device beeped. “Slightly off, but you passed.”

Then it was my turn.

I didn't hesitate. My hands knew these plants. They had learned on a dirt floor under a leaky roof, with no one to correct me except wounds that healed or festered. I crushed in small circles, added oil drop by drop, counting in my head. I didn't need to see the numbers. I could feel it come together.

The examiner tested my ointment. The device stayed silent. He looked at the reading, then at me, disbelief flickering across his face.

“The ratio is exact,” he said. “Zero deviation.”

A murmur of surprise went through the crowd. And Olivia's smirk was gone.

Nearly half the candidates had been eliminated in this task. I took a deep breath and waited for the notoriously more difficult challenge.

The second task was a simulated patient. A construct of bespelled clay and channeled scent, laid out on a cot, dying in real time, and we had until a sand-glass emptied to brew the cure.

Around me, candidates went pale reading the symptoms. Unsurprisingly, this task was far too tricky — The patient's blood ran black at the edges. The breathing came shallow and skipping. Necrosis spreading out from one deep wound.

My stomach dropped, then steadied. I knew this—not from a textbook, but from my hut.

From that night. From that dying wolf.

Marty, you probably don't know this, but now this task feels like you paying me back.

I went straight for the herb station while others were still staring at their slates. No hesitation. My hands reached before my mind finished naming. Stop the bleeding. Draw the poison. I'd done it for real, and real is faster than anything you learn from a book.

Behind me, I heard Olivia curse under her breath. She'd grabbed the wrong base. Her hands were shaking. She couldn't stand losing to an Omega she'd looked down on since childhood.

Time slipped away. I seized every minute. Nearly done, I was adding the last ingredient to the antidote when I sensed someone behind me.

“Don’t get too pleased with yourself. Bitch.” A vicious whisper rose.

Olivia's elbow drove into my arm, hard, right as I tipped the measure. A jealous little shove, meant to make my hand jump and ruin the dose.

But my hands have been steady through worse than her. I rode the hit, kept the pour clean, and didn't spill a grain.

Olivia wasn't so lucky.

She lost her balance, staggered sideways into the next station, and knocked over a tall bottle on the edge. The stopper wasn't tight, and the solvent inside poured out—mixing violently with the agent that fell from her own hand. The splash caught her across the face.

She screamed. The skin on her cheek blistered instantly, red and raw, the smell turning my stomach. Within seconds, her eye was swelling shut.

For a second, I almost went to her. Instinct. I even took a step.

That step ruined me.

"She did it!" Olivia shrieked, clawing at her face. "The wolfless one attacked me!"

The examiner was there in seconds, panic in his eyes. He looked at the weeping Alpha's daughter, then grabbed my wrist. "Medic!" he shouted. Two healers rushed in.

"I didn't touch her," I said. "Her own bottle—she knocked it over herself!"

"I saw it," one of her hangers-on said at once.

"So did I. The human did it."

“You're lying through your teeth!” I shouted.

"Enough." He wasn't listening. He'd already done the math—a wolfless orphan was easier to discard than an Alpha's daughter. "Disqualified. Take her away immediately. Lock her in the holding cell for investigation."

The soldiers put their hands on my arms, but Olivia wasn't finished. Through her sobs, she spat, "Investigation? She tried to blind me! Punish her now! She's an Omega from my pack—I have the right to demand it! Five lashes—no, ten—before I lose my sight!"

The examiner hesitated.

“This isn’t fair!” I cried out. “I didn’t touch her—she knocked over her own bottle! Check the records, test the residue on her hands! Why are you only taking her word for it?”

Olivia’s voice grew sharper, more frantic, cutting me off: “My father is the Alpha, and he’s right outside! If you dare to shield this wolfless mongrel, I promise you’ll regret it!”

The soldier behind me shoved my shoulder down, pinning my knees to the ground.

The examiner looked at Olivia’s disfigured face, then gave a short nod.

“The whipping will proceed immediately. Then confinement.”

They dragged me to the edge of the grounds, in full view of every candidate, and forced me to my knees. I heard the whip come loose.

The irony. This was a healer's examination. Yet one word from an Alpha's daughter had turned the "impartial" examiners into executioners.

Bloodline, power—more deadly than any poison.

The first strike tore across my back and stole the breath out of me.

"I didn't do it," I ground out, through the second lash, through the third. My vision went white at the edges. "I didn't… I never did it…"

A barbed whip cracked into me with brutal force. I felt my skin split, felt warmth run down my spine. The crowd had gone quiet and ugly, watching a wolfless girl get whipped for being convenient. Because it was easy. Because no one would speak up for an orphan.

In the depths of the pain, I whispered Marty's words to myself over and over.

You'll pass it.

And now even that was being torn out of my hands, one stroke at a time.

I was bracing for the tenth when the noise started.

A ripple at the back of the crowd. Boots. A wave of people stumbling to get out of someone's way, and a word passing mouth to mouth, fast and stunned.

The Prince. The Lycan Prince is here.

I tried to lift my head, blood dripping from my forehead into my eyes.

And a voice cut across the whole square, low and furious and so familiar it stopped my heart mid-beat.

"Let her go."