Chapter 3

KELLY

The room had grown colder, though Nevaeh burned like a star in my arms.

Her breath came in shallow gasps, her skin slick with sweat.

I pressed a damp cloth to her forehead, but it was useless.

The fever wasn’t ordinary. It pulsed beneath her skin like something alive.

“Stay with me, baby,” I whispered, brushing her hair from her face. “Please.”

Her little hand clutched at my wrist, too weak to hold on.

I called for help, once, twice, until my throat went raw.

My voice bounced off the stone walls and died in the dark.

No answer. “Call me a healer….” I screamed at the top of my voice.

When footsteps finally came, I almost wept. A guard appeared in the doorway, avoiding my eyes.

“The healers can’t come, Luna,” he muttered. “Lady Eve has taken ill. They’re attending to her.”

I froze. “Ill?” I hissed. “She’s pretending!”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “Alpha’s orders.”

The door shut again, and the silence that followed was unbearable.

My sister’s deceit, Ezekiel’s cruelty, none of it mattered right now. My child was burning alive, and I was powerless.

Or maybe not.

Somewhere deep in my bones, something stirred.

I remembered the stories my mother told of Lunas before me who could draw life from moonlight, channel it through blood and love.

Magic older than any curse.

I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to Nevaeh’s chest.

The air thickened, humming. A faint blue shimmer flickered beneath my skin, the same light that had split my palms open the night of the birthday.

It hurt. Gods, it burned. But Nevaeh’s breathing steadied. Her tremors slowed.

When she opened her eyes, they weren’t brown anymore.

They glowed faintly silver.

“Mommy…” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It’s singing.”

“What is singing my love?”

“The moon.”

Then she went limp, slipping into a heavy sleep.

I held her, shaking, tears spilling unchecked. I didn’t know if I’d saved her or cursed her all over again.

Hours later, the door crashed open.

Ezekiel strode in, rage written across every line of his body.

Behind him trailed Eve, pale gown, perfect hair, not a trace of illness.

“Explain yourself,” Ezekiel demanded. “You want to drag the healers away from your sister with your theatrics?”

“My theatrics?” I rose slowly, my body trembling from exhaustion and fury.

“Eve’s faking an illness while our daughter burns with fever!”

Eve gasped, a sound so delicate it made me want to rip the air from her throat.

“Oh, sister,” she sighed. “Grief has made you cruel.”

I laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “You wouldn’t know grief if it clawed through your perfect skin.”

Ezekiel slammed his hand against the wall, the stone cracking under his strength. “Enough! Do you think your hysterics earn you mercy? You bring shame to this pack!”

“You bring rot to it!” I shot back. “You call yourself Alpha, yet you turn your back on your blood, on your own daughter!”

His eyes blazed. “Watch your tongue.”

“No,” I whispered. “You watch yours. Every word you speak digs your grave deeper.”

Eve stepped forward, her voice honeyed and false. “Alpha, she’s dangerous. The fever, the light, it’s her curse spreading. If she infects the child…”

“Infects?” I snarled. “You’re the disease, Eve.”

Her smile was razor-sharp. “Then let’s see which of us survives the cure.”

Ezekiel’s voice dropped to a low growl. “Enough. Guards, take them back to the east cell. Double the locks. No one enters without my permission.”

I clutched Nevaeh tighter as the guards approached.

“Ezekiel..”

“Be grateful I spare your lives,” he said coldly. “The pack needs order, not your madness.”

He turned and walked out. Eve lingered, lowering her head until her lips nearly brushed my ear.

“Sleep well, sister. The next time you wake, your curse won’t be the only thing that’s dying.”

The cell stank of damp straw and old iron. Candlelight licked at the walls but could not reach the fever burning in my daughter’s small body.

She lay curled against my side, skin hot and dry as a brand, breath coming short and shallow like a bellows tired of its work.

I rocked her on my knees and prayed to gods I’d stopped believing in years ago. “Hold on,” I whispered. “Please hold on.”

Outside, the pack’s life went on in crooked, necessary ways, orders barked, boots echoing over stone, the rhythm of duty that had once felt like home.

Inside, time had narrowed to the sound of Nevaeh’s rasping breath and the pounding of my own heart.

When the guard finally returned with a healer, I rose so quickly my head swam.

He was young, apron stained, eyes that had seen more death than laughter.

He bustled past me into the next chamber where the child had been carried, his hands quick and professional.

“Tell me everything,” I demanded. “What’s going on with my daughter?”

The healer’s face folded into a careful neutrality. He pressed a hand to Nevaeh’s wrist, then looked up at me.

“Her pulse is fast. She’s delirious. We suspected meningitis—”

“No,” I cut in. “The fever came on after she—” I swallowed, remembering the strange silvering of her gaze.

“After she collapsed at the celebration.”

He nodded once as if cataloguing a case. “We’ll bleed, poultice, poultice again. The east apothecary has a sedative if the fever spikes. But the main men are..” He hesitated, searching for a word kind enough to be true.

“—engaged elsewhere.”

“Engaged elsewhere?” I echoed. “Where?”

He lowered his voice. “Lady Eve’s ailment was reported this morning. The council sent the senior healers to her tent.”

Something cold slid under my ribs. I stepped around him, anger and a primitive, hungry terror joining hands.

“She’s feigning,” I said. “She’s using herself as the bait to absorb the healers. You must go. We can’t afford the delay.”

He rubbed his temple, the lines there deep as old scars.

“I’d go if I could, Luna. But the Alpha has ruled—”

“You will go,” I said, surprising even myself. “Do you hear me? I will have the elders hear this.”

I went to the cell’s barred window and shouted, the sound raw with something that was no longer only a mother’s plea.

“Cole! Beta! A healer for my child this instant!”

The shuffling outside was immediate; shouts, then silence. A scuffle of intent. A voice I recognized, rough, reluctant. “Luna, the Alpha commands—”

“Tell him the Luna commands the same!” I answered. “My daughter is burning!”

The world tilted when the senior healer finally arrived, cloak thrown back, staff tapping like a judge’s gavel. He moved slower than the young man, a practiced dread in his gait.

He checked Nevaeh as if measuring the weight of a life, lips pressed tight.

“Heads of the council,” he said without preamble. “This is beyond a simple fever. The child’s state is… precarious.”

“Precarious?” My voice frayed. “Then act. Do something.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to dislodge memory.

“We can try. We will try. But time has been taken from us. Delay breeds consequence.”

Eve materialized at the doorway like a shadow cut in silk her face the picture of concern, fingers already pressed to a cold brow that wasn’t hers. “Is there anything I can do?” she purred.

My mouth tasted of bile. My legs wanted to move through her and tear at the fabric of the lie.

“Lady Eve,” the senior healer said politely, “we need stronger herbs…”

Eve’s hand flew to her stomach with a practiced, maternal sweep. “I am unwell,” she murmured. “My strength is failing. Surely the elders will agree the child of my womb deserves priority.”

A ripple of murmurs went through the assembled aides, the unspoken assumption heavy as stone, a gestation for the future of the pack takes precedence over one small life. The senior man’s jaw twitched, torn between the oath to heal and the pressure of ritual.

“No,” I said, though the word felt small in my mouth. “Not instead of her. Not while my child burns.”

He looked at me long, pity and protocol warring in his eyes. “The council will need convincing, Luna. They’ll listen to the Alpha more readily than to a wife accused of folly.”

The room tilted. Accused. Folly. Their words felt like shackles.

I leaned over Nevaeh, feeling the hum of a presence under my skin, an old thing waking, a raw line of power I’d been taught to fold into silence.

I thought of the bargain traded to save Eve when we were both children, the witch’s hands and the price my family had paid. I thought of the nights my wolf had been taught to hide.

“Do something,” I begged the senior healer. “Name it. I’ll pay. I will trade—”

He held up a hand. “There is a remedy, but it must be made with the moon-iron root and the blood of kin. It requires a ritual, and permission to draw upon pack resources. Without the council’s assent, we cannot perform it.”

Heat rose to my face, shame and fury braided together. I, who had sacrificed and served, would now stand barred by law and lie.

Eve’s silhouette seemed to grow, her smile a blade. “Perhaps Luna should be confined,” she whispered, loud enough for more to hear. “Not in anger, but for her own and the child’s safety. Solitude often sobers the mind.”

Before I could speak, the senior healer spoke with a voice like falling stones. “We can attempt the remedy, but understand this—the window is narrow. Delay can and will corrode chances. I fear, Luna, that if we do not act we may lose her.”

Those words fell like an executioner’s ax.

“Do it,” I rasped. “Whatever it takes.”

The healer knelt, gathering herbs, reciting quiet rhymes.

He asked for water from the holy spring, a token from the Alpha’s ring protocols meant to bind power.

Each step felt like a plea through courtly channels. I watched him work while fear braided itself with a new, cold determination.

When at last he straightened, his face unreadable, he met my eyes. “There is an eighty percent risk that she will not survive unless this ritual succeeds,” he said. “Even then…”

Even then. The sentence ended unfinished, but the weight of it was clear.

I collapsed against the flagstones.