All Chapters of A Healer's Heart, Not a Luna's Crown: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Ella's POVKyle Locke's tone turned coaxing."The moonstone carries too much power. If you wear it, it'll stir up your wolf. Besides, the fang pendant was always meant for you."He said it like it was obvious, like I'd been fighting over something that had never belonged to me in the first place.I lifted my chin and looked him straight in the eye. "So I only deserve the ordinary one?"He blinked, caught off guard for half a second, then laughed, a little helpless, the way you'd laugh at a kid throwing a tantrum."All right, don't get worked up. If you don't like this pendant, we'll go pick something else out at the jeweler's."That was the moment my heart finally sank all the way down.I stood up and pushed the fang pendant back across the table."Don't bother. Give it all to Serafina. Kyle, let's call off the engagement."Kyle must have thought I was just being petulant, because he reached out to pat my head."Ella, don't go around saying we're calling off the engagement.

When the car pulled up out front, Kyle said, offhand, "Serafina's coming by in a bit too. I want to set a room aside for her at our new house."I didn't say anything. I just quietly pushed open the car's back door and got out.The whole ride over, Kyle and Serafina had sat up front, heads bent together, talking about the Moonlight Rite. The two of them looked so close, so at ease, that I felt like the odd one out.I watched their profiles and finally understood. I had never been the center of this engagement.The house was built on high ground by the lake, meant to be our bonding home. There was a skylight cut into the roof, and on a full moon the light would fall straight onto the bed at its center, ideal for completing a bonding and for a mated pair's wolves to merge.The inside of the house was grander than I'd imagined, and none of it had been made with me in mind.The moment Serafina walked in, she looked straight up at the space under the skylight, her eyes bright as polish

I opened the door and found Kyle standing there."Ella, Serafina's Moonlight Rite only happens once in a lifetime. It starts at ten."I looked at him. "So?""Let's move the bonding ceremony to the evening. We can skip the formal part and go straight to the reception."Kyle walked into my room, his expression carrying that same air of taking it for granted."Ella, you're always the reasonable one. You'll agree to this, right?"I looked at him and suddenly thought back to when I was a kid.I'd once placed first in a Healer's examination, and my parents had gone to watch Serafina's Moonlight performance instead. Kyle had said he'd come. In the end, he went to Serafina too.I'd stood alone on that stage, watching everyone else's parents in the crowd.I understood then. All those years, I'd really been alone the whole time."Fine," I said. "Move it to the evening."It worked out well, actually. It saved me from having to find another excuse to stall.He clearly relaxed once I ag

Ella's POVI'd been here three months now.Lila had set up my own healing room, on the east side of the pack's clinic, with a window that looked out over the herb fields. In the early mornings I could watch dew drip down the leaves of the plants below.Every day I woke before dawn to mix remedies, make my rounds, and tend to the wounds of any patrol members who'd been hurt. In the evenings I sat by the window sorting through preions, teaching the pack's young cubs to identify herbs.Here, no one knew I was the second daughter of the Voss family. No one looked down on me.The young men on the patrol team would bow their heads to thank me whenever I healed a festering wolf-spirit wound. The pack elders would quietly leave dried fruit from their own harvest at my door. Even the pack's Alpha greeted me with courtesy as a healer.For the first time, I truly felt it: my skills, my presence, actually meant something.That evening, the patrol team came rushing in carrying someone. Leadi

Serafina came without an escort, holding a plain umbrella by herself, her chin, always held so high, tipped down just slightly now.She carried a wooden box in her arms. Inside it was the moonstone collar."Ella."She stepped into the clinic, her voice hoarser than I'd ever heard it."I'm sorry. I always took whatever I wanted from you, always thought it was mine by right. I told myself it was because I carry the Silver Wolf bloodline, that I deserved the best of everything, and I never once thought about how you felt."She pushed the box toward me."Take this back. It should have been yours all along."I glanced at the moonstone. It glowed warm and soft inside the box, beautiful, the kind of thing I used to stand in front of a shop window staring at as a child, too afraid to even say I wanted it.But now, it felt like it belonged to some distant world."I don't need it."I pushed the box back toward her. "I'm a Healer. I can settle my wolf just fine with herbs and needles.