I Was My Alpha’s Medicine, Never His Luna

The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and wolfsbane. I'd been breathing it for six years.

I sat in the chair by the window while Healer Petra prepared the extraction kit. My hands were folded in my lap. My posture was straight. I looked like I always looked—calm, composed, a Luna performing her role. Inside, my wolf was counting.

Two thousand one hundred ninety mornings. Two thousand one hundred ninety nights. Today was the last one.

"Adelaide," Petra said quietly. She was holding the syringe, her eyes on Kashton's arm where the vein stood out beneath his skin. He was sitting in the other chair, scrolling through his phone, barely paying attention. He never paid attention to these extractions anymore. They'd become routine.

I nodded once. Petra inserted the needle.

Kashton didn't flinch. He'd stopped flinching after the first year. The dark red blood filled the vial slowly, methodically. I watched it the way I'd watched every extraction before this one—like I was memorizing it. Because I was. Every drop of his blood was another hour of Dawson's life. Every vial was another day my mate could breathe.

Petra withdrew the needle, pressed gauze to the puncture site, and labeled the vial with her precise handwriting. She set it in the insulated case with the others. Then she turned to me.

"This completes the transfusion series," she said. Her voice was professional, but her eyes held something else. Knowledge. She'd known from the beginning what I was doing here. She'd filled my suppressant prescriptions every month for six years without asking questions. "Dawson's wolf will be fully restored within seventy-two hours."

I felt nothing on my face. Inside, my wolf threw her head back and howled.

"Thank you, Petra," I said.

Kashton glanced up from his phone. "We're done already?"

"Yes, Alpha," Petra said.

He stood, rolling his shoulder where the needle had been. "Good. I have a conference call in twenty minutes." He looked at me briefly, the way he always looked at me—like I was a fixture in the room, something useful and expected. "Adelaide, I'll need the quarterly budget report on my desk by this afternoon."

"Of course," I said.

He walked out. The door closed behind him.

Petra and I stood in the sudden quiet. She was still holding the insulated case. Her fingers were tight on the handle.

"Adelaide—" she started.

I picked up my empty tea glass from the side table. "I'll see you at the pack run tonight, Petra."

I wouldn't. But she didn't need to know that yet.

I walked out of the medical wing and down the hall to the pack kitchen. My feet knew the route without thinking. Two thousand one hundred ninety mornings of the same path had worn it into my bones.

The kitchen was empty. It was still early. The rest of the pack wouldn't be awake for another hour. I moved through the space like I always did—pulling down the ceramic pot, measuring the dried wolfsbane root, heating the water to exactly the temperature Kashton preferred. Not boiling. Just below it.

The tea steeped for four minutes. I timed it without looking at a clock.

When it was ready, I poured it into his preferred mug—the heavy stone one with Shadowcrest's crest carved into the side—and carried it down the hall to his study. I set it outside the door the way I always did. He'd find it when he came out of his conference call. He'd drink it without thinking about who made it or why it was always exactly right.

I stood there for a moment, looking at the mug. Steam rose from the surface in thin curls.

Two thousand one hundred ninety-one cups of tea. This was the last one.

I turned and walked past the kitchen. I did not begin the breakfast rotation. I did not pull out the meal-prep schedule. I did not check the pantry inventory.

I walked to the private chamber on the east wing where the Elder Council's witness was waiting.

His name was Marcus. He was old, his hair silver, his posture bent from decades of pack service. He looked up when I entered. The Luna renunciation papers were already spread across the table. He'd prepared them three days ago, when I'd sent word through a Thornfield courier that the extraction series was complete.

"Miss Freeman," he said. Not Luna. Miss Freeman. The title I'd been born with. The title I was taking back.

I sat across from him. "I'm ready."

He slid the papers toward me. I read them once, carefully, even though I'd memorized every clause weeks ago. The renunciation was absolute. Irreversible. Kashton's consent was not required under the loophole Dawson's mother had given me—a clause buried in Elder law that allowed a Luna to sever a bond that had never been consummated by marking.

I signed my name at the bottom. Adelaide Freeman.

Marcus witnessed it, pressed the Elder Council's seal into the wax, and stamped the date. January fourteenth. The two thousand one hundred ninetieth day.

"It's done," he said quietly.

I stood. "Thank you, Marcus."

He looked at me for a long moment. "You're a stronger wolf than most Alphas I've known, Miss Freeman."

I didn't answer. I walked out.

That evening, I was in my quarters when the mind-link crackled to life. It wasn't Kashton's voice. It wasn't Shadowcrest's pack frequency.

It was Dawson.

His voice was rough, layered beneath his wolf's for the first time in six years. I could feel the strength in it—the restoration, the life flooding back into him like water into a riverbed that had been dry too long.

*"Adelaide,"* he said. *"I can feel him waking up. Come home."*

My wolf surged inside me. I closed the link gently, carefully, the way I'd learned to do everything in this pack house—without leaving a trace.

I pulled my single bag from beneath the bed. I'd packed it two days ago. It contained nothing that belonged to Shadowcrest. Nothing I couldn't walk away from.

Before I left, I walked to Titus's room. The door was open. He was at a friend's house for the night. I set a handwritten note on his desk—his school presentation topic, three research sources, a reminder about his allergy. The same care I'd given him for six years. The same care I'd given all of them.

Then I walked down the stairs, through the front hall, and out the door.

The night air was cold and clear. I could see my breath.

I got in my car, started the engine, and drove.

By dawn, I was across the state line. I pulled over at a rest stop, took out my phone, and sent my father a single word.

*Dawson.*

Then I kept driving west. Toward the mountains. Toward Crescentfall.

Toward home.