I Was My Alpha’s Medicine, Never His Luna

I was three hundred miles away when Kashton's world started to fall apart.

I didn't know it yet. I was driving through the mountains, windows cracked to let in the cold air, my wolf stretched out inside me like she hadn't been able to stretch in six years. The suppressants were wearing off. I could feel my own scent returning—wild jasmine and cold mountain air, the scent that belonged to Dawson and no one else.

Behind me, in the pack house I would never see again, the first morning without me was beginning.

Kashton woke at dawn the way he always did. His alarm went off. He silenced it. He sat up, rolled his shoulders, and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

There was no tea outside his study door.

He didn't notice. Not right away. He had emails to answer, a conference call with the Ironclaw Pack's trade liaison, and a stack of territory dispute reports that needed his signature. He walked to his study, sat down at his desk, and worked for two hours straight.

It wasn't until mid-morning that he realized his joints were aching.

It was a dull throb in his knees and elbows, the kind of low-grade pain that had been his constant companion before Adelaide arrived. Before the tea. He frowned, flexed his fingers, and told himself it was the weather. January was always hard on old injuries.

He went downstairs for breakfast.

The kitchen was chaos.

Two Omegas were arguing over whether the bacon was supposed to be crispy or soft. A third was staring at the industrial oven like it had personally betrayed her. The counter was covered in half-prepped ingredients—eggs still in their cartons, bread unsliced, a pot of oatmeal burning on the stove.

"Where's breakfast?" Kashton said.

The Omegas turned to him, wide-eyed and panicked.

"Alpha," one of them stammered. "We're—we're working on it. Luna Adelaide usually—"

She stopped. Her face went pale.

Kashton's expression didn't change. "Usually what?"

"She usually has it ready by now," the Omega finished quietly.

Kashton looked at the chaos, the burning oatmeal, the unsliced bread. He felt a flicker of irritation. "Then follow her schedule. It's not complicated."

"We don't—" The Omega hesitated. "We don't have the schedule, Alpha. Luna Adelaide kept it."

Kashton stared at her. The schedule. The meal rotations. The inventory lists. He'd never looked at any of it. He'd never needed to. It had simply appeared, morning after morning, exactly when it was supposed to.

He turned and walked out of the kitchen without answering.

By midday, the problems were multiplying.

Gamma Silas appeared at his study door, holding a tablet with the patrol assignments. His expression was carefully neutral.

"Alpha," Silas said. "We have a conflict in the northern sector. Delta Crews Four and Six are both scheduled for the same shift."

Kashton looked up from his reports. "Fix it."

"I would, Alpha, but the updated rotation schedule—" Silas paused. "Luna Adelaide maintained the master schedule. I don't have access to her system."

Kashton's jaw tightened. "Then pull the backup."

"The backup is three days out of date."

Kashton set down his pen. The irritation was sharpening into something else now. Something colder. "Where is Adelaide?"

Silas hesitated. "I haven't seen her today, Alpha."

"Find her," Kashton said. "Tell her I need the updated schedules on my desk within the hour."

Silas nodded and left.

Kashton returned to his reports. But the ache in his joints was worse now. And the study felt wrong somehow. Too quiet. Too still.

He worked until evening. Silas did not return with Adelaide.

That night, Kashton couldn't sleep.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, his body restless in a way it hadn't been in years. The insomnia was back. He'd forgotten what it felt like—this wired, exhausted tension that made his wolf pace inside him like a caged animal.

He got up at three in the morning, went downstairs, and made himself tea.

It tasted wrong. Too bitter. He'd used too much wolfsbane root. Or not enough. He didn't know. He'd never made it himself.

He poured it down the sink and went back to bed.

By the third morning, the unease had become something sharper.

Kashton reached for the mind-link the way he'd reached for it a thousand times before. Adelaide's presence had always been there—quiet, steady, a constant hum at the edge of his awareness that he'd stopped noticing the way you stop noticing your own heartbeat.

He sent the command. *Adelaide. My study. Now.*

Nothing.

Not resistance. Not defiance. Not the sullen silence of someone refusing to answer.

Just—nothing.

He tried again, pushing harder, letting his Alpha authority flood the link. *Adelaide.*

The silence was absolute.

Kashton stood in the middle of his study, his hand braced against the desk, and felt the first cold thread of genuine unease slip down his spine.

He summoned Silas.

The Gamma appeared within minutes, his expression carefully blank.

"Where is she?" Kashton said.

Silas met his eyes. "Alpha, I checked the Luna's quarters this morning. They've been vacated."

Kashton went very still. "Vacated."

"Her personal belongings are gone. The closet is empty. There's no scent residue. Only—" Silas hesitated. "Only a faint chemical trace. Something medicinal. I can't identify it."

Kashton's wolf surged inside him, sudden and violent. "When was the last time anyone saw her?"

"Three days ago, Alpha. The night of the pack run."

Three days. Seventy-two hours. The same seventy-two hours Petra had said it would take for Dawson's wolf to fully restore.

The thought appeared in Kashton's mind unbidden, and he shoved it away immediately. Coincidence. It had to be.

"Find her," Kashton said. His voice was flat, controlled, but the Alpha tone beneath it was sharp enough to make Silas's wolf flinch. "Search the territory. Question every pack member. I want her location within the hour."

Silas nodded and left.

Kashton stood alone in his study. The tea mug sat on his desk, cold and untouched. The quarterly budget report Adelaide was supposed to deliver three days ago was still missing. The patrol schedules were still conflicted. The kitchen was still in chaos.

And the mind-link was still silent.

Kashton told himself it was administrative. A Luna's dereliction of duty. An inconvenience that needed to be corrected.

But his joints ached. His wolf was pacing. And he hadn't slept in three days.

Something was wrong.

He just didn't know yet how wrong it was.