I Was My Alpha’s Medicine, Never His Luna

I was three hundred miles west when Hallie made her move.

I didn't see it happen. I was crossing the Idaho state line, my wolf stretched out inside me like she'd been holding her breath for six years and could finally exhale. The suppressants were almost gone now. I could smell myself again—wild jasmine and cold mountain air. Dawson's scent. Not Kashton's. Never Kashton's.

But I knew Hallie well enough to predict exactly what she'd do the moment she realized I wasn't coming back.

She'd fill the space I left. She'd been waiting six years for it.

I imagined her that morning—walking into the pack house common room, rearranging the furniture I'd positioned for optimal pack flow, announcing herself to the Omegas as the new administrative contact. I imagined her at Kashton's side during the morning run, her hand on his arm, her voice carrying across the training grounds with that practiced warmth she used in public.

I imagined Gamma Silas watching her with the same flat, contemptuous expression he'd worn every time she'd tried to give him orders over the last six years.

Silas had never liked Hallie. None of the ranked warriors did. They'd tolerated her because Kashton demanded it, but tolerance wasn't respect. And without me there to quietly smooth over the friction, to redirect conflicts before they became confrontations, that tolerance was going to fracture fast.

I wondered how long it would take.

Two days, I guessed. Maybe three.

I kept driving.

By the time I stopped for gas in Boise, my phone had six missed calls from a Shadowcrest number I didn't recognize. I deleted the voicemails without listening to them. Whatever was happening in that pack house, it wasn't my problem anymore.

I filled the tank, bought a coffee I didn't drink, and got back on the highway.

The mountains were getting closer. I could see them on the horizon now—the Bitterroots, dark and jagged against the winter sky. Crescentfall territory. Dawson's territory.

My wolf surged. I pressed harder on the accelerator.

I didn't think about Kashton. I didn't think about the tea I wasn't making, or the schedules I wasn't updating, or the patrol adjustments I wasn't entering into the system.

I didn't think about the border patrol that would go out tonight without the weather data I would have flagged.

I didn't think about the two wolves who would come back with frostbite because no one had told them the northern sector was dropping to negative fifteen degrees.

I didn't think about Silas standing in Kashton's study, holding the injury report, his voice quiet and deliberate as he explained that Luna Adelaide would have caught this.

I didn't think about any of it.

Because I was done thinking about Shadowcrest.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, my wolf was counting again. Not days this time. Miles. Every mile between me and that pack house was another mile I would never have to walk back.

I crossed into Montana as the sun set.

The sky was burning orange and red, the kind of winter sunset that makes the snow look like it's on fire. I pulled over at a scenic overlook, got out of the car, and stood at the guardrail.

The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. I loved it.

I pulled out my phone and opened the message thread with my father. His last text was from this morning: *Thornfield border secure. He won't get through.*

I typed back: *Two hours out.*

His response came immediately: *Dawson's waiting.*

I put the phone away and looked at the mountains. Somewhere in those peaks, Dawson was standing on Crescentfall's ceremonial grounds, his wolf fully restored, waiting for me the way I'd been waiting for him for six years.

I got back in the car.

I didn't think about Kashton searching my quarters.

I didn't think about him opening the dresser drawer and finding it empty except for one thing—the silk dress from the Winter Solstice Banquet, folded carefully, the burn marks from Hallie's wolfsbane wine still visible across the bodice.

I didn't think about him standing there with the dress in his hands, staring at the damaged fabric, trying to remember the expression on my face when it happened.

I didn't think about the way I'd stood motionless in the center of that banquet hall while burning wine soaked through silk to skin, the pack watching, Hallie gasping her practiced apology, and Kashton doing nothing.

I didn't think about the way I'd looked at him across the hall—one long, steady look that he'd interpreted as wounded devotion.

It hadn't been devotion. It had been inventory.

I'd been counting that night too. Counting how many more humiliations I had to endure before Dawson's wolf was strong enough to survive without Kashton's blood. Counting how many more nights I had to sleep in that pack house before I could walk out and never come back.

That look hadn't been love. It had been math.

But Kashton wouldn't understand that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I kept driving west, into the mountains, toward the mate who had always been mine.

Behind me, in a pack house I would never see again, Kashton was holding a burned dress and trying to reconstruct a memory he'd never actually understood.

Let him try.

I was done being his Luna. I was done being his medicine. I was done being anything to him at all.

The mountains rose ahead of me, dark and vast and waiting.

I was almost home.