Freda Pov
I woke up on the cold floor of the guest room, and everything hurt. My whole body ached as if I had been in a fight. My face felt stiff and crusty, and when I touched it, I realized dried tears covered my cheeks.
I sat up slowly and looked around. The room was dim because the curtains were still closed. I did not remember falling asleep on the floor. I did not remember much of anything from last night except crying until I could not cry anymore.
Then I looked at my wrist, and my stomach dropped. There was a dark bruise there shaped like fingers. Five distinct marks where someone had grabbed me too hard. Urdon's fingers, from when he grabbed me yesterday and told me to go to Kyran if I wanted him so much.
The memory hit me as a wave, and fresh tears started, but I wiped them away fast. I was done crying over things I could not fix by crying. Tears did not solve problems; they just made my face hurt and my eyes puffy.
I forced myself to stand up even though my legs felt shaky. I walked over to the small mirror hanging on the wall and looked at my reflection. The person staring back at me did not look like a Luna. She looked sick and broken.
My icy blue eyes looked dull and empty like all the light had gone out of them. My skin was so pale it was almost gray. My hair was a tangled mess, and there were dark circles under my eyes from not sleeping properly for days.
But the worst part was what I felt in my chest. The mate bond was still there, but it felt so thin now. Like a single thread that could snap if someone breathed on it wrong. I pressed my hand over my heart and felt the weakness pulsing there.
"I have to fix this," I whispered to my reflection. "Before the mating rites. Before it is too late."
The mating rites were in five days. That was when the whole pack would gather under the full moon to celebrate bonds and unions and new life. It was supposed to be a happy celebration, but all I could think about was how everyone would see how broken Urdon and I were.
If we showed up to the mating rites with our bond this weak, everyone would know something was wrong. They would whisper and gossip and say the Luna was cursed. They would say I was destroying the Alpha and bringing bad luck to the pack.
I could not let that happen. I had to do something to fix this. But I did not know what. Urdon would not listen to me. He thought I had betrayed him with Kyran. He thought I was making up stories about curses to excuse my behavior.
Then I remembered the healer. She had warned me about cursed bonds before. She knew things about the old ways that other wolves did not know. Maybe she could help me manage the pain until I figured out how to fix everything with Urdon.
I got dressed in clean clothes and pulled my hair back into a simple braid. Then I checked the hallway to make sure nobody was around. Most wolves were still sleeping because the sun was just starting to come up.
I snuck out of the pack house and walked quickly to the healer's cottage. The morning air was cold enough to make me shiver, but I did not go back for a jacket. I just wanted to get there and back before anyone saw me.
When I reached the cottage, it looked dark inside. I knocked anyway and waited. After a minute, I heard footsteps, and then the door opened.
The healer stood there in her nightgown, looking surprised and a little worried. "Luna Freda," she said quietly. "It is very early. Is something wrong?"
"I need your help," I said. "Please. Can I come in?"
She looked past me at the empty path behind me. She was checking if anyone had seen me come here. Then she nodded and stepped aside. "Quickly."
I went inside, and she closed the door fast. She locked it too, which made me nervous. Her cottage still smelled like herbs and medicine and something sweet I could not identify. She lit a candle because it was too dark to see properly.
"Sit," she said and gestured to a chair.
I sat down, and she pulled another chair close to me. "What do you need help with, Luna?"
"My heat," I said. "It came early, and it was so much worse than it should have been. I need something to calm the pain, something that will help me get through it without needing my mate."
The healer's eyes went wide, and she leaned back in her chair. "You want a potion to suppress heat pain without your mate's help."
"Yes," I said. "Is that possible?"
"It is possible," she said slowly. "But Luna, it is very dangerous. You understand that the heat is meant to strengthen the mate bond. It forces mates to come together and reconnect. If you use a potion to avoid your mate during this time, the bond will suffer greatly."
"The bond is already suffering," I said. "It cannot get much worse than it already is."
"Yes, it can," the healer said firmly. "It can always get worse. And this potion will make it worse."
"Please," I said. "I just need something to help me get through the next few days. Just until I can figure out how to talk to Urdon without him getting angry."
The healer looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were sad, like she knew she should say no, but she was going to say yes anyway. Then she sighed and stood up.
She went to her shelf of bottles and jars and pulled down a small glass bottle. The liquid inside was dark purple and looked thick like syrup. She brought it back and held it out to me.
"This will calm the heat pain," she said. "It will make the physical symptoms disappear completely. But Luna, I must warn you. Drinking this will make the bond hurt more every day. The pain will grow in your chest where the bond lives, it will get worse and worse until you and your mate either heal it together or it breaks forever."
"How long do I have?" I asked and took the bottle.
"Maybe a week," the healer said. "Maybe less. It depends on how damaged the bond already is. If the bond is very weak, it could break in just a few days."