LUMA POV
Luma's hands were shaking.
She sat in the hallway outside the main healing chamber with four other healers, all of them waiting to see if they would be called. All of them hoping they wouldn't be. The atmosphere was thick with fear and something else. Desperation.
No one was talking.
The door to the chamber opened and Thomas walked out.
The older healer looked like he'd aged ten years in the last hour. His face was pale. His hands were trembling. When he saw the other healers waiting, he just shook his head slowly.
"It's too strong," he said quietly. "The curse. It's too dark. I've never felt anything like it in my entire life. I pushed everything I had into him and it was like pushing against a wall made of stone. The curse just pushed back harder."
Luma felt her stomach drop.
Thomas was the best healer in the pack. If he couldn't break the curse, nobody could. Everyone knew that.
The door opened again and a younger healer named David went in. Luma watched him disappear into the chamber. Then she waited. Everyone waited. The silence felt like it was crushing her from all sides.
David came back out maybe twenty minutes later looking broken. Defeated.
"I couldn't do it," he said, not meeting anyone's eyes. "I tried everything."
One by one, the other healers went in. One by one, they came back out looking worse than before. Each failure made the silence heavier. Each failure meant the Alpha was getting weaker. Each failure meant someone was going to have to make a decision about what happened when no one could save him.
By the time the fourth healer came out, Luma realized she was the only one left.
She'd been expecting to go home. She'd been expecting to pretend this day never happened. She'd been expecting to disappear back into her life where nobody knew her name and nobody called on her for anything important.
Instead, she was sitting alone in a hallway outside the chamber where the Alpha was dying.
Luma stood up to leave. There was no point waiting. They weren't going to call her. She was nobody. Just a background healer who fixed minor wounds and patched up small injuries. The Alpha's curse was way above her skill level. Everyone knew that.
Then the door at the end of the hallway opened.
James Chen walked toward her and the other healers, his face tight with panic. He was moving fast. His eyes were searching like he was looking for something specific. Like he was desperate.
He looked at the gathered healers and pointed directly at Luma.
"You," he said. "Come with me."
Luma's heart stopped.
"Me?" she whispered.
"Now," James said, already turning away.
She followed him because you didn't say no to the Alpha's closest advisor. But her legs felt like they were made of water. Her hands were shaking worse now. James led her through the hallways quickly, past other warriors who were standing around talking in worried voices.
They were all saying the same thing. The Alpha was dying. Nobody could save him. The pack was going to fall apart.
Luma's mind was screaming at her that this was a mistake. That she was about to walk in there and embarrass herself in front of everyone. That she was going to fail like all the others and then everyone would know her name just so they could remember her as the healer who couldn't save the Alpha.
They reached the main healing chamber doors.
James stopped and looked at her for the first time. His eyes were desperate. Terrified. Like a man who'd run out of options and was about to place his last bet on someone he didn't even know.
"Whatever you can do," he said quietly. "Do it."
Then he opened the doors.
The first thing Luma saw was Drake Ashford.
She'd seen him from a distance before. From across big rooms. Tall and powerful and untouchable. But that wasn't what she was looking at now.
Drake lay on the healing table in the center of the chamber and he looked broken.
His upper body was bare. Dark veins spread across his entire chest like a map of poison, moving under his skin like something alive and hungry. His whole powerful body was trembling, shaking uncontrollably. His face was pale. His breathing was shallow. Even broken and helpless, he was still the most powerful thing in the room. But he wasn't invincible anymore.
He was dying.
Thomas was standing near the table with his arms crossed, looking exhausted. When he saw Luma, his expression shifted. Not quite disbelief. More like confusion. Like he was wondering why they'd bothered calling her.
Luma understood. She was nobody. Why would they think she could do what he couldn't?
But she walked toward Drake anyway because James had asked her to.
With every step closer, her nervousness grew worse. The warriors standing around the chamber were watching her. Thomas was watching her. James was watching her. Everyone was waiting to see if she would fail.
She could feel their doubt like a weight on her shoulders.
Luma reached Drake's side and looked down at him. His eyes were closed. His breathing was getting slower. The dark veins were still spreading, consuming more and more of his skin.
She was running out of time.
James appeared beside her, his voice quiet and desperate. "Try. Please."
Luma took a deep breath and placed her hands on Drake's chest.
The moment her skin touched his skin, everything changed.
Her magic didn't wake up slowly. It exploded.
Golden light burst from her hands so bright that James had to cover his eyes. Brighter than it had ever been. Brighter than it should have been. The light filled the entire chamber, painting everything gold. The other healers in the room stepped back in shock.
Luma gasped because she could feel it now. Could feel the curse moving through Drake's body. Could feel the dark magic that was eating him alive. And her power reached for it like it knew what it was. Like it recognized it.
No.
Her stomach twisted.
She knew that curse. Not the specific spell itself, but the signature underneath it. The way it felt. The way it moved through the blood. The energy of it. The darkness of it.
She knew it because she'd grown up around magic like that.
Her father's magic.
But that was impossible. Her father had been dead for four years. He would never have cursed anyone. He would never have done something so dark and destructive.
Luma pushed the thought away and poured everything she had into Drake's body.
Hours seemed to pass. Or maybe just minutes. Time stopped having meaning. There was only the curse and the healing and the desperate need to fix something that felt like it was breaking her apart from the inside out.
Her hands burned. Her magic burned. She gave him everything, every bit of power she had, and it still felt like it wasn't enough. The curse fought back, resisting her healing light, pushing against her power like it wanted to stay inside him.
But her magic pushed harder.
Finally, when her entire body felt like it was made of ash, she pulled her hands away.
She was collapsing, her legs giving out beneath her.
James caught her before she fell completely to the floor. She was shaking so badly she could barely stand. Her vision was getting dark around the edges. But when she looked back at Drake, the dark veins had gotten smaller. They were still there but they were weaker. For the first time since he'd collapsed, his body wasn't convulsing so violently. His breathing was more stable.
She'd done it.
She'd actually done it.
"What you just did," James whispered, staring at her like she'd just done something impossible, "nobody could do that."
Luma couldn't answer him.
She couldn't tell him what she'd realized the moment she touched Drake's curse. She couldn't tell him that her magic had recognized dark magic when she saw it. That she'd felt something familiar in the curse signature. Something that made her blood run cold.
Because telling him that would mean admitting something she'd never told anyone.
It would mean admitting who her father really was.
It would mean admitting why her hands glowed brighter than any other healer's hands. Why her magic was stronger than it should have been. Why she'd always been taught to hide her power and keep quiet and never draw attention to herself.
Her father had taught her that. Before he died.
Before he disappeared under mysterious circumstances that she'd never been allowed to ask about.
As James helped her toward the door and her consciousness started fading, one terrifying thought kept repeating in her mind.
If the Alpha ever discovered why her magic could recognize his curse, why her power could fight it when no one else could, he wouldn't see her as his savior.
He would see her as the connection to whatever darkness had poisoned his blood.
He would see her as a threat.
And threats were something the Alpha knew how to destroy.