To heal a Rogue

EDELINA

Sterling sat back in the chair like the words had physically struck him.

”What the fuck,” he said, low and drawn out, dragging a hand down his face. ”That is the ultimate fuck you. Naming Wenzel’s boy over his own blood.” He stared at me, and I watched him work through it, watched the pieces assemble themselves behind his eyes the way they always did with him, quick and mercenary. ”So what do you plan to do now? Usurp him?”

”Of course,” I said. ”What else is there to do?”

”I cannot stand behind you if that’s the plan, Edelina.”

I felt something cold settle into my chest, colder than the fever that had been living there for weeks now.

”What the fuck does that mean?”

”There were benefits to standing behind you.” He said it carefully, like a man picking his way across ice he already suspected was thin. ”Quiet benefits. Discreet ones. But if you intend to start a war, a real one, over your own agenda, I cannot be part of that.” His jaw tightened. ”I am still a proud werewolf, Edelina. If a Lycan sits at the head of werewolf society after taking it through violence and given the exposure of what the Alpha King knew and even some of his servants, we are all finished. Every pack, every bloodline, everything we’ve built as a society for a thousand years, undone because of what you are and what you want.”

”What I want?” I repeated, and something in my voice must have carried more than I intended, because he flinched.

Still, something about the look in his face said that he was not going to back down.

”You are a Lycan through and through,” he said. ”Your goals are the only thing that has ever mattered to you. I understand that. I have understood that since the day I met you. But there is a difference between helping a woman keep a secret and helping her burn down a kingdom. A kingdom my blood and myself have been part of for generations.”

I reached out and grabbed his hand before he could pull it back, my grip was tighter than my current strength should have allowed, and I watched something flicker across his face when he felt it.

”What the fuck does that mean?” I said again, quieter now, which made it worse. ”A proud werewolf? Sterling, your pack was going to fall. I watched it happen in real time. The caste system affects everyone. Even fucking Alphas. Even packs has a ranking system and you were falling from the top 100 fast. You knew what that mean. That shit was eating your bloodline alive long before I ever came near you.” I held his eyes, unblinking. ”You are not Lily of the Valley. You are certainly not Skollrend. You had no crest worth kneeling for and no coffers deep enough to keep your own people fed through a bad year. If my dirty Lycan money hadn’t pulled your pack through, you would have fallen to penury in less than a decade. Every scrap of privilege you enjoy now, every ounce of respect that gets paid to your name in rooms you used to be laughed out of, exists because of me.”

”Edelina—”

”Just because there’s a setback,” I said, cutting him off, ”does not mean you get to abandon me now. Or abandon this cause. Not after everything I have already spent keeping you afloat.”

I let my eyes change then.

I felt them go, felt the warmth bleed out of them the way it always did, black pouring in from the edges until there was nothing human left in my gaze at all, and I watched Sterling’s whole body go rigid in the chair, watched him lean back like the space between us had suddenly become far too small.

”Just because I am on a sick bed,” I said, my voice dropping into something low and entirely without patience, ”does not mean I will tolerate this kind of disrespect from you. I will not tolerate it, Sterling. Not from you, of all people.”

He swallowed hard. I let my eyes hold there a moment longer before I let them fade back into something closer to human, and the room seemed to exhale along with him.

”So,” he said, his voice noticeably thinner now, ”what is the plan?”

”Like I said. Keep standing by my son’s side.”

”Can he do it... Can we actually do it?” Sterling said. ”What it takes, I mean. He might be half you, Edelina, but he is also half his father. Can he actually reconcile the fact that you killed the man who raised him? His own blood?”

”After everything Cornelius did to his own son,” I said, ”erasing him from a will three weeks before his death, letting him believe his entire life was building toward something that was never his to inherit, he can reconcile it fine.” I let that sit a moment. ”My boy needs you at the royal estate tonight, Sterling. Whatever he decides to do, whatever shape his plan takes, you hold his hand through it.”

”I need to know what he’s planning first.”

”Do not be such a coward.” The words came out sharper than I meant them, though I didn’t regret them once they’d left my mouth. ”You are bound to this whether you like the shape of it today or not. I still don’t even know the full extent of what Cornelius put in place before he died, what traps he might have left buried in that estate for people like us. So protect us, Sterling. In doing that, you protect yourself as well.”

He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working, something bitter and resigned passing behind his eyes.

”It is not as though I have a choice,” he muttered, mostly to himself, and then he stood, straightening his jacket with two sharp tugs. ”I have to leave. If I’m going to make it back before the mourning rites begin.”

I nodded once.

He didn’t say goodbye. Men like Sterling rarely did, not when they were leaving a room they hadn’t wanted to enter in the first place. He crossed to the door, paused there for half a second like he might say something else, and then thought better of it and walked out, pulling it shut behind him with more force than necessary.

I watched the door for a while after he’d gone; my chest was tight with something that wasn’t quite triumph and wasn’t quite dread.

Then the cough came again, hard and sudden, tearing up from somewhere deep in my chest, and I barely got a hand over my mouth before it doubled me forward against the pillows. When I pulled my hand away, there was blood on it, more than there’d been just minutes ago. This was just as dark and glistening against my palm.

I stared at it for a moment, breathing hard, and let my head fall back against the headboard.

The war was already costing me pieces of myself I could not afford to lose. I only hoped there would be enough of me left to see it through to the end.