To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

”Rosalind Thackery,” the healer finally breathed, her voice barely audible, as though speaking the name aloud might somehow summon the woman herself. ”She’s one of the junior healers. Or she was. I don’t understand how she could have—”

Bradley silenced her with a raised hand before turning toward the nearest sentinel.

”Bring the girl here. Now.”

Two sentinels immediately broke away, their boots striking hard against the floor as they vanished down the corridor. The healer who told scurried away behind them.

Bradley stepped out and his gaze swept across the ruined space, taking in the blood drying dark against the wall and looking back into the room occasionally to the empty frame where a man should have been chained.

”I don’t like that this house is being made fools of by vipers,” he muttered, his voice low and clipped. ”I hadn’t realized how deep the rot had spread. The witches and dragon shifters will have a field day with this once word gets out. A royal house that can’t even secure a single prisoner. What the fuck was I made for if I cannot be a competent Beta? It almost makes me want to... commmit treason.”

I cleared my throat, ignoring that. ”I want to talk about something.”

Bradley turned toward me fully. ”Of course. I’m your subject. My ears are yours.”

”The man in the tube.”

He went still.

It was subtle, no more than a slight stiffening through his shoulders, but I caught it.

”I think it’s fine to discuss,” I continued. ”The man in the tube could mean anything to anyone listening right now.”

”What about him, Your Majesty?”

”Again, this is only a gut feeling, but I think the person who attacked my mate—”

Bradley’s eyes widened at the word, and I realized a heartbeat too late what I’d let slip.

”Mate?”

”It was going to come out eventually,” I admitted. ”Yes. The goddess handed me a match of fate. The healer is my mate.”

Bradley snapped his fingers, realization settling into place behind his eyes.

”That explains it. I did wonder why she saved you the way she did. So publicly. My working theory was that she was trying to position herself favorably, currying goodwill in case things went even badly for her later. But the math never quite balanced, not if I was being honest with myself about her as a schemer. Now it makes far more sense. She simply acted without thinking it through.”

I raised an eyebrow at that but let it pass.

”Back to what I was saying,” I continued. ”I suspect it was him. The man in the tube. The one who attacked her.”

”That cannot be,” Bradley replied flatly. ”He’s contained.”

”He’s also a direct descendant of the deity we serve,” I countered, lowering my voice. ”Who knows what limits actually apply to something like that.”

”Then why would he start now, of all times?” Bradley pressed. ”Taking you out would have been the far more strategic move.”

I turned that over. He had a point, but I had one of my own.

”Unlike the rest of us, Bonnie is special,” I said. ”You saw her stitch a bullet hole shut in my neck with nothing but sheer will. Maybe he can reach her on a level the rest of us aren’t accessible on.”

”That’s a theory.”

”Maybe,” I conceded. ”But the witch said something similar before she collapsed and after she roused even. Whoever attacked Bonnie was old. Genuinely old. Those were her words. And Bonnie also told me she was pulled into the person’s memories during the attack. She saw them being cursed.”

I watched Bradley’s expression carefully.

”Does any of that ring a bell for you?”

He fell silent, visibly working through the implications.

”But why would he play games through dreams instead of simply freeing himself?” Bradley finally asked. ”If he had that kind of reach.”

”I don’t know,” I admitted.

”I do think I will get the legacy witch houses that helped us together one more time to chack the runes. But for now, we need to be grounded in reality. I believe all of this... everything keeps pointing back toward the people we already suspect.”

Johann and Edelina.

He continued. ”The only reason they haven’t faced the Elder Circle for treason is because we lack proof. We’ll get it eventually. And when we do, they’ll answer for it.”

A sentinel came sprinting down the corridor before Bradley could respond, breathless, something folded tightly in his hand.

”We found the healer,” he reported. ”In her quarters.”

”And?”

”She’d taken her own life,” the sentinel revealed. ”There was a letter left behind.”

”What letter,” I said, already crossing the room.

He held it out, and I took it, unfolding the paper with hands that weren’t entirely steady.

The paper was cheap, the kind stocked in bulk for junior staff, and her handwriting slanted hard to the right, rushed in places where the pen had nearly torn through.

I do not regret what I have done tonight. I regret only that it took me this long to understand what needed doing.

I was not born into a healer household. I was born an Omega. A Low caste. My mother scrubbed floors in this very estate for forty years and died with nothing to show for it but bad knees and a title that meant she could be worked to death and thanked for the privilege. I trained twice as hard as any born high caste to earn a place as a low ranking healer in this infirmary, and I still get spoken over in rooms where my opinion should matter more than anyone else’s. That is the caste system working exactly as it was designed to work.

Why should how you are born determine how you are allowed to live? Why does a wolf’s blood, something none of us chose, decide who kneels and who gets knelt to? I used to believe things would change slowly, through patience, through proving ourselves useful enough that they would have no choice but to see us. I was wrong. Nothing changes on its own. You can be the most useful person in a room and still be treated as lesser, because usefulness was never the actual measure. Blood was. It always has been.

The rogues understand something the rest of us were too frightened to admit. They are showing the rest of us the light, even if the werewolf world insists on calling it darkness. I am not ashamed of what I did tonight. I am only sorry I could not do more before this letter is found.

The royal house is not safe anymore. Not from us. We are the alliance against rank, and we are not confined to some rogue camp outside the pack lines. We are inside these walls already. We serve your food. We clean your linens. We heal your wounds and hold our tongues while you decide our worth based on nothing we ever had a hand in choosing. You should be afraid of exactly that. Not the rogues outside your gates. The ones already standing beside you.

If the throne falls, understand that it falls because it was built on a foundation that was always going to crack. We did not create the fault line. We are only the ones brave enough to finally strike it.

If you royals fall, know that it all falls. Every crown built on someone else’s back eventually collapses under its own weight.

I am not sorry.