To heal a Rogue

EDELINA

”When I was called to help the Alpha King back at the infirmary, when I touched that girl and dug into the attack on her body and mind, some man seized control of my body. And he—”

She stopped mid-sentence.

Her eyes cut toward the door, then slowly back to my face, something dawning in them that I watched unfold in real time, horror bleeding into her expression like ink spreading through water.

”You,” she whispered, taking a full step back from me now, putting distance between us that hadn’t existed a heartbeat earlier. ”Oh my goddess. You. You were part of... You knew. My memory is coming back and I know you knew. This whole time, you knew exactly what he was doing to me and you did nothing.”

I felt my pulse spike.

Before I could form a single word of denial, before I could even open my mouth to attempt one of the smooth, practiced lies I’d been rehearsing my entire adult life, she raised one hand toward me, fingers splayed, and a pulse of raw, unrefined magic slammed straight into my chest.

It hit me hit worse than a physical blow.

I left the ground entirely.

My back struck the door frame hard enough that white pain exploded up my spine, stealing the breath clean out of my lungs, and before I could even attempt to steady myself against it, she wrenched the door open behind me with another violent burst of force, sending splinters flying across the floor. A second pulse followed the first, hurling me bodily across the room.

I hit the bed at an angle that offered no mercy whatsoever, my hip and shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, and the wooden frame beneath me gave way with a sharp, splintering crack, both sides collapsing inward as I sank into the wreckage of what had, moments earlier, been a perfectly serviceable piece of furniture.

Pain flared bright and immediate through my ribs, my hip, the base of my skull where it had clipped the headboard on the way down.

I opened my mouth, already composing the lie I intended to tell whoever came running at the noise, some story about a sudden, unprovoked magical attack, something that would deflect suspicion entirely away from me and squarely toward the conveniently psychotic intruder that was now Willow.

But then... Willow froze mid-motion.

Her entire body went rigid, one arm still half raised from the spell she’d just finished casting, and for a long, suspended moment nothing in the room moved at all. Not her. Not the dust still settling from the shattered door frame. Not even my own labored breathing, which I found myself holding without meaning to.

Then her shoulders rolled back, slow and deliberate. Her neck cracked, sharp and unbothered, followed by each of her knuckles in quick, casual succession, the sound of it entirely too relaxed given the violence that had just occurred in this very room seconds ago.

”Willow?” I managed. ”Are you alright?”

”She is not, But I am.”

I could not help but stare. ”Huh?”

”Its me, I suppose she took over while I was gone,” Willow’s mouth said, though the voice beneath the familiar cadence had shifted entirely, deeper now, older, carrying weight her actual throat had never been built to hold.

”Lycaon,” I managed, wincing hard through the pain still radiating across my entire back.

He nodded, crossing the room toward me with unhurried, almost lazy steps, and crouched down beside the wreckage of the bed to help me up, one hand steady and firm beneath my elbow.

”Are you hurt,” he asked, tilting his head, studying my face with an attentiveness that felt almost insultingly calm given the circumstances.

”Of course I’m hurt,” I snapped, my voice cracking with leftover adrenaline, and the words dissolved almost immediately into another wet, ragged cough, blood spattering thin and dark across my palm when I raised it hastily to cover my mouth.

”That’s not ideal,” he murmured, something almost clinical in his tone now, like he was assessing a minor inconvenience rather than the blood currently staining my hand.

He pressed Willow’s palm flat against my chest, and I felt the warmth of soft blue light bloom instantly beneath his borrowed fingers, spreading through my body, knitting bone and bruised muscle back into something considerably closer to whole. The pain in my ribs eased first, then my hip, then the dull throb at the base of my skull, until I could finally draw a full breath without wincing through it.

When he finished, he turned toward the shattered bed frame and the door still hanging crooked and useless on one twisted hinge, waving one hand toward each in turn. Magic stitched splintered wood and warped metal fittings back into their original shapes with a low, groaning creak, the whole room resetting itself in a matter of seconds, as though none of it had ever happened at all.

”Where the fuck did you go,” I demanded, my voice still shaking with leftover adrenaline as I straightened my dress with hands that weren’t entirely steady. ”That was terrifying, Lycaon. I genuinely thought she’d won over you, or worse, that you’d simply abandoned me here.”

”I dream walked for a while,” he said, brushing a loose strand of Willow’s dark hair back from his face with an ease that still unsettled me every single time I watched him do it, borrowing her body’s smallest human gestures like they’d always belonged to him. ”That’s all.”

”That’s all?” I repeated flatly, staring at him. ”You disappear inside a body I’ve entrusted our entire plan to, leave her conscious and unguarded long enough to nearly expose both of us, and ’that’s all’ is the explanation you’re offering me?”

He studied me a moment, something unreadable moving behind Willow’s borrowed eyes.

”I found someone worth speaking to,” he said finally, quiet now, almost thoughtful. ”It took longer than I intended. I apologize for the inconvenience it caused you.”

”Who,” I asked, though something in his expression already told me I wasn’t going to like whatever answer he gave me.

He only smiled, and said nothing further as he walked away

I was not a fan of this. I hated this. I ahted this so much. Was having Lycaon on my side not a liability?