Chapter 15: Apothecary 1

Published Mar 17, 2026, 03:12 AM

Chapter 15: Apothecary 1 FIA I woke up to voices that sounded like they were coming from underwater. Muffled and distant. My head felt like someone had stuffed it full of cotton and then set it on fire. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar. White tiles. Fluorescent lights that hurt to look at. It was not my room. It was not anywhere I knew. Memory came back in pieces. The road. The flowers. The purple petals everywhere. The sweet smell that had made my head spin. Me running and falling. The gray strip of pavement under my bleeding hands. Then nothing. I tried to sit up. My body screamed in protest. Every muscle felt like it had been wrung out and left to dry. My skin burned under what felt like bandages soaked in something slick and herbal. "She’s waking up." The voice was sharp. Female. I turned my head toward it and immediately regretted the movement. The room spun. A woman stood a few feet away. She wore scrubs and had her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her face was hard. Unfriendly. She stared at me like I was something unpleasant she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. "About time," another voice which happened to be male and older said. "Thought she’d sleep through the whole damn crisis." I blinked and forced my eyes to focus. The room came into sharper detail. White walls. Medical equipment. Beds lined up in rows. An infirmary. Other people stood around. Most of them wore the same hostile expression as the first woman. Their eyes tracked my every movement like I was a threat they needed to contain. "Where..." My voice came out as a croak. I swallowed and tried again. "Where am I?" "Skollrend’s healing ward," the older man said. He stepped closer and I slowly drank in his features. Gray hair. A weathered face. Traditional healer’s robes. Was he... "You’re lucky to be alive, girl." Skollrend. This was Cian’s territory. His pack. The memories clicked into place faster now. The wedding. The limo. Being thrown out on the road. Walking through the forest. The flowers. The mourning moon. "How long..." "Almost twelve hours." This voice was different. Warmer. I turned my head the other way and saw the sentinel that had been driving us, Garret standing near the foot of my bed. His face was the only one in the room that didn’t look like he wanted to throw me back out into the forest. "Your fever broke not too long ago." He had bandages too. Around his forearms. The same slick sheen of herbal oils darkening the white fabric. "You’re hurt," I said. "Contact exposure." He shrugged. "Not as bad as you or..." He trailed off. His eyes shifted to something behind me. I followed his gaze. There was another bed right next to mine. And in it... Laid Alpha Cian. He lay perfectly still. His skin was pale. Too pale. Almost gray. His chest rose and fell in shallow movements that looked wrong. Labored. Bandages covered his arms and neck. The same oil stained wrappings I wore. "He found you," Garrett said quietly. "Carried you to the car. Drove you back here himself." The room tilted again. Not from the poison this time but from understanding. Cian had saved me. After everything. After throwing me out. After telling me I could rot for all he cared. He’d come back, found me dying on the side of the road and gotten himself poisoned in the process. "He’s not getting better." The woman in scrubs spoke up. Her voice was clinical but I caught the edge of worry underneath. "The antidote isn’t working fast enough." "It should have worked by now," the old healer said. He moved to Cian’s bedside. Placed a hand on his forehead. "I’ve treated mourning moon poisoning before. The fever should have broken hours ago considering we attended to him first." "Maybe it’s because he had direct contact with so much of it." Garrett stepped closer to Cian’s bed. "He carried her. The pollen was all over her dress. Her hair. He breathed it in for miles while he drove." "The antidote should still work." The woman crossed her arms as she sent me a stare that screamed professional curiosity. "If she is breathing and alive despite being the last to be treated while being the first one to make contact with the poison, I don’t understand why it’s not taking effect for Alpha Cian." "This is your fault." Another voice sneered. This one came from a younger woman standing near the door. She glared at me with open hatred. "He wouldn’t be dying if not for you." "That’s enough," Garrett said. "It’s true." The woman’s voice rose. "She walked into those flowers like an idiot. He had to save her. Now he’s could die because of her stupidity. This is supposed to be a great day for our pack... But no..." The words hit like physical blows. She wasn’t wrong. This was my fault. I’d been careless. Hadn’t paid attention. Walked right into a field of poison because I’d been too angry and stupid to think straight. And now Cian was paying for it and even if he happened to be a vile man, he did not deserve that. I looked at him again. At the shallow rise and fall of his chest. At the gray tinge to his skin. At the way his jaw was clenched even in unconsciousness like he was fighting something invisible. He’d called me manipulative. A schemer. Someone who hurt her own sister. And maybe he was right about some of that. Maybe in his eyes, I had been those things in ways I didn’t fully understand. But he’d still saved me. My mother’s voice echoed in my head. Lessons taught in secret. Late nights in her workshop while everyone else slept. She’d been teaching me about herbs and poisons since I was old enough to grind roots in a mortar. "Some plants kill," she’d said. "Some plants heal. And some plants do both depending on how you use them." The antidote they used wasn’t wrong, just incomplete. Mourning Moon was a deceptive poison. It didn’t strike all at once. It seeped through the body in layers, each more dangerous than the last. The usual antidote only treated what showed on the surface—the fever, the tremors, the paralysis—but it couldn’t touch the deeper toxins that settled in the blood. I was lucky my fever broke at all. That might have been less about their medicine and more about the remedies and vaccinations my mother had given me long before this. But there were other herbs, the kind my mom used to talk long before she passed. Most healers today wouldn’t even recognize their names, or maybe they’d pretend not to. Back in the old days, omegas were experts with poison. They had to be. Some were made to taste the king’s meals first, others were used to test the stuff meant for him. There were even those who learned how to poison quietly, helping whoever wanted the throne next. They knew how to dance that line between life and death better than anyone. I guess some of that knowledge survived, passed down through people like my mom. "I can help." The words came out before I’d fully thought them through. Every head in the room turned toward me. "What?" The old healer’s voice was sharp. "I can help him." I pushed myself up to sitting. The room spun again but I forced through it. "I know what he needs." "You’re an Omega," the healer said. The disdain in his voice was thick enough to choke on. "You know nothing about healing." "My mother was an Omega as well with knowledge on healing." I met his eyes. Held his gaze even though every instinct screamed at me to look away. To submit. "She taught me about poisons. About how they work. About how to counter them." "Your mother." He scoffed. "Let me tell you girl, Omegas produce other Omegas and failures. Not healers. You are either born with this talent or not and I do not think..." "Elder Thorne." The woman in scrubs stepped forward. "We’re running out of options. If she knows something..." "She knows nothing, Dr. Maren." The old healer waved a dismissive hand. "She’s a desperate Omega trying to seem useful because she understands the severity of what she has done." I looked at Cian again. His breathing had gotten worse even in the few minutes I’d been awake. More ragged. More strained. He was dying. The bond between us flickered, faint and uneven, like a candle fighting against wind. I had kept it walled off since the forest. It had snapped while I was unconscious, and when I woke, I must have mended it without realizing. Now, I lowered the shield, just a little, just enough to reach him. What came through wasn’t thought or sound—only pain. It burned through me, raw and endless, followed by the weight of darkness pressing in, swallowing everything. "I need wolfsbane root," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "The purple variant. Not the common kind. And silver touched nettle. Fresh if you have it. And moonwater." Silence filled the room. "Wolfsbane?" Elder Thorne stared at me like I’d grown a second head. "That’s poison."

React

Discussion