Page 20 of Rejected By My Shadow Alpha
I kissed her forehead, sealing the vow. I had lived through fire, and now I had something worth surviving for.
Liora.
My light.
Chapter 8
Drew
Seven Years Later…
My boots crunched through the underbrush, the coppery tang of blood sharp in the air as I reached the injured wolf. A young male, his ribs cracked and leg twisted. He had been ambushed by bounty hunters who thought rogues meant weak. Fools. Rogues had no alphas and no rules, but that didn't make them easy prey. I had received the SOS from the underground clinic and came right away.
I crouched beside him. "Stay still."
His eyes widened. "You're…"
"Shhh," I warned, sliding my bag open. "Don't say it. Just breathe."
Because names had power, and mine was a curse.
I had buried myself in the bones of rogue life, and I had meticulously searched for the few rogue wolves belonging to the Lunaris pack. Together we had been scheming and planning, and sure enough, we would soon strike. It hadn't been easy, butthoughts of revenge had kept me going, often fueled by the pain of rejecting Ruby.
I healed others to escape my pain. I patched broken ribs, sealed bleeding gashes, and reset bones with trembling hands and half-slept eyes. The supernatural underground didn't have clinics. They had people like me—healers in shadows, ghosts working under code names, crossing borders and boundaries like mist. They called me Wolfsbane22, fitting poison to monsters like Alpha Alfred and a cure to the broken.
The underground clinic was never meant to be a calling. It was a distraction, a place where I could drown the howling in my head and put my hands, hungry for Alpha Alfred's blood, to better use. I was stitching up wounds instead of tearing open throats and saving rogues instead of turning into one. The healer network had been just that—routine, necessary, hollow. We traded clinical notes, case logs, plant-based remedies, and dosages. For years, the healer cell was nothing but a sea of names and voices without faces. Alias upon alias. Burnt-out doctors, witches with shattered covens, lone wolves with haunted eyes. We shared knowledge in encrypted messages. We sent supplies. We saved lives. We asked no questions.
Then she joined.
Moonleaf.
The name was soft and gentle. She was unlike the others, and her messages, Goddess, they were meticulous. She had a way of phrasing things that made you listen, and not just the clinical stuff, though she knew her herbs like an ancient forest witch. The way she explained pain, healing, and emotional trauma felt like someone who had lived every wound she was trying to treat.
I knew she was a woman. I could feel it in her words.
Her recommendations were always laced with a kind of precision and care I hadn't seen before. It was not just the usual tone on how to treat the wound, but how to speak to the soul, likethe prescription she suggested in the group for some troubled wolves suffering from insomnia.
"Use elderflower in small doses for nerve pain. Mix it with lavender. They sleep easier that way, especially the ones who scream in their dreams."
The first time I tried one of her remedies on a scared rogue who hadn't slept in days. The kid fell asleep mid-sentence. No sedatives. No magic. Just Moonleaf's brew.
I sent her a message that night.
"Wolfsbane22 here. Your elderflower mix worked. Thanks."
She responded within minutes.
"Glad to hear. Trauma doesn't just sit in the flesh. It settles in the bones."
Who talks like that?
I told myself it was just professional…two healers comparing notes, but I kept going back. Her words lingered, like the aftertaste of something sweet and strange. Familiar and comforting in a way I hadn't felt in years. We weren't just trading herbal formulas anymore. Our chats stretched. Sometimes, we drifted away from medicine entirely.
There was something about her that stirred an ache in me. It wasn't attraction, not at first, just intrigue. It was more like déjà vu, like catching a scent you once loved in a dream. Every time she signed off as Moonleaf, something tugged at my memory. A pull I couldn't name.
She never shared her real name, and neither did I, but somehow, her presence rooted itself in my inbox, quiet and constant. Her thoughts, her insight, and her way of being settled into my days before I realized I was looking forward to her messages more than I should have.
And that scared me because I'd only ever felt this pull once before—with Ruby.
