Page 157 of The Ashpaw: Part One

The alpha command seized the guard’s muscles, and he dropped the sword.

Darion moved him easily to the side and opened the door, bracing himself for her more concentrated scent.

But what he saw instead was the healer on the floor with her, helping her drink something from a small bowl.

She looked so small, as though she’d lost almost a quarter of her weight in one day, and she’d already been small to begin with.

Her skin had taken a pallid tone, her lips were chapped, and her eyes were dull.

“Small sips,” the healer said quietly, sweetness in his voice the omega did not deserve.

The healer was ignoring him.

“What is it you give her? More willow bark?”

He looked at him, his brow pinched. “What does it matter to you?”

Darion was losing his patience with the clan. How had they all turned against him in the matter of a day? Most of the wolfkin barely knew the omega. Had ignored her as the Ashpaw.

And suddenly she was worth disrespecting their alpha over?

“You’re the one who gave it to her to begin with.”

Now the healer simply looked confused. “Why…”

Understanding widened his eyes, but they quickly narrowed again. “Is that really what you think happened?”

“My lady told me,” he said, gritting his teeth, “that the omega left your ward with willow bark. That you helped her into this situation.”

The healer blinked, then chuffed, shaking his head and looking up to the ceiling, muttering to himself before bringing his gaze back to Darion again.

“I’m glad to hear you started to read the book I recommended, Alpha, but it’s only too bad you ended on the first paragraph.”

Darion froze. He remembered something, shortly after claiming the omega as his Naravekh, about a book the healer had wanted him to read so as to better understand the she-wolf’s nature.

Where had he left that book? And was that the text Kyntha had referred to?

“Because if you’d continued, you’d have found that the researchers later discovered omegas didn’t chew on willow bark to induce their heats, but merely to relieve the symptoms preceding them.”

Darion looked down at the omega, and his mouth ran dry. He tried to swallow, but found his throat refused to cooperate.

“She… she still could have thought…”

The healer rose up quickly, cutting the space between them and poking him hard in the chest. “She came to me thinking she had some human illness. I told her she had all the signs she was falling into estrus and she didn’t even know what that was!”

Darion desperately searched the healer’s face for a hint of deception, but there was none.

Only hatred and frustration.

So if he wasn’t lying… if the omega really hadn’t induced her own heat, nor even tried to…

Then this was natural.

She’d done… nothing wrong.

And she was suffering because… because…

Because he’d blindly believed Kyntha once again without doing his due diligence.