To heal a Rogue

JOHANN

A healer.

The words wouldn’t sit right in my head no matter how many times I turned them over. I stood frozen near the front row while chaos erupted around me, watching sentinels drag that rogue away in chains, and I could not make my mind accept what my own eyes had just shown me.

The girl was supposed to die tonight. That had been the entire point, the whole beautifully constructed collapse I’d spent hours arranging over the phone with a man too stupid to even aim properly. Lysander throwing himself in front of the bullet instead would have worked just as well, honestly. Better, in some ways. I remembered the exact shape of the smile that had started forming on my own face as I watched blood pour out of my cousin’s throat, watched his legs give out beneath him, watched the crown I’d been denied bleed out on the floor of a hall meant to celebrate his rise.

Then that girl had put her hands over the wound and stitched him back together like it was nothing.

I was livid. Genuinely, thoroughly livid, in a way that made my hands ache from how tightly I’d curled them into fists at my sides.

Healers were supposed to be extinct. Gone. A footnote in old stories parents told their pups to make the past feel more magical than it actually was. That was the entire foundation of the world I’d grown up believing in, and now some rogue Omega playing dress up as a male retainer had just shattered it in front of every Alpha and Luna in this territory.

Behind me, a pair of idiot Alphas were already murmuring to each other, thrilled with the theory forming between them.

"If healers are back," one of them said, "there could be more of them hiding. Anywhere. Even in our own packs."

"We should check," the other said, half joking, half not. "Go through the whole roster. See if anyone’s been hiding something interesting."

I walked away before I heard any more of it. My skin was already crawling with everything I’d just witnessed, and I didn’t need their speculation adding to it.

Alpha Sterling caught me before I’d made it three steps.

He looked like he’d been dragged through something violent himself, his hands trembling, his eyes darting from corner to corner like the walls themselves might report him for treason.

"What do you plan to do now?" he said.

"You look like you’re on drugs, grandfather," I said. "Stop shaking. Eyes are literally everywhere."

He forced himself still, visibly, his jaw working hard to steady itself. "I’m stable now." He leaned in, dropping his voice through his teeth. "That rogue was taken alive. He’s going to talk."

"I really don’t think so," I said. "His loyalties will stay in place if he wants what he agreed to do this for in the first place. And I’m certain they will hold."

"Rogues don’t stand for anything, Johann," Sterling hissed. "That’s exactly how they ended up rogues in the first place. They couldn’t handle belonging to a pack structure. You think they’ll handle standing firm for something as complicated as a revolution?" His eyes narrowed. "There’s a reason they’ve always crawled along the ground and never quite managed to climb high enough to matter."

"I don’t know," I said. "They’re the reason this entire kingdom is currently a mess."

"Right," he said, something bitter twisting his mouth. "Because your mother built the avenue for it. They aren’t smart, calculated, or talented enough to pull off something like a fucking assassination alone, and you know it."

"I have this handled."

"You’d better."

Something in his tone snapped whatever patience I had left clean in half.

"Moving forward," I said, low and precise, "never take that tone with me again." I stepped closer, close enough that he had to hold his ground or visibly retreat. "I know plenty now, about my own origins. You are not my grandfather. We are allies, at best, and in ranking, you are nothing close to my equal. So lower your eyes and your voice when you speak to me, and put that haughty tail between your pathetic legs."

He said nothing further. I walked past him without waiting to see how he took it.

I made my way down toward the dungeons, cutting through the still-dispersing crowd, catching pieces of conversation as I went that made my blood boil hotter with every step.

"Divine," an elderly Luna breathed. "The Lily of the Valley Alpha, named heir, and now a healer at his side. It’s like something from the age of legends."

"You’re thinking too small," the Alpha beside her replied. "A named heir that is not the Prince is rare enough. A healer is... impossible. To see both in the same night..." He shook his head. "The goddess herself must have blessed House Asker."

I could only chuckle.

They saw me then and went quiet immediately, dropping their eyes and their voices swallowing themselves whole the moment my presence registered.

I was furious by the time I reached the cells.

They wouldn’t let me in.

"Move."

Neither sentinel budged.

"Your Highness," one of them began carefully, "the regent’s orders..."

"A rogue walked into the royal hall and fired a weapon at the regent," I cut in. "He nearly assassinated the acting ruler of this kingdom in front of half the nobility."

Neither of them answered.

"The same rogue may very well be connected to my father’s murder. Do you understand the magnitude of that?" My gaze shifted between them. "Every moment he sits in that cell without being questioned is another moment we lose."

The younger sentinel swallowed.

I pressed on before either of them could speak.

"I am not asking to execute him. I am asking to question him. Thoroughly. Personally. If there is even the slightest chance he is part of the bastards who orchestrated my father’s death, then standing in my way is bordering on negligence."

The older sentinel lowered his head.

"The current regent has made his orders clear, Your Highness. No one is to enter." Though his voice shook as he said it. "We don’t want to suffer the consequences of disobeying him."

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