Substitute Marriage: The Alpha's Secret Healer

Hermina Montgomery POV:

"Sign the contract, Hermina! Tonight, you're getting into that bridal carriage in Brylee's place!"

My father, Ronald Mercer, slammed a parchment scroll sealed with blood-red wax onto the heavy oak desk. A greedy man who would sell his own flesh and blood for gold and titles, the Lord of the Mercer pack glared at me, his neatly trimmed goatee quivering with rage.

I stood in the center of the dim study, my hands resting calmly against the rough linen of my skirt. Looking down at the parchment, I gave a humorless laugh.

"A month ago, when the Carlisle marriage envoy first arrived, you all sang a very different tune," I said, my voice flat and mocking. "Back then, Brylee bragged to every noble in the borderlands that she was going to be the Luna of the North. Why the sudden generosity?"

Standing behind her mother in an expensive lace gown, my half-sister Brylee Mercer shrank back. The skin beneath her left eye twitched right under her beauty mark as she dabbed at the dry corners of her eyes with a silk handkerchief.

"Hermina, how can you be so heartless?" Brylee whimpered, her sugary voice laced with spite.

"Word just leaked out of Northwind Castle yesterday. Lord Andrae's legs are completely ruined, his wolf is dead, and his temper has turned so violent he tore three servants to pieces in a fit of madness last night. If I marry that monster, I won't even survive the wedding night!"

"And I will?" I raised an eyebrow.

"That's completely different!" My stepmother, Glenda Mercer, stepped forward, her stubby fingers absently stroking the priceless heirloom emerald pendant resting against her thick neck.

"Brylee is a highborn she-wolf with a bright future. And what are you? Twenty years old and still without a wolf to your name. An outcast like you can't use the mind-link or feel a mate bond. Even if Lord Andrae goes mad, you won't suffer the backlash of a severed bond!"

In our world, anyone born unable to shift was treated worse than dirt. For eighteen years, this family had worked me to the bone in the back stables while lavishing Brylee with silk gowns and rare tonics, all because they believed I was a defective freak.

"Enough talk!" Ronald slapped the desk again. "It cost me five hundred gold sovereigns to bribe the Carlisle envoy into leaving the bride's given name off the contract. It only specifies a daughter of House Mercer! I put a roof over your head for twenty years-now it's time you earned your keep!"

He stormed around the desk, raising a thick, calloused hand to strike the defiance right out of me.

I didn't budge. I simply angled my chin to the left.

His palm sliced through the empty air beside my ear. The missed swing threw his heavy frame off balance, sending him stumbling against the bookshelf.

When Ronald whipped around in shock, I raised my gaze and met his stare dead-on. The lethal chill in my pale blue eyes made my cowardly father suck in a breath, stumbling back two steps until his spine hit the oak chair.

"How dare you dodge him, you useless little freak!" Brylee shrieked, clutching her skirts. "Mother, look at her! If she refuses to get in that carriage tonight, the Carlisle guards outside will drag me away instead!"

Seeing that brute force wouldn't work, Glenda forced a stiff, calculating smile onto her painted face.

"Hermina, don't be foolish," Glenda said, lowering her voice.

"Have you forgotten about your dead grandmother? You've spent years trying to find out who murdered her on that northern mountain road twenty years ago, haven't you?

Well, I recently learned that a servant from Northwind Castle passed through Dead Man's Gorge that very night-and picked up your grandmother's silver wolf-fang hairpin from the wreckage. He's the only living soul who saw who attacked her."

At the mention of my grandmother, my breath hitched. A fierce heat prickled beneath my skin, and for a split second, a faint silver-white glow flickered in the depths of my eyes. I curled my fingers into tight fists, forcing the awakening power in my blood back down.

My grandmother was the only person in this world who had ever loved me. For years, I had hit one dead end after another trying to uncover who was behind her murder. As a powerless outcast trapped in the borderlands, my reach was simply too short.

"Obey your father and marry into Northwind Castle," Glenda coaxed, thinking she had me cornered. "Once the carriage leaves the estate, I'll give you the name of the servant who holds that hairpin. Otherwise, you'll never know who butchered that old woman."

I looked at the three greedy faces in front of me. I was sick to death of this parasitic family, and marrying into Northwind Castle was my only real way out.

Not only would it lead me straight to the sole witness of that night, but the Carlisle pack also commanded the most powerful intelligence network in the north-the only tool capable of helping me hunt down my grandmother's killers.

Still, I had no intention of letting the Mercers walk away thinking they had won.

"I can take Brylee's place," I said slowly, pulling a chair over and sitting down right in front of the furious Ronald. "But a verbal promise from a liar is worthless. If you want my signature on that scroll, you're going to pay my price right now."

"Your price?" Ronald's face turned purple. "What right do you have to bargain with me?"

Just then, the heavy rumble of iron wheels and the snorting of giant warhorses echoed from the courtyard outside. The Carlisle escort had arrived at the main gates.

Brylee's face drained of all color. She grabbed Ronald's arm and shook it wildly. "Father, the guards are here! Hear her out, hurry!"

A cold smile touched my lips as I pointed a finger at Glenda's throat.

"After my grandmother died, you ransacked her room and stole her black iron apothecary case, along with that heirloom emerald pendant around your neck," I said evenly.

"Bring me the case, take off that pendant, and write down the name of that Carlisle servant right now. You have until those guards reach the front door-or I'll walk out there and tell them the real bride is hiding in this study."

"You greedy little bitch!" Glenda screeched, clutching the gleaming emerald pendant to her chest as if I were ripping out her heart. "This stone is worth a king's ransom! I've worn it for ten years-it's mine!"

"They're almost at the door," I said, glancing toward the window as the heavy boots of the Carlisle guards thudded up the front steps.

"Sounds like the escort captain is losing his patience. Brylee looks lovely in that lace gown, though. I'm sure Lord Andrae will enjoy tearing it to shreds."

"Mother! Give her the pendant! Take it off!" Brylee burst into real tears of terror, reaching up to claw at the gold chain around Glenda's neck. "Do you want me to die in that castle?!"

"Take it off right now!" Ronald roared at his wife, terrified that the powerful Carlisle Pack would slaughter them all for breaking the marriage alliance. "And go get that useless iron box from the vault! None of us could ever open the damn lock anyway!"

Shaking with rage and humiliation, Glenda unclasped the emerald pendant from her neck and threw it onto the desk.

Moments later, a breathless servant hurried in with a compact, untarnished black iron case and a slip of paper bearing a single name: Ab Mckay, Head Butler of Northwind Castle.

I pocketed the slip of paper and tucked the warm emerald pendant into my inner pouch. Picking up the black iron case with one hand, I grabbed the quill with the other and slashed my signature across the blank space on the marriage contract.

"Pleasure doing business with you," I said.

Leaving the three of them choking on their own fury, I turned around and walked out of the study with my head held high.

I left the perfumed hallways of the manor behind and climbed the narrow wooden ladder to my drafty hayloft behind the stables.

Bolting the rotting door shut, I set the black iron case on a battered wooden crate and pricked my index finger, pressing a drop of my blood onto the hidden wolf-head engraving on the bottom.

With a crisp click, the medical box that the Mercers had failed to crack for ten years popped open.

Inside lay a leather roll of long, moon-tempered silver needles, gleaming like cold stars, alongside a small crystal vial containing several dried crimson snow-berries-rare alpine berries my grandmother had preserved to pull the dying back from the brink.

Silver was lethal poison to werewolves, capable of searing their inner wolves to ash. Yet in my hands, these silver needles were the signature instruments of the realm's last master Healer.

I tucked the vial of snow-berries into my pocket and strapped the leather needle roll inside the lining of my wristbands. Catching sight of my reflection in the cracked bronze mirror on the wall, I paused.

From my anger earlier, the gray disguise on my left cheek had cracked, revealing a sliver of smooth, porcelain skin beneath. A faint, crisp fragrance like winter plum blossoms was beginning to rise from my skin.

It was the scent of a pure-blooded White Wolf-the royal bloodline blessed by the Moon Goddess herself.

My grandmother had been a legendary elder of the White Wolf royal court. Before she died, she warned me to hide my bloodline at all costs, or the shadowy forces that hunted our clan would tear me apart.

Pulling a packet of charred marsh-vine ash from beneath a loose floorboard, I mixed the dark powder with cold water in a clay bowl. I smeared the acrid, foul-smelling mud over my cheeks and neck.

Within seconds, the paste dried into rough, ash-gray blemishes, completely masking my true face and sealing my royal White Wolf scent beneath the surface.

Once again, the girl in the mirror looked like a hideous, wolfless peasant.

Heavy pounding echoed from the courtyard below, followed by a guard's impatient bark.

I threw on a ragged black hooded cloak, pulled the brim low over my scarred face, and walked down the stone stairs into the cold night wind. Under the main porch, Ronald, Glenda, and Brylee watched me from a distance with venomous eyes, eager to watch me ride to my death.

A burly werewolf guard standing beside the black iron carriage sized me up like cheap cargo and yanked the heavy door open.

"Get in," the guard sneered. "No one who steps foot in Northwind Castle ever walks out alive."

Without a word, I stepped onto the iron footboard, climbed into the dark cabin, and took my seat on the wooden bench. Lifting my eyes under the shadow of my hood, I looked calmly through the iron bars at the stunned driver.

"What are you waiting for?" I said coolly. "Drive."

Hermina Montgomery POV:

The black iron carriage jerked to a violent stop, throwing me forward before I braced my palm against the wooden wall.

Outside, thunder cracked across the night sky. The driver wrenched the cage door open, letting freezing rain blow into the cabin and soak the hem of my coarse cloak.

"We're here! Get out!" the driver barked, stepping back as if touching me would rot his hands.

Keeping my hood pulled low, I stepped down onto the slick obsidian flagstones. Before me towered Northwind Castle, its jagged black spires piercing the storm clouds like a giant beast crouching in the dark.

Yet the towering main doors at the top of the grand steps remained barred shut. Instead, the driver had pulled up beside a narrow, mud-splattered postern gate at the foot of the stairs, used for hauling livestock and stable waste.

Under the dry stone archway of the main stairs stood a tall old man with neatly combed gray hair and spotless white gloves. Flanked by two armored guards holding a massive, snarling black war-hound on an iron chain, he looked down at me with cold disdain.

"You must be the substitute bride sent by the Mercer pack," the old man said, his voice carrying clearly over the rain. "I am Ab Mckay, Head Butler of Northwind Castle."

Beneath my cloak, my fingers curled slightly. Ab Mckay. That was the exact name Glenda had written on the slip of paper-the witness who had picked up my grandmother's silver wolf-fang hairpin at Dead Man's Gorge.

I stood still in the pouring rain, looking up at him from beneath the wet brim of my hood. "If you know who I am, why are the main doors closed?"

A cold sneer twisted Ab Mckay's thin lips. "The main gates of Northwind Castle only open for highborn she-wolves of strong blood. By order of the old Lord, a scentless peasant without a wolf has no right to dirty the ancestral carpet."

The two guards beside him snickered openly.

"Look at the gray blotches on her face," one guard muttered. "Even the scullery maids look better than this defective freak."

Ab Mckay raised his chin and pointed a white-gloved finger at the puddle of mud at the bottom of the steps.

"Kneel right there in the mud, kiss the stone steps beneath the pack banner, and crawl in through the servants' postern," Ab Mckay commanded. "Otherwise, you can spend your wedding night kneeling in this storm."

To back up his words, Ab Mckay unleashed the heavy, predatory aura of a veteran werewolf warrior.

The invisible weight bore down on my shoulders like a boulder, meant to buckle my knees and force me into the mud. At the same time, the guard beside him slackened the iron chain.

With a vicious roar, the two-hundred-pound black war-hound lunged straight at my face, its razor-sharp fangs dripping with saliva.

Ab Mckay wanted to see me scream and grovel. Any ordinary wolfless girl would have had her throat ripped out in a heartbeat.

I didn't yield a single step.

Right as the foul heat of the hound's breath hit my cheeks, I lifted my chin. Beneath the shadow of my hood, my pale blue gaze met the beast's bloodshot eyes dead-on.

Without exposing my scent, I unlocked a razor-thin thread of my dormant White Wolf bloodline and drove that ancient, sovereign dominance straight into the war-hound's mind-letting the tail end of its freezing weight brush across Ab Mckay's chest.

To any werewolf or beast, a pure-blooded White Wolf was the primordial sovereign of their kind.

The ferocious war-hound froze in mid-air. A terrified, high-pitched whimper tore from its throat.

Overwhelmed by primal terror, the giant beast tucked its tail tightly between its legs, dropped belly-first onto the wet flagstones, and pressed its snout into the mud just inches from my boots, violently trembling.

The guards' mocking grins froze on their faces. "What the hell? Frost-Fang never backs down from anyone!"

Ignoring the whimpering beast at my feet, I walked straight up the stone steps.

Ab Mckay's gray eyes widened in shock. That split-second phantom pressure had made the wolf in his chest let out a panicked whine, as if a giant snow predator had just clamped its jaws around his throat.

Before he could recover, I stopped right in front of him. I reached out and brushed a drop of rainwater off the collar of his black coat. My fingertips grazed the side of his neck, resting with lethal precision right over the pulse at his throat.

Ab Mckay went rigid, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.

"I walked into this territory carrying a marriage contract stamped with the blood seal of your Council of Elders," I said softly, my voice colder than the rain.

"Humiliating the Alpha's legal bride at the front gate is a slap in the face to Lord Andrae himself. Tell me, Mckay-since when does a servant's word outweigh the Alpha's seal in Northwind Castle?"

"You..." Ab Mckay's throat bobbed. When he looked into my eyes again, the crushing royal aura had vanished completely, leaving him wondering if he had hallucinated in the storm. Yet the lingering terror in his veins was all too real.

Seeing a mere wolfless girl staring him down without a hint of fear, the shrewd old butler realized I was no soft target. Swallowing his pride, he stepped back, placed his right fist over his chest, and bowed his head.

"Open the main gates," Ab Mckay barked at the stunned guards. "Right this way, Madam."

The heavy ironwood doors groaned open. Leaving the shivering war-hound behind in the rain, I strode onto the dry crimson carpet of the main hall.

Vast stone pillars lined the cavernous room, and huge iron braziers burned with orange flames. Walking half a pace ahead of me to lead the way, Ab Mckay no longer dared to show his earlier arrogance.

As we climbed the wide spiral staircase toward the upper floors, I watched his back closely.

His steps were dead silent, his weight kept entirely on the balls of his feet-the classic gait of an elite military scout.

More tellingly, every third step he took up the stairs, his right ankle stiffened slightly.

That was the permanent mark of severe frostbone chill-an injury caused only by the freezing fog of Dead Man's Gorge along the old northern road where my grandmother had been ambushed twenty years ago.

"The storm on the northern mountain road was fierce tonight," I remarked casually, letting my voice echo off the stone walls. "When our carriage passed Dead Man's Gorge, I thought I heard wild wolves howling in the ravine. It's a miracle nobody gets killed on that road."

Ahead of me, Ab Mckay's boot faltered on the stone step.

His shoulders tensed, and his right hand subconsciously moved to press against his left breast pocket. Through the dark wool of his coat, I caught the distinct, narrow outline of a five-inch metal rod-the exact shape and length of a traditional wolf-fang hairpin.

A second later, Ab Mckay dropped his hand and turned his head slightly, his gray eyes dark and guarded in the torchlight.

"That old road was abandoned twenty years ago, Madam," he said in a tight voice. "Northwind Castle has many ghosts. For your own safety, it's best not to go looking for things buried in the past."

I offered a faint, cold smile under my hood and said nothing. I didn't need to rush; he had just confirmed that Glenda's clue was real.

As we reached the top floor of the keep, the temperature dropped sharply. Deep claw marks scarred the stone walls of the corridor, and not a single maid or guard was in sight.

A thick, bitter smell of boiled herbs hung heavy in the air. Yet as I drew a slow breath, I caught something else beneath the heavy herbal fumes-a faint, sickly-sweet metallic rot.

My eyes narrowed. As a Healer, I knew that smell all too well. That wasn't medicine meant to save a dying werewolf; someone was slowly rotting his bone marrow from the inside out.

Ab Mckay stopped five paces away from a pair of massive black oak doors carved with snarling twin wolves. Even a veteran like him looked visibly pale as he stared at those doors.

"The Alpha Lord is inside," Ab Mckay whispered, taking a hasty step backward. "His inner wolf has been violent since the ambush. None of the doctors sent in this week came out in one piece. I wish you luck, Madam."

Without waiting for my reply, the old butler turned and hurried back down the stairs as if fleeing the plague.

Left alone in the freezing corridor, I walked up to the twin-wolf doors and pressed my palms against the cold brass handles. With a low groan of the hinges, I pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside.

The door swung shut behind me with a heavy thud, plunging me into pitch darkness.

No candles burned in the room, and the fireplace was dead and cold. Suddenly, a jagged bolt of white lightning tore across the sky outside the tall arched window, lighting up the bedchamber for a single heartbeat.

By the window sat a tall, broad-shouldered man in a heavy carved redwood wheelchair.

Even seated, his frame was massive and intimidating. A loose black tunic hung open at the collar, revealing a sculpted chest crisscrossed with faded battle scars.

He had raven-black hair and a razor-sharp jawline shadowed by the gloom, while his long, powerful fingers slowly turned a heavy wolf-head signet ring on his thumb.

A suffocating wave of bloodlust and the feral, untamed dominance of a cornered apex predator rolled off him, pulling the very air in the room taut as a drawn blade.

In the pitch dark, a pair of glowing, molten-gold eyes cut through the shadows and fixed straight on my throat.

"Get out," he rasped, his deep voice rumbling through the dark with murderous authority.

Hermina Montgomery POV:

I didn't retreat. Reaching back without taking my eyes off him, I slid the heavy iron latch into place.

In the pitch-black bedchamber, the air felt like a drawn bowstring ready to snap.

"Are you deaf?" Andrae's voice rumbled from the shadows by the window, rough as crushed gravel. "I told the old man I don't need a bride to drag into the grave with me. Walk out that door while I can still control my claws."

My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. Another flash of lightning lit up the room, and I noticed something the rumors outside had left out.

On the small table beside his wheelchair, a bowl of dark herbal soup sat stone-cold and untouched. More tellingly, deep gouges scarred the thick redwood armrests of his chair, and dark red blood dripped slowly from Andrae's clenched fists.

He had driven his own claws deep into his palms, using raw physical pain to keep his poisoned, feral wolf from losing control in the storm.

A flicker of surprise crossed my mind.

The whole borderland called Andrae Carlisle a bloodthirsty tyrant who tore servants apart for fun. Yet here he was, locking himself in a freezing, lightless room and bleeding into his own hands just to avoid hurting a stranger.

"If I wanted to run, I would've jumped out of the carriage at Dead Man's Gorge," I said calmly, taking a few measured steps forward until my boots stopped near his chair.

"Besides, if you'd really torn three servants to pieces last night like the rumors claim, your head butler wouldn't have had the nerve to bully your bride at the front gate."

Andrae went still in the shadows. His glowing dark-gold eyes narrowed on me.

"Nobody sent into this room talks back to me," he said coldly, though the murderous edge in the air receded a fraction. "The Mercers sent a wolfless girl who isn't afraid of dying?"

Reaching out, I struck a flint on the side table and lit a single tallow candle. As the warm yellow flame flickered to life, I pulled back my dripping black hood, exposing my ash-smeared, scarred face to his gaze.

"I'm very fond of staying alive," I replied, glancing down at the untouched bowl of tonic on the table.

"Which is why I never drink broth laced with slow-acting liquid silver. It seems you figured out someone was poisoning you too, Lord Andrae. Too bad you realized it three years too late."

The moment the words "liquid silver" left my lips, the air in the room turned to ice.

Every royal apothecary in the kingdom had diagnosed Andrae's paralysis as severed nerve pathways from an old battlefield ambush. Only two kinds of people could know about the dissolved silver rotting his marrow: a master Healer, or the mastermind who put it in his bowl.

Before I could blink, the man in the wheelchair moved with terrifying speed.

His large, bloodstained hand shot out and clamped around my wrist, yanking me down. My knees hit the footrests of his wheelchair as I tumbled across his lap, and his other hand caught my jaw, tilting my head back.

The heavy scent of rain-washed pine and warm iron wrapped around me like a cage.

Yet even as he pinned me like a raging beast, I felt his calloused thumb stop just short of crushing my windpipe. He was holding back his lethal strength.

When my rain-soaked cloak pressed against his chest, Andrae frowned slightly. His dark-gold eyes dropped to my shivering, ice-cold fingers, and he instinctively shifted his broad shoulders to block the freezing draft blowing in from the window.

Then, with my face mere inches from his, he drew in a sharp breath.

Beneath the acrid stench of the marsh-vine ash smeared across my cheeks, a faint, crisp trace of winter plum blossoms drifted past his senses.

Andrae froze.

Beneath my hands, I felt the rabid, thrashing fury of his wolf go suddenly dead silent. The violent tempest of his aura vanished like smoke, replaced by a hot, electric jolt that arced from where his fingers touched my skin straight to my core.

My breath caught. Deep in my blood, my dormant White Wolf stirred from her slumber, drawn to the fierce heat of this man's soul.

"What is that scent on your skin..." Andrae breathed, his voice sinking into a low, husky rasp. His dark-gold eyes darkened, his pupils dilating as he stared at my scarred face while his thumb absently brushed across my jawline. "Why did my wolf just go quiet?"

Pushing down the strange heat rising in my chest, I flipped my free right hand.

A three-inch moon-tempered silver needle slid between my fingers, its razor-sharp point resting cold against his jugular.

"Ask one more question, Alpha, and you'll find out how fast silver can pierce your throat," I whispered evenly, meeting his burning gaze without blinking.

"I had three chances to stab your heart while you pulled me down. If I were an assassin sent to finish you off, you'd already be a corpse."

Andrae looked down at the gleaming silver needle against his skin, then slowly lifted his gaze back to my ice-blue eyes.

Instead of flying into a rage at the sight of a werewolf's most hated metal, the tension in his sharp jaw relaxed. A dark, dangerous smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.

For a man surrounded by smiling traitors in his own castle, a woman holding a needle to his throat was the most honest thing he had seen in years.

"A wolfless peasant from the Mercer house doesn't hold silver without shaking," Andrae said softly, slowly releasing my chin.

Instead of shoving me to the floor, his strong arm steadied my waist until I stood back up on the flagstones. Without a word, he reached behind his wheelchair, grabbed a thick black wolf-pelt throw, and tossed it straight over my soaking-wet shoulders.

"Put it on before you freeze to death on my floor and give the old man an excuse to blame me," he muttered, looking away as he wiped his bloody palms on a dark cloth. "Speak. Who are you really, and what do you want from me?"

Pulling the warm, pine-scented wolf pelt around my shoulders, I looked straight at him.

"I'm the only person in this realm who can purge the liquid silver from your marrow and make you stand again," I said clearly. "Let's make a deal, Lord Andrae."

Andrae leaned back against the redwood chair, resting his chin on his knuckles as he studied me. "What kind of deal?"

"I cure your legs and help you drag the rat who poisoned you out into the light," I said.

"In exchange, while I'm in Northwind Castle, you give me your full protection as your legal Luna and open the Carlisle intelligence network to me.

Twenty years ago, my grandmother was ambushed on the old road near Dead Man's Gorge, and your pack's network is the only tool powerful enough to help me hunt down the ones behind her death."

Andrae raised a dark brow. "Twenty years ago? You were barely born. You walked into a den of wolves and married a cripple just to settle a twenty-year-old blood debt?"

"She was my family," I said, my voice hardening. "Unlike the snakes in your castle who feed you poison and call you brother, I pay my debts in full."

That remark hit a raw nerve. A cold shadow flashed across Andrae's handsome face as he thought of the gentle, smiling brother who brewed his daily tonics.

"Every master apothecary in the capital swore that once silver enters the marrow, not even the Moon Goddess can pull it out," Andrae said, his voice low and testing. "How do I know you aren't just buying time?"

"One needle will tell you whether I'm lying," I replied.

Dropping the heavy wolf pelt onto a chair, I knelt on one knee in front of his wheelchair and reached out to lift the hem of his black trousers.

Andrae's leg muscles tensed by reflex-for three years, he had hated letting anyone look at his crippled, lifeless limbs. Yet when he saw the calm focus in my eyes, he slowly unclenched his fists and let me roll the fabric up past his scarred knees.

His lower legs were pale and icy cold, the veins beneath the skin tinged with a faint, sickly gray.

The instant my bare fingertips pressed against his calf to trace the nerve pathway, a sharp spark of electricity snapped between our skin.

Andrae sucked in a sharp breath above me. His large hands gripped the wooden armrests until his knuckles turned white, his gaze locked intensely onto the top of my head.

Ignoring the tingle in my fingers, I channeled a thread of pure healing energy into my right hand and drove the first moon-tempered silver needle two inches deep into the dormant pressure point above his right kneecap.

For a long, breathless moment, nothing happened.

Then, a dark purple bruise bloomed rapidly around the base of the needle, and a drop of thick, foul-smelling black blood oozed out of the pinhole, sizzling faintly against the silver.

Beneath my palm, a searing, living heat flared through his deadened nerves for the first time in three years.

A low groan tore from Andrae's throat. Before my eyes, his right foot-which had lain lifeless for so long-twitched visibly against the iron footrest.

Andrae stared down at the black blood dripping from his knee, his dark-gold eyes widening in utter shock as his trembling hand reached down and gripped my shoulder.

"You... you actually drew the silver out?" he rasped, his voice shaking with disbelief.