DRAKE POV
Drake woke up screaming.
His uncle's face was the last thing he saw before consciousness ripped him back to reality. Blood. His hands covered in blood. His uncle's eyes going dark as he died, and Drake standing over him knowing he'd just killed the man who raised him, the man he'd loved, the man who'd never hurt him but had to die because Drake wanted more power.
Luma was at his side immediately.
She didn't ask what happened. She didn't demand explanations. She just sat down next to him and let him breathe. Let him shake. Let him fall apart for just a moment before he had to pull himself back together and be the Alpha again.
"It happens a lot?" she asked quietly.
Drake wiped his face. "Every night. Different versions of the same thing. Him dying. Me killing him. Me not being able to stop it even though it's already done."
Luma reached out and took his hand. Her grip was warm and steady.
"The weight of it," Drake continued, the words pouring out like they'd been waiting nine years to escape, "it's crushing me. I make decisions that destroy people's lives. I order warriors into battles knowing some won't come back. I hold this entire pack together and if I show one second of weakness, everything collapses. I can't sleep because my brain won't stop calculating the next threat. I can't relax because relaxing means I might miss something that gets people killed."
He looked at her directly.
"I've forgotten how to be anything except the thing that keeps this pack alive."
Luma didn't try to comfort him with empty words. She just listened. She listened while Drake told her about the guilt. About the loneliness of being Alpha. About never being allowed to show fear or doubt or pain because showing those things meant his warriors would start questioning if he was strong enough to lead.
She just listened and held his hand.
Over the next few days, the balance shifted.
Drake started asking her questions. He wanted to know about her life outside the pack. He wanted to understand how someone like her existed in his world without him ever really seeing her.
One night, three weeks into her healing work, Luma talked about the hospital.
"I started going when I was fourteen," she said. Her hands glowed softly against his chest, working on the curse that was almost completely invisible now. "My mother was already sick. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for her. She had some kind of supernatural illness, something that normal medicine couldn't fix."
"How did you help her?" Drake asked.
"I went to the hospital's supernatural wing," Luma continued. "I watched how the healers worked. I started learning about how human bodies worked, what made them different from shifter bodies. Then I started reading. Stealing books from the pack's library. Studying at night. Teaching myself magic."
Drake listened like her words were the most important thing he'd ever heard.
"By the time I was sixteen, I could heal her enough to slow down the illness. By seventeen, I'd reversed some of the damage. By eighteen, she was functional again. Not cured completely. But alive. Still with me."
"You did that alone," Drake said. Not a question.
"I had to," Luma said simply. "Nobody else would help. Humans weren't worth saving to the pack. So I learned to save her myself."
Drake realized in that moment that this woman was brilliant in ways he'd never noticed before. She didn't have formal training. She didn't have the backing of powerful mentors. She'd built her power from nothing. From books and desperation and refusal to accept that her mother couldn't be saved.
She understood healing in ways that went beyond magic. She understood the human body. She understood medicine. She understood the intersection between supernatural and normal in a way that made her insight incredibly valuable.
And he'd never noticed any of it.
"Tell me more," Drake said. "About everything. Your childhood. Your mother. How you learned to hide your power so well that nobody even knew you existed."
Luma talked and Drake asked question after question. He wanted to know everything. He wanted to understand how she'd survived invisibility. How she'd learned to make herself so small that even he'd walked past her a hundred times without seeing her.
"Why do you want to know this?" Luma asked finally, sounding confused.
"Because I'm realizing I've wasted nine years," Drake said. "I've been so focused on being cold and untouchable that I forgot how to notice people. How to see them. How to care about anything except power and strategy and control."
He pulled her hand away from his chest and held it between his own.
"I see you now, Luma. And I can't stop seeing you."
Luma's face flushed. She looked away but Drake could see her trying to hide a small smile.
"You shouldn't," she whispered. "You should stay focused on the pack. On the threat. On who cursed you."
"I am focused on that," Drake said. "But I'm also focused on you. Those things can exist at the same time."
He watched her process that. Watched her realize that she mattered. That her life mattered. That she wasn't invisible anymore, at least not to him.
Three weeks into the healing, something changed with her magic.
Drake noticed it the moment her hands touched his chest that night. Her glow was brighter. Much brighter. Almost blinding in the quiet chamber. And it wasn't just healing him anymore. Her magic was reaching for something inside him. Reaching for him in a way that felt intimate and personal and completely different from any healing he'd ever experienced.
It felt like her magic was trying to merge with his. Like it wanted to stay inside him. Like it was becoming bonded to him in ways that went beyond the physical healing.
Drake's breath caught.
Luma's eyes opened and she looked down at their connection. At the way her golden light was intertwining with his own power, creating something new. Something that belonged to both of them.
"This isn't supposed to happen," Luma whispered, but she didn't pull away.
"Why not?" Drake asked.
"Because this is a bonding," Luma said, her voice shaking. "My magic is bonding with yours. That only happens when healers work with someone they love. When the connection goes deeper than just physical healing."
Drake sat up slowly, careful not to break the connection between them. Their hands were still touching. Their magic was still intertwined. Golden light surrounding them both.
"Then stop," he said.
Luma looked at him with tears starting to form in her eyes.
"I can't," she admitted. "I don't know how anymore."