Chapter 22: Her Name
LYSANDER
"Why am I even surprised?" she said, her gaze drilling into the stairwell wall as if it might confess its secrets. "You’re Lily of the Valley. Of course your people would pull something like this."
"Something like what?"
"What do you intend to make me?" She finally met my eyes, her stare sharp as broken glass. "A forced bride? Some toy for you to use whenever you please?" Her jaw locked. "I might not have killed your uncle. But I can absolutely kill you."
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it, low and clipped, carrying more disbelief than any real humor.
"You think I’m joking," she said.
"Perhaps if you weren’t shielding, I’d know for certain." I watched her, noting the careful mask she’d drawn over her features the instant we left the cell. "But I’m here to help you. Maybe try looking at me as something other than the enemy. A little kindness wouldn’t kill you."
She dropped her head, and for a heartbeat, a sound almost like a sob trembled in her throat before she strangled it. "Fuck. What did I ever do to deserve this?"
"I can’t be that terrible a mate." I let a crooked grin slip through, just to see if it would spark anything. "If it’s my bedroom skills you’re worried about, I apologize. That was mostly my wolf, not me."
I meant it as a joke, a way to break the tension. Instead, she stared at me as if I’d just declared I planned to sprout a second head.
I let the joke die a quiet death and nodded at the split skin along her temple. "We should get that cleaned up while we talk."
"I’m fine." She said it too fast, the kind of fast that meant the opposite. "I heal quickly."
"You’re not fine. And you’re an Omega, in case you’ve forgotten. Whatever gift you’re using to heal is fighting against the wolfsbane still crawling through your veins." I stepped closer, closing the gap until she had to tilt her head back to meet my gaze.
She held my gaze anyway, and in her eyes was a promise: push her any further, and pain would be waiting for me.
Still, I pressed on.
I slipped an arm around her before she could protest again and carried her the rest of the way, ignoring the rigid defiance in every line of her body, not stopping until we reached the infirmary.
The wing was grand, like every inch of my uncle’s estate: high ceilings, spotless white walls, healers gliding between cots with practiced grace. As we crossed the threshold, heads turned, and I watched recognition dawn across their faces in slow, inevitable waves. First me. Then her.
Then the room went very still.
I caught scraps of it, whispered just loud enough to reach me.
White hair.
Killer.
An older healer, with silver threading her braid, approached with the wary grace of someone nearing a creature she did not trust.
She bowed to me. "Alpha Lysander. Are you injured?"
"Clearly not," I said. "She is."
The woman’s gaze landed on Bonnie and lingered, and whatever she saw there made Bonnie edge half a step behind my shoulder, using me as a shield. That small movement spoke louder than any confession.
"So you’re here because of her," the healer said. "The killer."
"She is not the killer."
My words came out flatter and colder than I meant, and the healer’s eyes flicked to mine, measuring how far she could press before it cost her dearly.
"Please," I said, "do not be disrespectful."
She bowed her head again, quick and shallow. "My apologies, Alpha Lysander. I am simply not equipped to handle injuries of that nature. Forgive me."
She turned and walked away, unhurried, leaving behind the unmistakable message that this was never about equipment, but about whose blood she was being asked to clean.
"Is that insubordination?" I said, loud enough to carry.
She stopped. Turned back around, expression smooth again, practiced. "Of course not, Alpha Lysander. I simply do not wish to cause the girl further harm." Her eyes cut sideways, briefly, toward Bonnie. "But if the Alpha insists."
She snapped her fingers at a younger healer working a few cots down, an Omega, by the soft deference in her posture, and I watched the box of supplies pass hand to hand until it reached me.
"I would have to comply," the older healer said, voice smooth as glass, and beneath the words I caught the thin, unmistakable thread of a threat, the kind wrapped so carefully in courtesy that no one could call it what it was.
I didn’t blame her, not really. My uncle had been loved. Genuinely loved, by people who had known him for decades, who had no framework yet for understanding why his murderer was standing in their infirmary being protected by his own nephew and for those who now knew, his named heir. This was going to be difficult in ways I hadn’t fully accounted for yet.
I intercepted the kit before the girl reached us, waved her off with a nod, and steered Bonnie to an empty cot near the far wall, out of the worst of the staring.
She sat when I told her, but every muscle in her body still radiated resistance. I crouched in front of her and opened the kit.
Her eyes never touched me. Instead, they swept the room, tracking every healer, every patient who had stopped what they were doing to watch us.
"Are you afraid?" I asked, soaking a cloth in antiseptic.
"They’re looking at me like they want to tear me apart," she said, voice low enough that only I would catch it. "Am I not allowed to be afraid?"
"You’re allowed."
"Nothing is scarier than a room full of people who have already decided who you are." She winced as I pressed the cloth to her temple, her body going rigid before she forced herself to relax. "A hivemind is worse than any enemy. At least you can reason with one person."
I worked in silence, carefully wiping away the dried blood, watching her jaw clench each time the cloth found a spot still raw.
"You know my name," I said eventually. "I don’t know yours."
"I don’t particularly care to tell you."
I clicked my tongue.
"That doesn’t seem fair."
Her brow lifted.
"Fair?"
"You’ve been calling me Lysander."
"I don’t see the problem."
"I know your face, your crimes, your stubbornness, and approximately how many times you’ll argue before doing what I ask." I folded the bloodied cloth over to a clean side. "You know my name. All I have is ’girl who is far too stubborn for her own good.’"
"I wasn’t aware we were trying to become friends."
"We’re not."
"Then it doesn’t matter."
"It matters to me."
She finally turned her head enough to meet my eyes, suspicion written plainly across her face.
"Why?"
"Because I’d rather not keep referring to you as ’her.’"
She held my gaze for another second before looking away again.
"I still don’t care."
I sighed.
"Fine."
She frowned slightly.
"Fine?"
"I’ll ask around."
Her head snapped back toward me.
"You wouldn’t."
"I would."
A glare settled over her face, sharp enough to strip bark off a tree.
"I’ll find someone who knew you."
"There isn’t anyone."
"Someone always knows something."
Her silence was answer enough that I’d struck closer than she’d wanted.
I dabbed another cut.
"You worked as a male retainer."
She stiffened.
"So?"
"So what name did you use?" I asked. "Your own, or a man’s?"
"..."
"If it was a man’s name, which one?"
She studied me with narrowed eyes, clearly weighing how much refusing to answer would actually protect her.
"Bonner."
I let out a short laugh despite myself. "Okay. And... what about the real one?"
Her mouth flattened into a thin line, and for a moment I thought she would refuse, guarding her name as fiercely as she had guarded everything else for years. But the room kept watching, kept whispering, and in the end, it was easier to surrender something small than to keep sitting in that heavy silence.
"Bonnie," she said finally, quiet enough that it nearly got lost under the noise of the infirmary around us.
I studied her for a long moment, turning the name over in my mind, trying to match it to the woman before me instead of the mask she had worn for years.
"Bonnie," I echoed, and somehow, saying it out loud settled a fragment of the past day’s chaos, small and strange and entirely unwelcome with everything else teetering on the brink.
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