Chapter 275 Discharge – Blackwolf’s POV

Chapter 275 Discharge – Blackwolf’s POV
My bedroom had the sparse functionality of a room designed by someone who viewed sleep as biological maintenance. Single bed. Steel desk. One east-facing window, chosen two centuries ago because sunrise was marginally less depressing than the west wall’s view of the service corridor and yesterday’s laundry.
The journal lay open on my lap, leather cracked along the spine and pages yellowed by decades of use. I wrote with a fountain pen because it demanded care, and care remained something I could provide when everything else felt unstable. The nib scratched across the paper, carrying thoughts I trusted nowhere else.
13 weeks, 2 days. Discharged 0600 hours. Queen Amelia Brecc.
My handwriting had not changed in two centuries: precise, angular and controlled. It belonged on medical charts rather than in a private journal, fitting for someone who had never learned where one ended and the other began.
Toxin levels undetectable in final bloodwork. Cardiac function normal. Respiratory rate stable. Pups’ heartbeats strong and consistent, approximately 150 bpm each and within the normal range for gestational age. Placental attachment secure on ultrasound. No evidence of uterine irritation or contraction.
I paused with the pen hovering above the paper until a black dot formed beneath the nib. Later, I might blame the instrument instead of the hesitation.
Kaela remains depleted but functional. Her protective instinct is remarkable. She kept the Queen unconscious for four days, minimising metabolic strain while the body processed the toxin. Unprecedented in my clinical experience, though historical texts mention similar responses after severe trauma. The bond between human and wolf operates beyond the reach of conventional medicine.
That was the clinical entry, suitable for official records, medical charts and Dominic’s immaculate filing system. Dominic believed organisation was the closest thing to morality the palace was likely to produce.
Beneath it, in smaller script, I began the entry that belonged nowhere except here.
I have been complicit in many things.
The sentence waited on the page as if it had been gathering patience for years. I watched the ink dry and did not move.
Two centuries of collaboration with Redwolf. Regime changes. Selective poisonings. Carefully timed leaks. Patients treated for injuries I helped cause and suffering I helped design. I insisted these actions served a larger purpose, that the greater good waited beyond the next necessary compromise. The argument grew thinner each time I used it.
The pen moved faster. Precision loosened, and the letters crowded one another towards the margin.
Children have always been the line. Not a flexible boundary or useful guideline. The line. Drawn in stone, blood and whatever remains of the conscience I began with. I have watched infants die. I have held them, pronounced the time, signed the forms and returned to rooms made emptier by their absence. I told myself those deaths were not mine because I arrived afterwards, because my hands touched only the consequences.
These pups came closer to that line than anything in two centuries.
My hand shook. The pen skidded, leaving a black streak across the page. I let it remain. Cleaner presentation would not make the confession cleaner.
Redwolf denies knowledge or involvement. Last night, her voice carried every note of sincerity she can produce, and I wanted to believe her. I still do. But the poison was precise: botanical compounds with metallic catalysts, designed for uterine contraction and placental separation. That was not opportunism or the work of distant cousins following an old grievance. It required a healer’s knowledge, or a healer’s consultation, and the list of people in this kingdom both capable and willing is shorter than I would like.
Anger tightened the burn scars across my hands. I flexed my fingers and continued. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking led towards emotions I had rationed for three centuries.
I am to blame. Not solely, perhaps not even primarily, but I sit in rooms where these plans are made. I have sat in them for centuries, nodded at the right moments and asked questions that sounded like concern while serving as intelligence gathering. I stitched together victims of plots I helped design and pretended the stitching counted as absolution.
It does not.
The Queen trusted me this morning. She believed me when I said the pups were healthy and the danger had passed. She does not know that the healer monitoring her pregnancy spent two centuries collaborating with the architect of the threat that nearly took her children. My diagnosis was honest. The context was not.
Heat tracked down my cheek. I ignored it and kept writing, the nib moving faster now that the excuses had run out.
I cannot walk away. Redwolf was right, which may be the most galling part of this situation. Leaving would expose the Queen and the pups. As her healer, I remain the best guarantee that another attempt will meet someone who recognises the danger and knows how to counter it.
So I stay. I monitor. Every diagnosis I deliver is medically honest and morally incomplete. The space between those facts is where my ethics used to live.
Tears struck the words and spread the ink into a grey cloud. Something clear muddied by contact with something else. The symbolism was almost offensively precise.
I capped the pen and set it on the desk. The journal remained open while the stain dried. I did not blot it. I had spent enough centuries attempting to undo permanent things.
Outside the window, pale gold spread across the eastern rooftops. Somewhere in that light, people read Kane and Blackthorn’s statement, chose sides and prepared for the next move in a game designed by people like Redwolf and me in rooms no one else could enter.
I closed the journal. The leather was warm beneath my palms, worn smooth by decades of recording the same compromises in different ink.
The white coat hung on the door, crisp and pristine, symbol of a profession I had honoured in every way except those that mattered most. When I reached for it, my scarred hands no longer shook.
Time to check on my patients.