Chapter 203 Oh Goddess
The adrenaline that had fueled them through the nightmare had completely burned out, leaving the pack infirmary draped in a heavy, exhausted silence. It had been a solid two hours since the suffocating 120-degree heat of the vault, and the stark, clinical environment of the medical wing felt like an entirely different universe. The air here was sharp and aggressively cold, smelling of harsh antiseptic and clean cotton instead of scorched wool, sweat, and burning ghost-root.
Leela and Ginny were finally fully awake, resting in adjacent beds. They were pale and physically drained, their voices barely more than hoarse whispers, but the terrifying, icy pallor of Magda's poison had been entirely flushed from their systems. Ginny was propped up against a mountain of soft pillows, her eyes heavy with sleep as she gazed down at tiny, newborn Iggy tucked safely against her chest.
Across the room, Leela lay quietly, her hands splayed protectively over her still-swollen belly. Feeling the strong, steady, and wonderfully warm pulse of her unborn son, Zephyr, thrumming through the mate bond was the only medicine she needed. She closed her eyes, letting the rhythmic beep of the heart monitors ground her.
In the bed nearest the heavy double doors, Elana was awake, too.
The color had steadily returned to the former Luna’s face, flushing her cheeks with natural warmth. Her silver eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, burned with their familiar, authoritative fire. Her mind had finally clawed its way out of the forced, protective faint her ancient wolf had shoved her into when she remembered Damon's ultimate betrayal. Now, she just looked deeply irritated, exhausted, and ready to get out of the hospital bed to take charge of her pack.
Elana reached down with a frustrated huff, her fingers curling tightly into the thick, white thermal blanket covering her lap. She hated feeling vulnerable. She hated the IV taped to the back of her hand. Fully intending to swing her legs over the side of the mattress and stand up, she threw the heavy covers back.
She pushed her weight forward, sending the instinctual mental command to her lower body to move.
Nothing happened.
Elana paused, a deep, annoyed furrow appearing between her brows. She stared down at her legs, perfectly still against the crisp white sheets. She took a breath and tried again, pushing the command harder this time. Move.
Not even a toe twitched. It wasn't that they felt heavy; it was that they felt like they belonged to a ghost. The connection was simply... gone. It was like sending a signal into an endless, dark void.
"What..." Elana whispered
The irritation instantly drained from her face, violently replaced by a cold, creeping dread that spiked her heart rate. She reached out, her hands shaking, and slapped her own right thigh hard with the palm of her hand. The smack echoed sharply in the quiet room, but she barely registered the sting. It felt distant, muted, like she was touching someone else's body.
Panic—sharp, suffocating, and entirely unfamiliar to the formidable former Luna—seized her chest in a vice grip. Her breathing hitched into a ragged gasp, her silver eyes flying wide open as she looked wildly across the sterile room.
"Oh goddess," Elana choked out, her hands digging desperately, almost bruisingly, into the unmoving flesh of her thighs. "What is happening? Fenn... Jax, I can't move them. I can't move my legs!"
Jax, who had been sitting in a vinyl chair by Ginny's bed watching his mate and newborn son sleep, shot up so first, his chair tipped over and clattered against the linoleum. He sprinted across the room.
"Mom, hey, look at me," Jax said, his massive hands hovering over her trembling shoulders, trying to ground her as her breathing rapidly spiraled into hyperventilation. He remembered perfectly well that she had been kicking the blankets off her in a fit of rage just two hours ago down in the vault.
"Calm down. Let us get Veda." Fennigan said from the other side of the bed.
Jax spun toward the open doorway, his voice booming down the infirmary hall with sheer, unfiltered Beta panic. "Veda! Get in here! Now!"
A moment later, the rhythmic, heavy thwack, thwack of a hawthorn cane echoed against the tiled floor. Veda shuffled into the room, her clouded eyes taking in the terrifying scene with her usual, infuriatingly unbothered calm. She approached Elana’s bed, leaning her cane against the mattress, and reached her withered, warm hands under the hem of the hospital gown. She ran her palms firmly down the former Luna's shins, pressing hard into the nerve points near her ankles.
"I can't feel that," Elana sobbed, tears of absolute terror finally spilling over her thick lashes, completely shattering her stoic facade. "Veda, I could move them in the vault! Before I passed out, I was moving them, I swear to you! What is happening to me?!"
Veda slowly pulled her hands back and gripped her cane, resting her weight heavily upon it. Her expression was grave, the deep wrinkles of her face pulling into a tight, solemn mask. Her voice remained a steady, raspy anchor in the panicked room.
"It can happen sometimes with the Winter's Breath," Veda explained, looking directly into Elana's terrified, tear-filled eyes. "The ghost-root is a parasite that attacks the central nervous system. It freezes the pathways. Your beast fought like hell to burn the poison out of your blood, and the extreme heat in the vault saved your life. But when your human mind remembered what Damon did, your wolf forced you into a dead faint to protect your sanity."
Veda pointed the tip of her cane toward Elana's motionless legs. "When you fainted, your heart rate plummeted and your blood pressure dropped. The residual toxin that was still fighting to survive in your bloodstream pooled in your lower half. The frostbite on your nerve pathways finally set in once your adrenaline crashed."
Jax gripped the metal rail of the hospital bed, the steel groaning under the pressure of his white-knuckled grip. "How do we fix it, Veda? Tell me what to do. How do we thaw the nerves?"
Veda shook her head slowly, her ancient eyes filled with a grim, unflinching honesty. "We don't, Beta. Only her body and her wolf can do that now. It could just be temporary—a protective paralysis that lasts until every last microscopic trace of the toxin is completely flushed from her spinal fluid over the next few weeks."
The Elder paused, the silence in the infirmary growing so heavy it felt suffocating. Even Leela and Ginny were holding their breath, listening from their beds.
"Or," Veda finished quietly, her raspy voice completely devoid of pity, "it could be permanent. It all depends entirely on how her body and her wolf react to the internal nerve damage in the coming days."
Elana stared down at her unmoving legs, the reality of the words crushing the very last of her fierce, unbreakable spirit. The former Luna, who had survived pack wars, rogue attacks, and the betrayal of her own mate, was suddenly trapped in a prison made of her own flesh and bone.