Chapter 2

My eyes stung. I turned for the stairs.

Silas stopped me at the bottom step and handed me a folder. "Something else. Moonleaf. Rosie's been running it since you left, and your parents think it's time to put that on paper."

It was a transfer of ownership. The apothecary, the grower contracts, my recipe book—every piece of it, made over to my sister.

"Who's going to buy a remedy from a Coldwater wolf?" my mother said.

"Rosie kept it going," my father said. "She's earned it."

Earned it.

Moonleaf had started as a single shelf in a rented back room. I'd mixed tinctures through the night, memorized every regular's aches and every pup's allergies, won the pack's trust jar by jar. Rosie had spent three years behind my counter, smiling, while my assistant did the actual work.

It made no difference. I'd be gone before I could run it again.

I signed.

Rosie took the folder and flipped it open at once. "I've got so many plans. Silas, what if we did a whole new line for the Harvest Market—"

She turned toward him, and he bent his head to hers. In a minute they were deep in stock and pricing and next season.

My mate and my sister, building a future with no room for me in it.

Nobody saw me go upstairs.

I started packing. If I was dying, I didn't want to leave them anything to sort through. My clothes. My herb journals. The pressed flowers I'd kept since I was small. Everything that proved I'd ever lived in this house.

I had to stop every few minutes. My bones ached; my hands wouldn't steady. Whatever had gotten into my blood in Coldwater had finished most of its work.

The parcels from home had been the one bright spot of those three years. I'd taken them as proof that my family still cared.

I was beginning to wonder.

By the time I finished, the window had gone black. I made it as far as the bed before my legs gave. A few hours of sleep, and then I'd decide how to spend whatever time was left.

I didn't hear them on the stairs. I woke when the door crashed against the wall.

Rosie came in sobbing, my parents and Silas close on her heels.

"How could you do this to me?" she cried. "I believed in you!"

I pushed up on one elbow. The room swam. "Do what?"

"Your old customers," Silas said, ice in every word. "They're telling the pack Rosie couldn't mix a cough syrup to save her life. That she's been riding on your name from day one."

"The whole pack is laughing at me!" Rosie wept. "They're calling me a fake!"

I just looked at her. I hadn't spoken to a soul. I'd hardly been out of this room.

"I never—"

"Then why is this happening now?" my mother demanded. "The second you come home?"

"Because she's jealous," Rosie wailed. "She can't stand that I've got everything she threw away!"

My father's lip curled. "We took you back. And this is what we get?"

Silas stepped toward the bed. "Fix it."

My mother pulled Rosie in and smoothed her hair. "Shh, baby. You'll make yourself ill." Over Rosie's head, her eyes found mine. "Your sister is going to make this right."