Offered to the Triplet Alphas

[Raven]

"The sutures are stable, Alpha, but... Alpha Ezra's wounds aren't healing."

"No potion, in any dose, is effective."

"It's almost as though something is blocking his recovery."

I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to pacify the throbbing headache as I went through the scrolls of medical notes and compared them with Ezra's reports.

Three days had passed since Ezra's outburst, and all I could do was contain his feral powers.

We operated on five major fractures in his limbs, three in his ribs, and almost ten other minor bone displacements and fractures. He had deep tears in his abdomen, chest, and shoulders while minor cracks ran all over his skin.

His powers were no longer trying to tear his body apart, but his body wasn't healing, despite everything we did. No matter how strong the healing potion we gave him, his body remained unresponsive.

I knew what was interfering with his healing - the curse. But the real problem was the curse hadn't manifested enough to react to the curse litmus for me to determine its nature and type.

So creating an effective healing potion was the actual challenge. We couldn't afford to simply experiment with different potions on Ezra, hoping one would work. The time, place, person, and words tied to the curse all played a role in determining its nature. Using the wrong potion could speed up the curse's manifestation.

Speeding up the curse's manifestation was the last thing I wanted. In Ezra's condition, the curse could easily consume his complete existence in a matter of a few days.

Ezra was surviving on heavy doses of painkillers.

He hadn't regained consciousness since he lost it, and one by one, I was running out of ways to bring him back.

The numbers, words, and graphs on the reports blurred before my eyes. The voices of the healing team faded into silence as I slipped into a daze once again.

I can't fix this.

I can't handle this..

I am making this worse.

I am not qualified enough.

What if Ezra never wakes up?

What if he's gone?

It will all be my fault-

Slamming my hand on the table, I got up from the chair, my breaths quickening.

The team of healers sitting around the table looked at me as I began pacing around the room.

I glanced at the reports spread out on the table once more, desperately searching for a blind spot or some kind of miraculous solution to this problem.

"Alpha, you haven't slept for three days straight. You should rest a little," a young healer suggested.

"Don't tell me what to do," I growled, glaring at her.

She lowered her head, cowering under my scrutiny.

I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and glanced toward the corridor through the watching glass, hoping to see Asher. He had been here with me for the past three days, and somehow, just his presence had kept me going. I looked around.

"Where is Asher?" I asked.

"Alpha Asher? I saw him head outside the bunker earlier," another healer said.

"Keep monitoring Ezra every second. Report any fluctuations to me immediately. I'll be back," I said, my voice firm, before turning and walking into the corridor.

We were in the old underground bunker where Ezra was treated after his very first power outburst - the same lab that had once been part of the Forced Activation.

I hesitated when Asher suggested bringing Ezra here. The memories tied to this place made it hard to return. But I couldn't deny that this was the only lab that could contain and stabilize him because it was built specifically for this purpose. Moreover, we couldn't risk news of Ezra's condition becoming public; it would cause severe unrest within the pack and draw the relentless attention of the press, fueling unnecessary questions we didn't have the time or answers for. Getting out of the bunker, I scanned the area, releasing my butterflies to look for Asher because he didn't respond to my mindlink or my texts or my calls.

A dense forest now sprawled across the grounds where the FA facility once stood. Beyond the woods loomed the accursed walls, cloaked in vines and creeping vegetation, still as tall and foreboding as ever.

My blood boiled with uncontainable rage every time I saw this place. Why Asher hadn't torn down those walls and erased the ruins was a mystery that only deepened my frustration. Through one of my butterflies, I spotted Asher deep in the forest.

"What the hell is he doing here?" I grumbled as I walked into the forest, following Asher's scent.

My steps faltered, and my body froze the moment I saw him sitting on the ground with his back resting against the thick roots of a towering tree, its trunk draped in soft, green moss. I furrowed my brows, widening my eyes as I absorbed the intensity of his emotional aura.

To confirm what I was seeing, I switched to Pheles' vision.

Asher's emotional aura had always been blank, cold, and devoid of any trace of feeling. He suppressed his emotions so flawlessly that I actually believed he was incapable of feeling anything.

But right now, his emotional aura was blazing with colors so bright and violent that it was impossible to make sense of his emotional state. It was a chaotic storm of feelings so intricate and raw that I couldn't fathom how emotions this complex could even exist.

I trudged toward him slowly, each step cautious and unsure.

It felt as though all his emotions were battling, each one clashing against the other in a struggle for dominance.

Fiery streaks of crimson surged frantically. A shade of red that forms when someone hurts the very person they long to protect. Wisps of deep indigo wove through the chaos, heavy with despair and the suffocating weight of loss. Bright flashes of gold and white clashed with the darker hues. It seemed as though grief and torment fiercely attacked love and hope.

But all those chaotic emotions were bound by swirls of jagged black edges, rippling at the boundaries of his aura, symbolizing something darker that even an emotion demon failed to comprehend.

Even with all the emotions I couldn't decipher, his aura was undeniably heavy with - pain?

Asher and pain?

Rubbish.

Asher never feels pain or anything at all.

So what in the world could be causing this?

Could it be the curse?

As I strode closer, I realized he wasn't unconscious - he was asleep. His head hung low, his face eclipsed by shadows, and his breaths were labored. His hand clenched his chest, as though his heart hurt. "Asher..." I whispered, squatting beside him.

As I lifted his chin, my breath caught in my throat, and I instinctively pulled back, a rush of unease flooding me.

Clenching my jaws, I struggled to make sense of what was happening with him. I had never seen Asher shed a single tear in his life, not even as a child. So, seeing the tear streaking down his face wasn't just alien, but deeply unsettling. I reacted before I could think things through, overcome by a disturbing anxiety that tightened like a knot in my chest.

Ezra was already in danger. I couldn't lose Asher as well.

I checked his pulse, his heartbeat.

Nothing was normal.

Nothing.

Given the state of his emotional aura, his heart should be erratic, but there was an eerie silence.

"Asher! Wake up! Asher!" Panic surged through me as I gripped his shoulders, shaking him desperately.

My mouth dried up, my fingers turning ice cold when he didn't respond. His hand slid off his chest, almost lifeless, and that just messed with my brain even more. The sight of him like this... it twisted something heavy inside me, and my throat tightened.

I had an ominous feeling that something terrible, irreversible, had already happened to him.

"Wake up! Asher!" I growled, my teeth clenched in frustration. "I hate this place! I fucking hate this place!" My hands shook as I gripped him tighter. "Asher! Don't fucking scare me like this!"

Asher took a shaky gasp before his eyes fluttered open. In an instant, his emotional aura snapped back to its usual blankness, his emotions and his pain disappearing.

It took him a few minutes to fully return to reality. He squinted his eyes, his hand pressing to his forehead as if trying to orient himself.

"Raven?" He mumbled.

I stared at him, panting. Licking the dryness from my lips, I forced myself to calm down, trying to hide the frenzied worry that had consumed me only moments ago. "What happened to you?" I asked, my voice strained.

"To me?" Asher's eyes flickered with confusion.

"You were... hurting..."

Asher glanced down at his body, his fingers brushing the tear on his cheek.

"Was I?" he asked in a distant tone.

Taking a quick gulp, I sat beside him, scrubbing my hand over my face as relief washed all over me.

"I was... I thought..." My voice faltered as I clenched my fists, resting my elbows on my curled-up knees. "I thought it was the curse..."

Asher shut his eyes and gulped hard, as if trying to shake off the remnants of whatever had just happened to him.

"A dream," he muttered, his voice low, and I stared at him, confused.

"What?"

"You must be dreaming," he said.

"What!?" I snapped, my scowl cutting through his dismissive tone.

"You've been treating Ezra non-stop for three days with no break," he said, deadpan. "You must be seeing things."

I glared at him and opened my mouth to retort, but stopped. Right now I could tolerate his gaslighting, but not his silence. Asher was back to normal, and that was enough for me.

"Yeah, right?" I scoffed, shaking my head. "I must be dreaming with my eyes wide open in broad daylight. Seeing things as you say."

"Indeed," Asher said with an exaggerated nod, like a sage imparting great wisdom.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever."

We sat in silence until...

"Just for clarification. You weren't actually worried about me, were you?" Asher asked, narrowing his smug gaze.

"In your dreams," I drawled.

"Good," he replied smoothly. "Because if you ever were, I'd start questioning your sanity."

"Oh, don't worry," I shot back. "Your existence already does that for me."

There was silence again. Absolute, awkward silence. I swear I heard crickets giving us side-eyes as they cricketed away.

"You got no better place to have a nap than these woods?" I finally broke the silence, side-eyeing him. "What were you thinking, taking a nap here? Hoping forest fairies would sing you a lullaby?" "No, perhaps hoping for my princess darling to find me and wake me from my eternal sleep with a kiss. But I guess a snarky brother is all I got."

"Guess your princess darling took a look at you and decided eternal sleep was a better option for you," I mocked, smirking.

Asher fell silent, his gaze drifting off into the distance, the usual smugness wiped clean from his face.

"I guess that's what she thought," he muttered to himself. "More like an eternal punishment."

"What?" I asked, frowning at the sudden shift in his tone.

"Nothing," Asher said quickly, snapping back to his usual demeanor. He got to his feet and dusted himself off, looking down at me. "What are you doing here? How is Ezra? You should be with him." "Just let me be here for a while," I said, taking a deep breath, avoiding eye-contact.

"You don't want a hug, do you?" Asher raised a brow.

"Don't even dare," I growled, annoyingly.

A wind suddenly swept through the trees, shaking the leaves off their branches, and they rained down on us, drifting softly through the air.

"Hey Asher..."

"Yes, Raven?"

I looked up at him, hesitating, debating whether I should say it or not. The silence pressed on me like a weight, and I just decided to let it go.

I got to my feet, dusting off my scrubs.

"I think we should find the original healers who were involved in... Forced Activation," I said, my tone lowering, humbled by the weight of the words. "I think... only they can heal Ezra now."