ZARIA'S POV 
I threw open the heavy wooden doors to the medical wing, the hinges groaning loudly in the quiet corridor. My breath was shallow, catching in the back of my throat as I rushed inside with Cassian following closely behind me. The clinic smelled strongly of clean linens, sharp antiseptic, and that heavy, familiar scent of crushed herbs and copper that always hung around healing wolves.
Maya was sitting upright on one of the cots near the back wall. Her torso was wrapped tightly in thick white bandages, and I could already see small, fresh blossoms of red bleeding through the fabric where her stitches must have strained when she moved. Her gray wolf fur was entirely gone, leaving her looking fragile, pale, and shivering against the sheets. But her eyes were wide and completely alert, scanning the room frantically until they finally locked onto my face.
"Zaria!" she cried out. Her voice cracked under the weight of pure panic, and she immediately burst into heavy, breathless tears, reaching her hands out toward me.
I crossed the room in a single stride, dropping to my knees right by the side of her mattress. I was terrified of hurting her, so I wrapped my arms around her shoulders as gently as I could, letting her bury her face into my neck. "I'm here. I'm right here, Maya. It's okay. You're safe now." I smoothed a hand down her tangled hair, my own chest tightening as a cold, protective anger flared up inside me. "It’s over. Cassian has the guards securing the entire perimeter. Cynthia is going to pay for every single thing she did to this place. I promise you that."
But Maya didn't look relieved. Instead, a violent shudder ran through her entire body, and she began shaking her head frantically against my shoulder, her breaths coming in short, ragged gasps.
"No, no, Zaria... you don't understand," she gasped, her voice raw and climbing in panic as she pulled back to look at me.
She reached out and grabbed my wrists with a desperate, crushing grip. Her fingers were trembling, but her hold was an absolute vice. Her eyes darted up past my shoulder to meet Cassian's, filled with a deep, instinctive terror that made my stomach drop, before she looked right back into my eyes.
"It’s not just Cynthia," Maya whispered. The words tumbled out of her in a breathless, terrified rush, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt and soot on her face. "Garrick... Garrick knew about the poison, Zaria. He knew all of it. I've already told you. He knows exactly what is going on, he might try to fool you because you loved him but don't listen to him.“
The temperature in the room seemed to drop to absolute zero. Behind me, I heard the subtle, heavy shift of Cassian stepping closer, his entire presence turning dark, still, and lethal.
I froze, my mind entirely stalling out as I tried to process what she was saying. My brow furrowed, and I tried to pull my wrists back slightly, but she wouldn't let go. "What are you talking about? Maya, he was just at the gates. I saw him. He came all the way here just to warn me. He swore he didn't know anything about the assassins or the attack on the palace."
"He lied to you!" Maya interrupted, her voice trembling violently as her fingers dug tighter into my skin, right over the raw bruises I’d gotten during the fight. "I overheard them, Zaria. I heard them talking in the eastern corridor of the Bloodmoon hall right before the mating ceremony started. They thought everyone was already out in the main courtyard waiting for the announcement. Garrick wanted Cynthia because her wolf was stronger, because marrying her secured his position as Alpha with the elders. But he was terrified of the fated mate bond. He was terrified of what would happen if you fought back or if the pack rallied behind you."
She took a ragged, shaking breath, her eyes pleading with me to believe her, her voice dropping into a desperate whisper.
"They engineered the whole thing together. The poison, the public humiliation, the exile—all of it. He wanted to make sure you were too weak to ever challenge their authority, and too broken to ever find another mate to protect you or help you build power. They planned your ruin together from the very beginning, Zaria. Every single step of it."
The silence that followed her words was suffocating. It pressed down on my chest until I couldn't draw a full breath.
My hands fell completely limp in Maya's grip, and she finally let her fingers slip away. I stood up slowly, my knees feeling entirely hollow, as if the solid stone floor beneath my boots had suddenly vanished into nothing. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even think straight.
The image of Garrick kneeling on the cobblestones outside—the pathetic, bloody wreck who had just crawled through the mud, crying and begging for my forgiveness, clutching his chest and whining about the agony of our broken bond—shattered into sharp, ugly pieces.
He wasn't a victim of his family's cruelty. He wasn't a fool blinded by a bad choice, or a coward who had simply looked the other way because he was too weak to stand up to Cynthia.
He was an active architect of my ruin. Every single piece of my suffering, the freezing cold of the blizzard, the blood I had spilled, and the pain that had nearly killed me, it had all been written by his hands, too.
But why would he do that to me. If he has planned on switching to Cynthia, why hadn't he loved her from the beginning? Why did he deceive me in the first place?