Mated to Her Alpha Instructor (Eileen and Regis) novel Chapter 93

Mated to Her Alpha Instructor

Chapter 93

Eileen

The laboratory smelled of failure.

I stared at the gray–purple stain spreading across the treated cloth sample, my fourth attempt in as many hours. The combination of silver leaf, woundwort, and lunar moss should have worked–the ancient texts had been clear about their purifying properties. But the infection didn’t respond. It never responded.

Around me, glass vials and mortar bowls littered the workbench in chaotic arrays, each one a testament to another dead end. My fingers trembled as I added three drops of distilled moonwater to the mixture, watching the liquid turn a promising pale blue before darkening again to that familiar, sickly gray.

“Come on,” I whispered, pressing the fresh cloth against a sample of infected tissue I’d been permitted to collect. “Please work.”

Nothing. The tissue remained discolored, the smell of rot intensifying rather than fading..

I sank onto the stool, pressing my palms against my eyes until spots of light danced behind my lids. Two days. I’d been at this for two full days, and all I had to show for it was a collection of failed formulas and a growing list of warriors who looked at me with thinly veiled skepticism.

The door creaked. I didn’t look up, assuming it was Mira coming to drag me to lunch again.

“Still trying the standard purification approach, I see.”

My head snapped up. Nina Grey stood in the doorway, her expression as cool and unreadable as ever. She’d never spoken to me directly before–we existed in parallel orbits within the healing arts division, her brilliance sharp and solitary, mine tentative and overlooked.

“I–yes. I gestured helplessly at my notes. “The combinations should work. In theory.”

She stepped closer, pale eyes scanning my meticulous documentation of symptoms: the spreading discoloration, the resistance to conventional treatments, the way the wounds seemed to actively reject healing energy. Her finger traced one line I’d written: Infection spreads despite treatment, as if feeding on healing attempts.

The formula was complex. Three herbs, each requiring specific preparation. Silver leaf grass crushed with a mortar blessed under moonlight. Bitter root powder aged in silver vessels. Moonflower extract gathered at dawn. The timing was critical–too early and the lunar potency wouldn’t be sufficient, too late and it would be wasted.

“Parasitic, I breathed, mind racing. “Not poison. Something alive. Something that evolved to feed on what makes us strong.”

The full moon was four days away. If I started preparations now–if I could convince the herbalists to give me access to their restricted stores–if the warriors would let me try-

My stomach twisted with a complex knot of hope and terror. This could work. Or it could make everything worse.

But at least now I had a direction.

By dusk, my eyes burned from hours of cross–referencing texts, my notes covered in sketches of parasitic life cycles and treatment protocols.