The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 357

Chapter 357

Ellie’s POV

The leaves were starting to turn gold and brown, the air cooling as summer faded into a crisp and misty autumn, by the time I finally felt like I had a normal routine again.

It wasn’t much of one. Wake up. Eat whatever Lucas had left in the fridge before heading out for the day. Walk to the academy. Study. Come home. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. But after weeks of lying in bed staring at walls and crying into pillows I didn’t own, routine felt like progress, so I held onto it.

The healer academy became my second home. I spent my days there, studying and preparing for my final exams, which would come up just before the holidays. When I wasn’t wallowing in Lucas’s house, I was usually there, holed up somewhere in the library until all hours, tucked away in some corner or another, surrounded by books and papers and cardboard coffee cups that had gone cold and stale.

At least there, tucked away within the walls of the healer academy, I felt normal.

If only it weren’t for my wolf.

She had been quiet since the night I left Dominic for good. I could still feel her in the back of my mind, a faint warmth like embers that hadn’t quite gone out, but she wasn’t present the way she used to be. She didn’t stir when I was stressed. She didn’t surface during class, giving me a boost when I needed the extra energy or the focus.

In fact, she barely reacted to anything at all.

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I knew why she was like this. I didn’t need a textbook to tell me that a wolf without her mate was only half of herself. The mate bond was still there, technically. We were divorced, but that didn’t sever it.

Dominic and I were still connected in the way that only two bonded wolves could be, that invisible thread running between us no matter how many miles I put between us. And as long as that thread existed, some part of my wolf would always be pulling toward the other end of it.

She wasn’t dormant, not yet, but she was grieving. And each day that passed without our mate by our side, her grief grew deeper and darker until it was a yawning chasm of pitch blackness. One more step and I might fall into it, too. As if I weren’t already standing on a precipice of constant pain and grief over my mother.

The main problem about all of this was that a grieving wolf made for a distracted healer. I caught myself losing focus during lectures, my eyes drifting to the window while the professor was mid-sentence.

I made errors on assignments I should have been breezing through. A practical simulation in week six had me forgetting to check circulation before applying a tourniquet, which was so basic it made me want to put my hea through the wall. My grades, which had always been strong, had begun to slip and it felt like there was nothing could do, no amount of studying or practice of cups of shitty coffee, to pull myself back up.

My professor, Professor Moar, noticed before I did.

It was strange. Professor Moar rarely paid close attention to me, or to any of the other students in the class. She was a no-nonsense, practical woman who didn’t give handouts or freebies. If you failed, that was on you, and she didn’t give second chances.

And yet, out of nowhere, she stopped me after class on a Thursday, just as I was packing up my bag to leave. She had a folded-1

-up piece of paper in her hand, which she held out to me.

My throat knotted up as I took it and unfolded it. It was the quiz we’d taken last class.

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Ster 357

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Judging from the massive amount of red marks on the page, I had failed.

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