WHAT SHE IS TO HIM

RIA'S POV

I wake up and for a few seconds I do not know where I am.

Then I remember and I press my eyes shut and breathe and the relief that comes is so strong it almost hurts. I am still here. I am still alive.

I sit up slowly. The pain in my side pulls sharply and I press my hand over the bandage and wait for it to settle. Someone wrapped this while I was unconscious. Someone who knew what they were doing because it is clean and firm and the wound is not bleeding anymore.

I look around the room. A stone ceiling. White curtains. A shelf of books on the far wall and a desk with papers stacked neatly on it. A pair of boots on the floor beside the chair across the room. The chair he was sitting in when I woke up that first time. He was all the way across the room when I opened my eyes. Not standing over me. Not too close.

The room smells like pine and leather. It is his room. I know that without being told.

Clean clothes sit folded at the foot of the bed and there is a cup of water on the table beside me that is still cool when I touch it. Someone left it recently. I drink it slowly and set the cup down and sit with the quiet for a moment and think about the fact that someone took care of me while I was unconscious and I do not know yet what to make of that.

*You are my mate.*

I have been turning those words over since he said them. I keep waiting to feel something and there is nothing. No pull. No recognition. Just fear and the awareness that I am inside an enemy pack with nowhere to go.

The knock at the door is soft.

"Come in," I say.

The girl who steps inside is small with curly auburn hair and a tray balanced carefully in both hands. She smiles the moment she sees me and it is a warm smile but slightly careful underneath and that tells me she was told to be nice and she is genuinely trying to be.

"Good morning," she says and sets the tray on the bedside table. There is bread and broth and a small bowl of something warm. She pulls a bandage roll from under her arm and sets it beside the food. "I am Lira. I am the healer's apprentice. Maren treated your wound when they brought you in and she asked me to come and change the dressing this morning."

"I am Ria," I say.

"I know." She catches herself. "I only mean Alpha Zac told us your name. He left instructions."

"What kind of instructions?"

"That your meals come from the main kitchen directly." She starts unwinding the old bandage gently. "That no one is to disturb you without reason. That anyone who gives you trouble answers to him." She pauses. "He was specific about that last part."

"How long have I been here?" I ask.

"Two days," she says. "You were out for most of it. Maren was not sure you would wake up when they first brought you in." She glances up at me quickly. "You look better than you did."

"I do not feel better," I say.

"You will," she says and she sounds like she means it. "Maren is very good at what she does. The wound is closing properly." She works quietly for a moment and then adds without looking up, "Are you hungry? I can bring more if what is on the tray is not enough."

"This is enough," I say.

She ties off the new bandage and smooths it down with her fingers. I watch her and I notice she is comfortable doing this. She moves the way someone does when they have done a thing many times.

"What is the pack saying about me?" I ask.

She does not answer right away. The pause is small but I have spent my whole life reading the silence inside pauses and this one tells me more than whatever she is about to say.

"There is always talk when something new happens," she finally says and her voice is a little too measured. "It will settle down."

"That is not what I asked," I say.

She glances up at me and then back down at her hands. "Most of them have heard where you came from and what you were accused of. That is what they are going with right now."

"So they think I did it."

"Some of them," she says and she is honest enough to hold my gaze when she says it. "Not everyone."

"But most," I say.

She does not answer that one and I respect that she does not try to soften it with a lie.

"Does it bother you?" I ask. "Being the one who comes in here every morning?"

She looks at me for a moment and then she says, "No. It does not bother me." She gathers the old bandaging into a neat roll. "I make my own decisions about people."

She leaves when she is done and I sit with the tray and eat slowly. My hands shake a little around the bowl and I press my palms flat against the ceramic until they stop. Three days without food teaches your body things that take a while to unlearn.

*You are my mate.* Still no bond. Still nothing but the memory of his eyes and the way he said it. Like something that was already settled. He did not say it to claim me or to frighten me. He said it the way you state a fact and then he sat there quietly and let me sit with it and he did not push at all.

I do not trust that yet. I want to and that wanting is what makes me careful because in Black Hallow I learned that kindness from someone with power always comes with a price attached and I do not know yet what this one costs.

A sound rises from outside and I set the bowl down and cross to the window and look down into the courtyard below.

Three men and a woman are standing near the far wall in a tight group with their heads close together and their voices low. The kind of gathering that is not accidental.

One of the men looks up.

He finds me at the window and he does not look away and his expression does not change. No surprise. No curiosity. Just a flat steady stare that is not welcoming and is not going to become welcoming.

I look back at him and I do not move away from the glass.

A few seconds pass and then I step back.

My chest is tight but I keep my face even because I have learned that you have to practice that when no one is watching or it will fall apart when someone is. I have been doing it my whole life. I can do it here too.