Chapter 6

Amreth's POV

It had been weeks since I rejected Lea of Eel Pack, and I had no reason to be on this side of the grounds.

The war council had been dismissed two hours ago, my correspondence was sitting unread on my desk, and there were seventeen other things that needed my attention before nightfall.

None of them were in the direction of the washing grounds, and yet here I was, walking slowly along the lower corridor with my hands clasped behind my back like I was simply taking the air.

Sven wasn't even pretending.

He had been pulling at me since morning, that low, restless drag beneath my ribs that meant he wanted something I wasn't going to give him. I had learned a long time ago that the easiest way to quiet my wolf was to walk.

I told myself that was all this was. An innocent walk through the grounds to calm my dramatic wolf and not for any other reason.

I heard the sound of someone sniffling back tears, accompanied by the scrape of fragile skin against rock. I stopped at the corridor's edge and looked down into the wash yard to be sure my ultra-sharp hearing wasn't playing tricks on me, but unfortunately, the sight that greeted me was the last scene I expected to stumble upon.

She was on her knees in the untarred corner, the rough patch of ground Mirabeth liked to use for punishments she could frame as tasks. Lea's dark hair was falling out of its tie, and her hands were working at the ground in front of her, knuckles digging through rough earth that would carve marks into her pale skin.

Her knuckles were already bleeding.

The blood was dark against her pale skin, and she hadn't stopped. She hadn't looked at her hands or pressed them against her chest or done any of the things a person does when they are in pain and want it acknowledged.

Instead, she just kept digging. Stone after stone, slow and stubborn, like she had made a quiet agreement with herself somewhere in the last few days that she was simply not going to break.

You should go down there, Sven said.

"I should go back to my study," I said.

She is bleeding.

"Half this pack is bleeding at any given moment. That is the nature of —"

She is yours.

I didn't answer that. I couldn't possibly give any honest response to that. I stood at the corridor's edge and watched her work, her thin shoulders set against the strain, her head bowed like she had made peace with the position. Like kneeling was just another thing her body knew how to do now.

Something moved in my chest that I pressed down immediately.

She looked up, but not at me. Her eyes were silver-grey, and I had forgotten that, or told myself I had. She wasn't looking in my direction, but for a moment the light caught her face, and I saw the bruise along her jaw.

I couldn't help but notice the cut above her cheekbone as well, and the particular exhaustion that lived behind her eyes that had nothing to do with today's work and everything to do with years of it.

I couldn't silence the voice in my head telling me that rejecting her was probably a source of additional pain, another layer on top of whatever she had already been carrying. Another voice reminded me that it had been a sacrifice, my way of keeping her alive in a pack that would have torn her apart if she held any real standing.

I stepped back from the corridor before she could turn my way.

I walked back toward my study and did not look back. I told Sven firmly and clearly that there was nothing to discuss.

He laughed the way he does when he doesn't believe me.

I was crossing the main courtyard an hour later when I saw Rowan, the pack healer. More specifically, I saw Rowan's hand. His fingers laced through Lea's, not guiding her forward the way you'd lead someone who was struggling, but holding her deliberately, like she mattered, like they meant the world to each other. Or was I reading too much into this?

Sven had stopped laughing. Instead, he went gravely silent, and I knew that could only mean one thing, and that silence was worse somehow.

Mirabeth was at my side, saying something about the evening arrangements, and I heard none of it. My eyes were on Rowan's thumb moving in slow circles against the back of Lea's hand, and on the way her fingers had curled into his like she was trusting something for the first time in a long time.

She does not do that, Sven said very quietly. She does not lean. She is not the type to hold on to things. I have been watching her for days, and she does not let herself hold on to anything.

I kept my voice flat and controlled so my possessiveness didn't bleed through. "Rowan."

They both stopped. Lea's eyes went straight to the ground, her shoulders pulling in, her whole body doing that thing it did whenever I was close, compressing itself into the smallest possible shape. I noticed it the same way I noticed everything about her, against my will.

"What is our pack healer doing escorting the pack maid?"

"Healing business, my Alpha. The girl's hands needed attention. We wouldn't want her unable to work."

Mirabeth laughed softly beside me. "Of course. The sooner she's patched up, the sooner my laundry is done." She said it lightly, like a joke, and I watched Lea's jaw tighten just slightly before she smoothed it back out.

"See to it quickly," I said to Rowan while trying my best not to spare her another glance.

But control be damned. Her features kept haunting me, every soft and feminine curve, the stubborn curl of her lips, the way she looked at the ground when she was trying to keep her tears at bay, the silent grace she carried despite being in rags. How was I supposed to get her out of my mind?

They moved past us, and for one second she was close enough that the air between us shifted and Sven made a sound low in my chest like something tearing slowly. I kept my eyes forward and my pace steady, and I said nothing.

Mirabeth slipped her hand into the crook of my arm and kept talking, but I heard none of it.

That night, I sat at my desk and did not read the report in front of me. Outside my window, the healer's building sat quiet and lit against the dark, warm light behind the shutters, and I could feel through whatever broken thing connected me to Sven that she was still in there.

I should have felt nothing. I had made my decision in front of every elder, every warrior, every person whose respect kept this pack intact. I had looked at the mate bond the goddess had tied around my wrist like a trap, and cut it cleanly, and told the pack she was nothing but a weak and wolfless burden.

I had believed it when I said it. Now I wasn't sure I believed it anymore, and that was the most dangerous thought I had allowed myself in years.

Then why, Sven said into the quiet, does it feel like we made a mistake?