06

Sophia.

My eyes opened to white ceiling tiles and the steady beep of a monitor I couldn't quite locate.

For a moment, I just lay there, staring at nothing, trying to remember how I'd ended up here. My head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. When I tried to move, pain shot through my skull in waves.

I pressed my palm against the side of my head and felt bandaging, thick, professional bandaging.

Where the hell was I?

I sat up slowly, taking inventory of my body. Everything hurt. My ribs were tender when I breathed, my left arm was wrapped, and my legs felt like they belonged to someone else entirely. But I could move, I could think, even if thinking made my head throb.

The room was small and clinical, a medical room, clearly. Machines I didn't recognize lined the walls. There was a window, but it showed me nothing than trees and sky. It wasn’t my pack's territory, or anything I recognized.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, testing my weight. The floor was cold against my feet. Everything was happening slowly, like I was moving through water, but I pushed through it. I needed to get out of here. I needed to figure out what was happening.

My clothes were gone, replaced with a simple medical gown. That detail made my stomach twist. How long had I been unconscious? Who had undressed me?

The hallway outside was quiet and sterile, lined with doors. I had no idea which direction led anywhere useful. My head was still foggy, fragments of memory refusing to come together into anything coherent. I remembered running. I remembered branches cutting my face. I remembered the crushing weight of betrayal in my chest. But everything after that was darkness.

"You shouldn't be walking around."

I spun, too fast, and the room tilted dangerously. Strong hands caught my shoulders, steadying me.

The man in front of me was tall, with dark hair and a face that suggested he spent more time frowning than smiling. He was wearing dark scrubs, a stethoscope around his neck.

"Where am I?" My voice came out hoarse, unused.

"Medical wing of the Greyhound Pack compound." He guided me gently but firmly back toward the room I'd just escaped. "I'm Beta Drew. You've been here for two days. You need to sit down before you fall down."

Two days.

The words didn't connect to anything. Two days since what? Since I'd run into the forest like an animal? Since I'd been so desperate to escape that I hadn't cared if I died doing it?

He helped me back to the bed, and I let him, too weak and confused to fight. His hands were gentle as he checked the bandaging on my head, examining me with professional distance.

"How did I get here?" I asked, my voice still rough.

"Alpha Kai found you in the forest, about a mile from our territory line. You'd hit your head pretty badly on a rock. You were unconscious when he brought you in." Drew moved to the monitor beside my bed, checking the readings. "You've got a significant concussion, some bruising, and a few cracked ribs. But you're lucky. Another inch to the left and you might not have woken up at all."

Lucky. That was a generous way to describe whatever this was.

"I need to leave," I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt.

Drew gave me a look that was part sympathy, part exasperation. "That's not happening. You can barely stand. You need at least another few days to recover before you even think about traveling."

"I can't stay here."

"Why not?"

Because I couldn't face going back to my pack. Because I couldn't stand the thought of seeing Ethan or Victoria or any of the people who'd watched my life implode. Because I had no idea who I was anymore without him.

"It's complicated," I said instead.

Drew didn't push. He just sat beside me on the bed and pulled out a chart. "Look, I don't know what brought you to the forest in the condition you were in, and I'm not going to pry. But you're safe here. Alpha Kai has rules about his territory, and one of them is that we take care of people in need. So let me take care of you, yeah? Get you cleaned up, get some food in you, and then we can figure out next steps."

There was something genuinely kind in his voice. Not the patronizing kindness people give to women they think are fragile, but actual kindness. The kind that suggested he'd seen people break before and understood that sometimes they just needed someone to not make it worse.

I nodded, too tired to argue.

He led me to the bathroom, which was connected to my room, apparently and ran a bath. The steam rising from the water looked like heaven. He left me there with clean clothes on the counter and a promise to bring food in twenty minutes.

I sank into the water as far as I could without disturbing my bandages. The heat was incredible, melting away some of the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders. For the first time in what felt like forever, I let myself just breathe.

But breathing meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering.

Ethan's face when he told me about Victoria. The way he'd looked at me like I was something broken beyond repair. The way she'd stood in my bedroom, pregnant with my husband's child, offering me the baby like it was some kind of prize.

I'd been so focused on surviving the last few days that I hadn't really let myself feel the full weight of it. Now, alone in this bathroom with nothing but hot water and my own spiraling thoughts, it all came crashing down.

I cried, quietly at first, then harder, my shoulders shaking as I tried to muffle the sounds. The water mixed with my tears, and for a while, I just let myself fall apart.

The bathroom door opened without warning.

A man stood in the doorway, taller than Beta Drew, broader, with the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier. He was dressed in dark clothes, and his expression was completely unreadable.

"Get out!" I scrambled to cover myself, my heart jumping into my throat. "What the."

"Relax." He didn't move, didn't even have the decency to look away. "I'm not interested in seeing you naked. But sitting in a bathtub feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to change what happened. It won't make him regret anything. It won't make him come looking for you."

"Who are you?" I demanded, my initial fear rapidly transforming into anger. "And how dare you.."

"Alpha Kai." He leaned against the doorframe like he owned it, because he probably did. "This is my pack. Which means you're under my protection now, whether you like it or not. And what I'm not going to tolerate is someone wasting away in my medical wing because of some alpha who was too stupid to appreciate what he had."

"You don't know anything about.."

"I know enough." His eyes, dark, sharp, missing nothing locked onto mine. "I know you ran into the forest like you had a death wish. I know you've been unconscious for two days. And I know you're sitting there thinking that you might as well have died out there because your life is over anyway."

My throat tightened. He wasn't wrong, and that was somehow worse.

"So here's what's going to happen," he continued, his voice steady and unbending. "You're going to finish your bath. You're going to eat the food Drew brings you. And you're going to rest. And then, when you're strong enough, you're going to decide what kind of woman you want to be. But you're not going to do it by wallowing. You're going to do it by fighting."

He turned to leave, then paused at the door.

"And Sophia? That man who broke you? He's not worth the tears. Trust me on that."

Then he was gone, leaving me alone with the cooling water and the echo of his words.

I didn't know this man. I didn't know his pack or his rules or why he'd bothered to save someone who wasn't even his responsibility.

But as I climbed out of the bath and dried off with shaking hands, I realized that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't done fighting yet.