Chapter 62 Still Waiting

Chapter 62 Still Waiting

The journey back to the pack was made of broken pieces.

Boots striking wet earth. Urgent voices cutting through rain. The sharp smell of blood that refused to fade no matter how far they moved.

Lucian barely registered the gates swinging open. Freda lay on the stretcher the entire time, her body too still, too pale. The bandages Helen had pressed against her wounds in the field were already soaked through.

"I need her on the operating table now," Helen ordered as they reached the infirmary.

The doors flew open ahead of them. Healers rushed in from every side.

Lucian moved with them without thinking, until Helen stepped directly in front of him.

"Alpha." Her voice was firm, her sleeves already pushed up. "You don't come inside."

He didn't argue. He didn't even pause long enough to make it a fight.

His gaze moved past her shoulder to Freda's still form, then came back to Helen.

"I'll stay where I'm needed," he said quietly.

Helen studied him for a moment, then gave one short nod.

"Good. Because she needs calm, not pressure."

Lucian stepped back. When Liam tried to follow her inside, Lucian caught his arm gently.

"You stay with me."

Liam swallowed and nodded.

The doors closed.

And just like that, Freda was gone behind them.



Time moved strangely in the corridor outside the infirmary. Lucian did not leave the bench against the wall. He didn't pace. He didn't speak.

He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head slightly bowed, like a man listening for something only he could hear.

The mate bond was faint. But it was there. A fragile thread pulling at the center of his chest. Not pain. Not relief. Just presence.

Liam shifted beside him, restless in a way he had been trying to hide since they arrived. His hands opened and closed at his sides.

"They're taking too long," he muttered.

Lucian didn't look at him. "Helen is thorough."

"That's not what I mean." Liam's voice dropped lower. "It's been hours. Something should've changed by now. Someone should've come out."

Silence answered him.

Liam kept his eyes fixed on the closed doors. "I don't like this kind of quiet."

Lucian's jaw tightened, but his voice stayed even. "Quiet means she's still being worked on."

Liam didn't say anything after that.

Neither of them moved again.

The corridor held no footsteps, no voices. Only the distant, muffled sounds of healers working on the other side of the wall. And Lucian kept watching the doors anyway.



Eventually, they opened.

Helen stepped out first, pulling off her gloves slowly.

Lucian was on his feet before the doors had fully swung back.Evelyn followed close behind him, looking worn but steady.

"How is she?"

Helen exhaled. "She's stable."

A beat of silence passed.

"Three deep claw wounds. We stopped the bleeding, repaired what we could, and closed her." She paused. "If we had been any later..."

She didn't finish.

Evelyn stepped closer. "She'll live?"

"Yes," Helen said. "But she won't be waking up anytime soon. Her body needs time. At least three days, maybe more."

Lucian's jaw tightened. He said nothing.

"She'll be moved to recovery," Helen continued. Then her tone sharpened just slightly. "And Alpha, you are not allowed inside that room until she's stable enough for visitors."

Again, no argument came. Only quiet acceptance.

"I'll be there when she wakes," he said.

Helen nodded once, satisfied.



The days slipped in a blur

Freda did not wake.

But she was not alone.

Lucian never left the chair beside her bed. Not once. Liam stayed most of the time too, sometimes asleep against Lucian's side, sometimes curled up at the foot of the chair when exhaustion finally pulled him under.

The room became its own quiet world.

Rain tapping softly against the glass. The steady rise and fall of Freda's breathing. And the faint, unbroken hum of the mate bond, thin but alive, pulling just enough to remind Lucian she was still there.

He barely spoke during those days. He only watched her.

When fever moved through her, he felt it first through the bond, before the healers said a word. When her breathing steadied, he knew before anyone confirmed it.

And when she drifted too deep into unconsciousness, he moved closer, his hand resting near hers without pressing too hard, like he was afraid that even that small weight might cost her something.

"She's holding on," Liam said once, half-asleep.

Lucian didn't look away from her. "She's stronger than she looks."

Liam nodded faintly against his arm. "She is."



On the third night, the room was quieter than it had been all week. Even the rain had slowed to almost nothing.

Freda drifted back to the surface slowly, pulled upward through layers of heaviness and dull, controlled pain.

At first there was only darkness and the faint sound of her own breathing. Then warmth. The soft smell of healing herbs. The distant creak of the building settling. A steady, quiet presence somewhere nearby.

The infirmary. She knew before she opened her eyes.

Her eyelids lifted slowly. The ceiling came into focus first, pale and familiar, lit by a low candle burning somewhere just out of sight.

She shifted, and pain answered immediately in her side, dull but real, held back by bandages and healing work. A reminder of how close she had come to not being here at all.

Her gaze moved slowly across the room.

And then she saw them.

Lucian was asleep in the chair beside her bed. He had slouched forward in exhaustion, one arm resting loosely against the edge of the mattress.

His head was tilted down, dark hair falling across his forehead. She could see the weight of the past three days written into his face. The tight set of his jaw. The faint shadows under his eyes. The heaviness of a man who had not allowed himself to rest the way he needed to.

And on his lap, Liam was curled up completely. Fast asleep. His small hands were still gripping a fold of Lucian's shirt, like he had refused to let go even in sleep.

Lucian's arm was wrapped around him without any apparent thought, holding him in place even now, protective even in rest.

The sight stopped Freda completely.

For a long moment she didn't move. Didn't breathe.

Something tightened inside her chest, quiet and unfamiliar and deeply unsettling.

Five years.

Five years of learning how to exist without leaning on anyone. Without expecting anyone to stay. Without letting herself believe that staying was something people actually did.

And yet here he was.

Asleep beside her bed. His son held against him like the world outside this room no longer existed.

Freda's fingers shifted against the blanket. The mate bond responded at once, soft and steady, unmistakably alive beneath everything else she was feeling.

Her throat tightened.
She didn’t know what frightened her more.
The pain she had survived.
Or the fact that they were still here when she woke up.