Chapter 17 Kaden’s POV
I was in a council meeting when her scent hit me.
It cut through everything the discussion about border patrols, the reports about the rogue bodies, the arguments between the elders. All of it disappeared the moment I caught that familiar scent drifting through the open window.
Elara.
I shot to my feet so fast my chair crashed backward.
"Alpha?" Elder Miriam looked at me in concern. "What's wrong?"
I couldn't answer. My wolf was going insane inside my mind, throwing himself against my control with a force I'd never felt before.
"Kaden, what is it?" Miriam asked again.
I ran. I didn't excuse myself, didn't explain. Just ran out of the council room and down the hallway, following her scent like a lifeline. It was faint but growing stronger, coming from the direction of the main gates.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out without slowing down.
A message from the border guards.
‘The missing omega has been found. Dr. Shawn brought her. She's unconscious taking her to the infirmary now.’
Unconscious.
My legs moved faster. My wolf was clawing at me, demanding control, demanding I shift and run to her. I pushed him back, but barely.
"Not now." I growled out loud, not caring that pack members were staring at me as I sprinted past them.
By the time I reached the infirmary, my heart was pounding so hard I thought it might break through my chest. I could smell her now it was strong and clear and mixed with something else, something wrong.
Blood, sickness, fear.
I burst through the door.
The scene before me stopped my heart. Elara was on a gurney, unconscious and deathly pale. Her face was covered in fading bruises, yellowing and green around the edges.
There was a bandage across her forehead. Her clothes were torn and dirty. She looked so small, so broken.
A stranger stood beside her, a dark-haired man I had never seen before. He was inserting an IV into her arm with practiced efficiency.
"What happened to her?" The words tore out of me before I could think.
The man looked up, his eyes sharp and assessing. "Who are you?"
"I'm Kaden Xandros Alpha of this pack. Now tell me what happened to her!"
"I'm Dr. Damian Shawn." He didn't stop working, didn't even flinch at my tone.
"And right now, I need you to step back and let me do my job."
"That's Elara." I said, moving closer.
My hands were shaking. "She has been missing for over a week. Where did you find her? What happened? Is she-"
"I said step back." Damian moved between me and Elara, his posture protective.
"She is my patient and she is in critical condition. I don't care who you are, you are not getting near her until she's stable."
My wolf snarled. Who was this man to keep me from my mate?
"Kaden." Ethan's voice came from behind me. He must have followed from the council room.
"Let him work, you can't help her like this."
I wanted to argue and wanted to push past this stranger and get to Elara. But looking at her lying there so still, barely breathing, I forced myself to take a step back.
"Just tell me if she's going to be okay," I said, and I hated how my voice broke on the last word.
Damian glanced at me briefly before returning his attention to Elara. "I don't know yet if her condition is serious."
I watched him work, my entire body rigid with the effort of staying back.
He checked her vitals, adjusted the IV, examined the bruises on her face with gentle fingers every second felt like an eternity.
Finally, after what might have been twenty minutes or might have been hours, Damian stepped back from the gurney. He pulled off his gloves and turned to face me.
"We need to talk.” He said.
"Privately."
I nodded, not trusting my voice. We moved to a small office adjacent to the infirmary. Ethan followed, closing the door behind us.
"Tell me everything." I managed to say.
Damian leaned against the desk, his arms crossed. "I found her six days ago. In the forest, about fifteen miles from here. She had been beaten badly and left in the rain to die."
The image his words painted made me feel sick. "Who did it?"
"Rogues multiple attackers based on her injuries. They targeted her head and body. Ribs, face, everywhere."
His jaw clenched. "Whoever did this wanted her dead."
I felt something crack inside my chest. "Where was she? All this time, where was she?"
"With me In an old shack first, then a small town. I have been treating her injuries as best I could with limited supplies."
"Why didn't you bring her here sooner?"
"Because she was too weak to move because I didn't know who she was or where she came from. Because-" He stopped, studying my face.
"You care about her. Why? They told me she was just an omega servant here."
"She's more than that," I said quietly.
"How much more?"
I looked at Ethan, then back at Damian. "She is my mate."
Damian's expression hardened. "Your mate!”
“And yet she was running through the forest alone where rogues could attack her. Your mate, who has no one looking after her properly. Your mate, who-"
"I rejected her!" The words burst out of me.
"I rejected the bond a week before she disappeared. I pushed her away and she left and this is my fault. All of this is my fault."
The room was silent.
"You rejected her." Damian said slowly, his voice cold.
"You rejected your own mate."
"I made the worst mistake of my life." I pressed my hands against my face.
"And then she was gone and I couldn't find her and I thought God, I thought she was dead. I felt the bond go silent and I thought I had killed her."
"You almost did." Damian said.
"If I hadn't found her when I did, she would have died in that forest."
The words were knives, each one deserved.
"How bad are her injuries?" I asked.
"Bruised ribs, concussion, multiple contusions but the worst damage is internal." He paused.
"She has amnesia and the head trauma wiped her memory. She doesn't know who she is, where she is from, what happened to her, all she remembers is her name."
I felt like I had been punched. "She doesn't remember anything?"
"Nothing not the attack, not this pack, not-"
He looked at me meaningfully. "Not you."
Not me, she didn't remember me, didn't remember what we had shared, what I had done to her.
Maybe that was a mercy.
"What else?" I asked, because I could see there was more something he wasn't saying.
Damian was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "There is one more thing you need to know."
"What?"
He met my eyes directly. "She is pregnant."
The world stopped.
Everything stopped.
My heart, my breath time itself.
"What?" The word came out as barely a whisper.
"She is pregnant about six to eight weeks along based on her symptoms."
Six to eight weeks later the timeline crashed over me. That would be right around…..
The night we had been together. When she told me she was a virgin. When I had promised to be gentle. When the bond between us was so strong and pure.
When I had taken everything she offered and then destroyed her the next morning.
"The baby." I said, my voice shaking. "Is it..."
"She doesn't remember the father and doesn't remember anything about the conception."
Damian's voice was hard. "But you can do the math yourself."
The baby was mine.
Elara was carrying my baby.
My legs gave out and I sank into the nearest chair, my hands gripping my knees so hard my knuckles turned white.
"Oh God." I whispered. "Oh God, what have I done?"
"You rejected your pregnant mate." Damian said, and there was no gentleness in his voice now. "You threw her out. And she almost died carrying your child."
I looked up at him, and I couldn't stop the tears anymore. They burned down my face and I didn't care.
I didn't care that I was breaking down in front of strangers. Didn't care about anything except the horror of what I had done.