Chapter 38 Elara's POV
The pack hospital was quiet that afternoon.
Most of the wounded from the border attack had been moved to recovery rooms, and the main ward was nearly empty. Damian was finishing up his rounds, checking on the last few patients, when I decided to keep him company.
"You don't have to stay," He said, scribbling something on a patient's chart. "It's going to be boring."
"I don't care, nothing is better than sitting alone in that room all day."
He smiled. "Fair enough."
I sat on an empty bed near the nurse's station, swinging my legs back and forth like a child. It felt good to be out of my quarters. Good to be somewhere that wasn't suffocating me with its expensive furniture and heavy silence.
Damian moved between patients with practiced ease, his movements fluid and confident. He was good at what he did really well and I wasn't the only one who noticed.
Two nurses walked past us, both glancing at Damian as they went. One of them, a blonde woman with bright eyes, actually slowed her pace, straightening her posture slightly.
I caught it immediately.
"You have admirers." I said, barely hiding my smile.
Damian looked up from the chart he was reading. "What?"
"Those nurses, the blonde one, nearly walked into a wall looking at you."
He glanced toward where they had gone, then back at me with a confused expression. "I didn't notice."
"Of course you didn't." I rolled my eyes. "You never notice."
"There is nothing to notice they are colleagues."
"They are colleagues who look at you like you hung the moon."
Damian shook his head, but I caught the slight redness creeping up his neck. "You are imagining things."
"I'm really not. It's actually kind of funny watching them try to get your attention. Have any of them actually tried talking to you?"
"Can we please change the subject?"
I laughed a real laugh the first one in what felt like weeks. It felt good and normal.
"Fine but for the record, you should probably notice. You deserve someone who looks at you the way they do."
Something passed across his expression, something sad and complicated before he smiled. "I appreciate that, Elara. Really."
We spent the rest of the afternoon talking. About nothing important about everything important. He told me about a difficult case he'd treated years ago, about traveling between packs, about the loneliness of never having a permanent home.
I told him about how grateful I was for him. How he was the first person in this pack who'd actually made me feel safe.
By the time evening came, I was exhausted but content. It was a peaceful kind of tired that I hadn't felt in a long time.
"I should get you back.” Damian said, checking his watch.
Before either of us could move, a knock came at the hospital entrance.
Kaden stood in the doorway, dressed in a simple black shirt and dark pants. His hair was slightly disheveled, like he'd been running his hands through it.
"I will drive her back.” He said.
Damian looked at me. I nodded slightly.
"Okay," Damian said.
"Get some rest for both of you."
The drive back was quiet; it was not the uncomfortable silence of before. This was different and softer somehow.
I watched Kaden from the passenger seat. I really watched him. In the dim light of the car, I could see things I had been too guarded to notice before.
The dark circles under his eyes the tension in his jaw. The way his hands gripped the steering wheel too tightly.
He looked exhausted and worn down in a way that went beyond physical tiredness.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"Fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I'm handling it."
I wanted to push and wanted to ask him what was wrong, what was keeping him up at night, what was draining the life out of him. But the words wouldn't come yet.
So I said nothing.
He walked me to my quarters, nodded to the guards, and disappeared down the hallway without another word.
I watched him go.
Something about the way he had looked tonight bothered me. The pain in his eyes, the heaviness in his shoulders.
I couldn't sleep.
I lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, my mind restless. Finally, around two in the morning, I gave up trying.
I needed air, needed to move, needed to do something other than lie here thinking.
I left my room quietly, passing the guards who stood at attention but said nothing. I walked down the hallway toward Kaden's room. I told myself I was just going to check on him to make sure he was okay, nothing more.
His door was slightly open. I pushed it wider and stepped inside.
Kaden stood at the window, his back to me, looking out at the forest he was shirtless.
I stopped breathing.
His back was covered in old scars, faded and white. New ones, still pink and healing. The marks of an Alpha who had fought his entire life to protect his pack.
And seeing it there, on his skin, brought everything crashing back. Not just fragments, not just flashes of everything.
His bedroom the way he had looked at me with such tenderness. The way my hands had trembled as he had undressed me.
"I've never done this before.” I whispered, terrified.
"I know I will be gentle, I promise."
And he had been so gentle and so careful. His hands moving over my body with a reverence that had made me cry.
But then the bite when he had sunk his teeth into my neck during the height of our mating. The pain had been sharp but brief, replaced almost instantly by something so intense and overwhelming that I couldn't breathe. The bond had snapped into place, burning between us like fire.
And then the cold morning light. His back turned to me as he dressed.
"This was a mistake."
Those terrible words.
"I, Kaden Blackwood, Alpha of the Blue Moon Pack, reject you, Elara, as my mate."
The bond shattering the pain ripping through my chest like my heart was being torn out. Me begging him to stop, to reconsider, falling to my knees.
And he walked out the door without looking back.
I choked.
The sound escaped my throat before I could stop it. A strangled gasp of pain so raw it barely sounded human.
Kaden spun around.
His eyes went wide when he saw me standing there, trembling, tears streaming down my face, my hand pressed over my mouth.
"Elara?" He took a step toward me. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
I backed away from him, shaking my head. "Don't." I whispered.
"What happened? Talk to me."
"I remember." The words came out broken. Barely audible. "I remember everything that you did to me, all of it."
Something shattered in his expression. "Elara-"
"The way you held me that night." My voice was trembling so badly I could barely form the words.
"The way you promised me and then the next morning you just... you just threw me away."
"know...I know what I did. I'm so sorry-"
"Sorry isn't enough." I looked at him through my tears. At the man who had taken everything from me and destroyed it in a single morning, at the man who was now desperately trying to fix what couldn't be fixed.
"I don't think I can forgive you." I whispered.
The words hung between us and I watched as they broke something inside him that might never heal.