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ALTHEA

Healing, I learned, was not loud.
It didn’t come with dramatic breakthroughs or sudden relief. It came in small, cruel increments—measured in hours where the pain dulled just enough to breathe, and nights where it flared so sharply I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
Six weeks.
Kaylie had said it gently, but the number had echoed in my mind like a sentence.
Six weeks of bandages.
Six weeks of helplessness.
Six weeks of remembering.
I stayed in my room.
Not because I was ordered to—no one dared—but because stepping outside felt like opening a wound that refused to close. Every sound reminded me of raised voices. Every footstep in the hallway made my muscles tense, waiting for a presence I refused to face.
The door stayed shut.
When Kaylie came, I answered.
When the healers checked my arm, I endured.
Everyone else was met with silence.
“Althea,” someone would call softly through the door.
No answer.
I wasn’t angry anymore.
Anger required energy I didn’t have.
I was tired.
Talia curled deep inside me, quieter than she had ever been. She didn’t push me to heal faster. She didn’t urge me to shift or fight or be strong.
She simply stayed.
We’ll heal slowly, she murmured one evening, her voice faint but steady.
That’s okay.
“I know,” I whispered back.
My arm lay heavy against my body, wrapped and splinted, aching in a way that went beyond bone. Some days the pain was sharp and demanding. Other days it was dull and constant, like grief that refused to fade.
Kaylie warned me repeatedly.
“No shifting.”
“No strain.”
“No pushing your limits.”
I obeyed.
Not because I feared the consequences—but because I no longer cared to prove anything.
Food was brought and left quietly outside my door. I ate just enough to survive. Sleep came in fragments, broken by dreams I couldn’t escape—hands gripping too tight, voices accusing, red eyes burning in the dark.
When I woke from those dreams, my heart racing, I reminded myself of one thing:
He can’t hurt you anymore.
That thought was both comfort and curse.
The pack adapted without me.
Life moved on, as it always did.
I watched it through the window sometimes—wolves training in the courtyard, patrols changing shifts, laughter drifting faintly upward from somewhere below. It felt like observing a world I no longer belonged to.
No one asked me to attend meetings.
No one demanded explanations.
No one pushed past the boundaries I’d drawn.
Even Beta Braxton kept his distance.
I was grateful.
The fewer eyes on me, the easier it was to disappear.
One afternoon, Kaylie sat beside my bed longer than usual. She examined my arm carefully, fingers gentle as she adjusted the wrap.
“Bone alignment is holding,” she said. “Healing is slow, but steady.”
“Slow is fine,” I replied.
She studied me for a long moment. “You’re shutting everyone out.”
“I’m resting,” I said calmly.
“That’s not the same thing.”
I met her gaze without flinching. “It is for me.”
She sighed, clearly wanting to argue, then stopped herself. “You’re allowed to protect yourself.”
I nodded.
That was all I wanted—permission to exist quietly.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
The pain lessened in degrees so small I barely noticed them at first. I could move my fingers without wincing. I could sit up without dizziness. The arm still hurt, but it no longer felt like it was tearing me apart from the inside.
Emotionally, though—
I built walls.
High ones.
I didn’t speak about what happened.
I didn’t ask about him.
I didn’t want apologies that came too late or explanations that couldn’t undo the damage.
Once, I heard raised voices in the distance—an argument that carried through stone and air. A familiar aura brushed against my senses briefly before retreating.
I closed my eyes.
Not my concern anymore.
That became my mantra.
When someone knocked unexpectedly one evening, I didn’t answer. The knock didn’t repeat.
Good.
I learned to exist in the quiet.
To breathe without expecting pain.
To sleep without waiting for footsteps.
Healing wasn’t about becoming whole again—not yet.
It was about learning how to live with what remained.
And for now, that meant silence, distance, and the slow, careful rebuilding of myself—bone by bone, breath by breath.
Six weeks would pass.
My arm would heal.
But the rest?
That would take longer.
And for the first time, I wasn’t willing to rush it for anyone.