Chapter 27 Rejection and Regret

Chapter 27 Rejection and Regret


Reality returned with the dawn, cold and unforgiving as the light that crept through my narrow window. I woke in my own bed, alone, the memory of his kisses still warm on my lips, the ghost of his hands still burning on my skin. For a single, fragile moment, I let myself simply feel. The joy. The hope. The terrifying, exhilarating possibility of a future I had never dared imagine.

Then the door opened, and Eira walked in.

Her face told me everything before she spoke a single word. The set of her mouth, the way her old eyes avoided mine, the heaviness in her step. The joy curdled in my chest, replaced by a cold, creeping dread.

"What?" I was already sitting up, the furs falling away. "What happened?"

"Alpha Garrick left at dawn." Her voice was flat, clinical. "Border patrol. Urgent matter with the eastern scouts."

Relief, quick and foolish, flooded through me. He had duties. Of course he had duties. Last night didn't erase his responsibilities.

But Eira still wouldn't meet my eyes.

"When will he return?"

"He left orders." She paused, and the pause was a knife. "You are to remain in the healing house. No contact with him until he returns. Those were his exact words."

The words landed like ice water, stealing my breath. "What? Why?"

Eira finally looked at me, and in her eyes I saw something worse than pity. I saw understanding. The kind that came from years of watching people make the same mistakes. "I don't know what happened between you two last night. I don't want to know. But he's running. That's what Alphas do when they feel too much. They run. They push away. They protect themselves by destroying everything good."

"No." I shook my head, denial a desperate clawing in my chest. "He wouldn't. Not after last night. Not after what he said."

"He would." She sat on the edge of my bed, the old wood creaking under her weight. Her weathered hand reached out and covered mine. "I've known him since he was a boy with scraped knees and a dead father's legacy crushing his shoulders. When things get too real, too close, he retreats. It's how he survived then. It's how he's survived everything since. It's his only weakness, and it's the most destructive thing about him."

I stared at the wall, at the rough stone, at the small sliver of sky visible through the high window. My heart was cracking, hairline fractures spreading through the hope that had bloomed so briefly.

"He said he loved me." The words came out small, broken.

"Then he meant it." Eira squeezed my hand. "That's why he ran."

Three days.

Three days of waiting, of watching the horizon, of jumping every time a rider approached the gates. Three days of Eira's pitying looks and Calder's averted eyes and Orion's silent, watchful presence that felt less like protection and more like a cage. Three days of replaying every moment in the clearing, every word, every touch, searching for the moment it had all gone wrong.

I worked. I worked until my hands were raw and my body exhausted, hoping to outrun my mind. It didn't work. Every patient I treated, every wound I stitched, every poultice I prepared, he was there. In the corner of my vision. In the beat of my heart. In the phantom warmth of lips I could still feel on mine.

On the third night, I dreamed of the oak tree. Of his hands in my hair, his mouth on mine, his voice whispering words I had waited seventeen years to hear. I woke gasping, alone in the dark, and the tears came whether I wanted them or not.

On the fourth day, he returned.

I was in the courtyard, fetching water, when the riders appeared on the horizon. My heart leaped into my throat, a traitor's response I couldn't control. I watched them approach, counting the horses, searching for his familiar form.

He rode at the front. Of course he did. He was Alpha. His dark hair was wind-tossed, his face set in the familiar mask of cold command. He looked larger than life, more powerful than memory, more beautiful than any man had a right to be.

He rode past me.

His eyes swept over me without stopping, without acknowledgment, without a single flicker of recognition. It was as if I were a stone, a shadow, a piece of the landscape. He dismounted, handed his reins to a waiting stable hand, and walked toward the great hall without a single glance back.

I stood frozen, the water bucket heavy in my hands, the cold seeping through my clothes. Around me, the courtyard resumed its bustle. Life went on. But I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't process the casual cruelty of that dismissal.

I don't remember putting the bucket down. I don't remember crossing the courtyard or entering the lodge or climbing the stairs to his study. I only remember the door bursting open under my hand, the satisfying crash as it hit the wall, and the sight of him standing at his window with his back to me.

He didn't turn. Didn't move. Just stood there, rigid and unreachable.

"What the hell was that?" My voice shook with fury and heartbreak, with three days of agony and one moment of utter devastation.

Silence. Then, flat and empty, "That was a mistake."

The words hit like a blade, clean and deep. I felt them pierce through every defense, every hope, every foolish dream I had dared to cherish.

"A mistake." I heard my voice crack, but I couldn't stop it. "You kissed me like I was air and you were drowning. You held me like I was the only thing keeping you alive. You told me you loved me. And now I'm a mistake?"

He turned then, slowly. His face was the mask, the cold, impenetrable wall he showed the world. But his eyes. His eyes were a battlefield.

"I am Alpha." His voice was rough, forced. "You are a debt slave. Nothing happened that changes that. Nothing can."

"Don't you dare." I crossed the room in three strides, my hand closing around his arm, forcing him to face me fully. The contact sent a jolt through me, that familiar electricity that had never died, and I saw him flinch. Felt the muscles beneath my fingers tighten. "Don't you dare pretend last night meant nothing. Don't you dare look me in the eye and lie to me. I know you. I know what you feel. I can see it in every line of your face."

He looked at me then, really looked, and what I saw shattered what was left of my heart.

Pain. So much pain it was a physical thing, carved into every line of his face, burning in the depths of his stormy eyes. He was not cold. He was not indifferent. He was drowning, and he was pushing me away to save himself from watching me drown with him.

"I can't do this." His voice broke on the words, raw and agonized. "I can't love you and protect you. I can't have you and keep you safe. Every person I have ever loved has been used against me, hurt because of me, lost because of me. My mother. My father. My closest friends. They are all gone, Anika. All of them. I will not let that happen to you."

He pulled his arm from my grip, but I grabbed his face, my hands cupping his jaw, forcing him to meet my eyes. The intimacy of the touch was electric, a spark that jumped between us despite everything.

"That's not your choice." My voice was fierce, desperate. "You don't get to decide what risks I take. You don't get to protect me by destroying us. I am not asking for safety. I am asking for you."

His hands came up, covering mine where they held his face. For a moment, his eyes softened, the mask cracking, and I saw the boy from the oak tree, the man who had loved me for seventeen years, the future I could still have.

Then he pulled away. He removed my hands from his face gently, so gently it hurt more than violence, and stepped back. The space between us was a chasm.

"It's the only choice I have." His voice was barely a whisper, broken and final. "Stay in the healing house. Do your work. Do not come near me again."

He walked out. He walked past me, through the door, and was gone. I stood in his study, the silence pressing in, the scent of him still lingering in the air.

I don't know how long I stood there. Minutes. Hours. The light shifted, the shadows lengthened, and I did not move. My eyes traveled over his desk, over the maps and ledgers, over the small wooden box that still sat in the corner.

The river stone.

He hadn't taken it. Hadn't hidden it. Had left it there like a confession he couldn't unsay, like a piece of his heart he couldn't bear to reclaim. I didn't take it. I couldn't. But I crossed to the desk, my hand reaching out, my fingers brushing against its smooth, cool surface.

It was warm from the sun. Or maybe that was my imagination. Maybe I was imagining a lot of things. His love. His fear. The future that had flickered and died.

I left the stone where it sat. I left the study with its ghosts and its memories. I walked back to the healing house through corridors that felt like a tomb, and I did not cry. Not yet. The tears would come later, in the dark, when no one could see.

But as I lay in my bed that night, staring at the ceiling, I felt them coming. The first tear slid down my temple, into my hair. Then another. Then a flood I could not stop.

He loved me. He had always loved me. And that love was the very thing destroying us both.