Chapter 22

Zara

I stared at the strange ceiling when I woke up. Where was I? Where was Lucian?

I looked around and tried to sit up, but someone’s hand pressed me back against the bed.

“Don’t move too quickly,” a vaguely familiar voice ordered.

It took a couple of tries, but my eyes finally focused. I recognized one of the pack’s healers.

“Healer Esmeralda?” I asked.

She was the healer who tended to my injuries when I was little, and the few times I’d been sick. Despite being a hybrid, I was still a robust child, and didn’t need a healer often.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s been a while, Zara. You have not been taking care of yourself.”

She sounded like she found that to be a personal insult. Maybe she did. Some healers were just like that.

“I’ve been training pretty hard,” I admitted.

“Maybe too hard,” she said. “You collapsed in the shower. Do you remember what happened?”

I felt heat creep up into my cheeks. I remembered, all right. Lucian’s hands, his tongue and teeth on my skin. Kissing him.

Damn it, I’d kissed him. Did he know? Did he realize I was his fated mate now?

“I’m going to guess that you do, from the look on your face,” Healer Esmeralda said. “Did anything, hm, violent happen during the encounter? You can tell me, a healer is sworn to silence.”

I knew that. And I also knew that a healer’s word was only as good as their Alpha’s in the end. The healers always told my father when I got in a scrape. But I wasn’t a child and Alpha Lucian was hardly my parent. And Esmeralda was not one of the healers who’d shared my secrets back then.

“Nothing happened,” I said truthfully. “Well, not nothing, but nothing like that. We kissed. Things got, um, intense, but then…” I gripped my stomach as I remembered that sharp, all consuming pain. “Then it hurt and I passed out. I don’t know why.”

“What, exactly, hurt?” Esmeralda asked.

“My stomach, well, sort of,” I said, waving in the vague area.

“Can you describe the pain?” she asked.

“It was sharp, stabbing,” I reported. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

That was the truth, but not entirely. I’d never felt a pain sharp enough to make me faint. But I did recognize the pain. It was the incomplete mate bond.

“Hm. I’d thought it might be shock,” Esmeralda mused, “but that sounds like something else. Tell me, have you had any trouble with your mate bond?”

I flinched, and nodded. It was bad to hide things from healers. They couldn’t fix you if they didn’t know what was wrong. But I hated to talk about what had happened with Adrian. And I wasn’t sure what, if anything, the new Alphas knew about that.

“Ah. That explains things,” Esmeralda said.

“It does?” I asked.

I knew that my incomplete mate bond to Adrian was a problem. I just hadn’t realized it could make me pass out like that.

“We don’t really know much about how mate bonds affect humans, or part humans,” Esmeralda said. “It shouldn’t just randomly pain you like that. But it’s possible the bond thought you were trying to establish a new bond, with the Alpha. Were you?”

“No!” I yelped. “That’s not how it works. Right? You have to be fated, you don’t just decide to form a mate bond.”

“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Esmeralda said, “But you’ll need to be careful. Even if you do find your second chance mate, the bond will still fight against it as long as your original mate is alive.”

I nodded. The healers had explained it to me when I’d come of age. That I could take a mate, like any wolf, but that I would not get a second chance if things went wrong. A human hybrid was vulnerable. Even the partial bond could injure, even kill me, if I tried to form a new bond.

But I hadn’t! We’d just been… I’d just tried to soothe his wolf.

Oh. I wasn’t trying to form a mate bond. But I was using it to soothe their wolves. Was that enough to make the original bond act up?

“Damn that fool,” Esmeralda muttered.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your former mate. Adrian. He was a fool to choose Chloe over you. They weren’t even fated. She just seduced him. And now he’s banished, so he can’t even do the right thing.”

“I wouldn’t want him,” I said. “I don’t care about him.”

“If you say so,” Esmeralda said. “Well, you’re also showing distinct signs of overwork and malnutrition. You haven’t been eating?”

I’d been starved for days, and even when I was let out my appetite had suffered. I wasn’t sure who all knew about my punishments from the alphas, though. And I really didn’t want to talk about it. Ever.

“It’s been stressful,” I said.

“Well, I imagine so,” Esmeralda said, “but you need to take care of yourself. You push yourself too hard, Zara.”

I sighed and nodded. I'd heard variations on this lecture all my life. I couldn't keep up. I would never be as strong as my peers. I shouldn't push myself too hard. I was just a weak hybrid and I should learn to accept my place.

“Anyway, I'm going to keep you overnight for observation, and recommend you stay on minimal duties for the next few days. No heavy lifting, no extreme training. Take it easy. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“As for the bond stress, there's not much you can do to be honest,” Esmeralda added. “As long as Adrian is alive and your bond remains incomplete, it's a risk.”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“It's a little odd, to be honest,” Esmeralda said. “Usually, if the bond was going to cause you problems, it'd happen sooner. Part humans do tend to pine when the bonds break, but you came through the initial shock so well I thought you'd be fine.”

I could only shrug. The bond twinged occasionally but there wasn't anything anyone could do, so I never told the healers about it. I just put more of my focus on training and learning about the human world, so I could leave and forget about mate bonds and Alphas and all the rest of it forever.

“I can tell the Alphas to back off, if they're making overtures in that direction,” Esmeralda offered. Which was a surprise. Telling an Alpha they couldn't have whatever they wanted was a dangerous thing to offer.

“No, don't tell them anything, please,” I said. “I'll handle it myself.”

Esmeralda sighed. “If you're sure,” she said. “I will tell them about the exhaustion, though, because as you're their personal attendant, it's their job to set your workload and they need to know to lighten it some.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

I stared at the wall after she left. What was I going to do? I had to keep my bargain with the Alphas. It was my only hope of escape. But if I kept using the bond to soothe their wolves, the incomplete bond to Adrian would weaken me. It could even kill me.

I couldn't explain myself to Kieran and Lucian, either, because then they'd know I was their fated mate. Who knows what they'd do then? Kieran was possessive and Lucian was ruthless. They might very well decide to hunt down Adrian and kill him.

I might not ever want to see Adrian again, but I didn't want him dead, either.