Rejected Exiled And Claimed

Chapter 7: The Pack That Wasn’t Mine

I woke to voices outside the room.

At first I thought I was still dreaming. The pain in my chest had eased from a sharp tearing into a heavy ache, and the soft hum of the air conditioner made everything feel slightly unreal. But the voices came again, low and male, close enough that I could make out the tension in them even if I couldn’t hear every word.

I kept still.

The room was dim, lit only by the weak morning light pushing through the curtains. Sometime during the night, someone had adjusted the blanket over me and left a glass of water on the bedside table. I stared at it for a moment, then turned my attention back to the door.

One voice was unfamiliar.

The other I recognized immediately.

Lucian.

I didn’t know why that made my pulse change. Maybe because I remembered too clearly the way he had looked at me the night before, as if there had been something he was not saying. Maybe because I had fallen asleep under his roof, in his pack, in his territory, and waking up there made everything feel less like an accident and more like the beginning of something I didn’t understand.

The unfamiliar voice lowered. Lucian answered, calm and unreadable even through the wood between us.

Then the door opened.

I sat up too fast again, not from panic this time but from instinct, and only just stopped myself from gasping at the pain that flared under my ribs. I pressed my hand against the blanket and kept my expression still.

It wasn’t Lucian.

A man stepped inside carrying a paper cup and a thin tablet tucked beneath one arm. He was younger than I expected, maybe mid-twenties, dressed in dark pants and a charcoal button-down with the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. He had the kind of face that looked composed even when he wasn’t smiling, and his eyes missed nothing.

Beta.

I knew it before he spoke. Not from scent alone, though that was there—calmer, steadier than an alpha’s, more grounded. It was in the way he carried himself. Controlled. Observant. The kind of man who saw the room before he entered it.

“You’re awake,” he said.

There was no surprise in his voice. Just acknowledgment.

I nodded once. “Yes.”

He shut the door behind him, then paused a polite distance from the bed. “I’m Adrian Thorne.”

Lucian’s right hand.

The realization landed instantly. Of course it would be him. If the alpha of the Nightbane Pack had brought a wounded omega from rival territory into his own medical wing, his beta would want to see the damage up close.

“I know who you are,” I said quietly.

One dark brow lifted very slightly. “Do you?”

Heat touched my face before I could stop it. “I mean… I’ve heard your name.”

“Ah.” If he found my embarrassment amusing, he was kind enough not to show it. “That makes more sense.”

He set the paper cup and tablet on the table by the wall. Coffee. The smell reached me a second later, rich and bitter.

I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until then.

Humiliation followed right after. I looked away from the cup before my expression could betray me.

Adrian noticed anyway. Of course he did.

“You’ll get breakfast soon,” he said. “Unless Mara decides to torture you with nutrition rules first.”

I stared at him.

That had almost sounded like a joke.

It startled me enough that I looked up. His expression was still composed, but something about him felt less severe than I expected. Not soft exactly. Just… not cruel.

I didn’t trust that either.

He seemed to accept my silence without offense. “Lucian asked me to check in.”

My fingers tightened slightly in the blanket. “Why?”

A pause.

Then, “Because you’re here.”

That answer was too simple to mean anything and too careful to be useless.

I lowered my gaze. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“I know.”

I looked up again at that. He was watching me with a kind of measured calm that made me uneasy. Not because it was harsh. Because it wasn’t. Because after everything that had happened in Evercrest, I no longer knew what to do with wolves who spoke to me like I was a person instead of a problem.

Adrian moved toward the chair beside the bed and sat down, not asking permission but not crowding me either. He picked up the tablet and glanced at the screen.

“Mara says you’re stable,” he said. “Exhausted, but stable.”

I nodded.

“She also says you hate following instructions.”

That made me blink.

Before I could stop myself, I said, “She talks too much.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

I looked away immediately, annoyed with myself.

The room was quiet for a moment. I could feel his eyes on me again, not in the suffocating way Lucian’s had been, but steadily enough that I knew he was studying me. Cataloguing details. My posture. My voice. My reactions.

He wasn’t just checking on me.

He was assessing me.

The realization made my stomach tighten.

“You don’t trust us,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

I kept my eyes on the blanket. “I don’t know you.”

“Fair.”

I waited for more. It didn’t come.

That was somehow worse.

“I’m from Evercrest,” I said after a moment, because it felt dangerous not to say it. “I know what that looks like from your side.”

“We’re aware of where you came from.”

The careful wording made me glance up again.

Not who you came from.

Where.

Interesting.

I should not have noticed that, but I did.

Adrian rested the tablet on one knee. “No one is asking anything from you right now, Anastasia.”

I hated how quickly relief tried to rise at those words. I pushed it down at once.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t later.”

His expression didn’t change. “Probably not.”

The honesty of it made me tense.

Then he added, “But if that happens, you’ll know it directly. We don’t do much whispering here.”

Something in my chest shifted uncomfortably.

Because that was the opposite of Evercrest.

Because I wanted to believe him.

Because I had believed people before.

My voice came out softer than I intended. “I see.”

Adrian was quiet a moment longer before setting the tablet aside. “Lucian won’t send you out while you’re like this.”

The words landed somewhere between relief and fear.

I wet my lips. “How long is ‘like this’?”

His gaze dropped briefly to the way I was holding myself too carefully, then lifted again. “Long enough.”

I didn’t know whether to be grateful or ashamed.

Maybe both.

He stood, and I realized the conversation was ending before I’d figured out what exactly it had been. A welfare check. A warning. A reassurance. All three, maybe.

At the door, he paused and looked back at me.

“There’s one thing you should know.”

I went still.

“The pack knows you’re here.”

Cold moved through me immediately.

Not surprise. I should have expected that. Packs noticed everything, especially when their alpha carried home a stranger. But hearing it aloud made my skin go tight.

“What are they saying?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Adrian considered me for half a second, then answered plainly.

“That you were injured.”

“That Lucian brought you in himself.”

“And that until he says otherwise, no one is to bother you.”

I stared at him.

Something strange passed through me at the last part. Not safety. Not trust. Just the sharp, disorienting awareness of what it meant for an alpha like Lucian to say no one touches something under his protection.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Adrian’s hand closed around the door handle. “Eat when they bring food. Rest when Mara tells you to. It’ll make everything easier.”

He opened the door.

Then, as if reconsidering, he added, “And don’t look so alarmed. Nightbane is not Evercrest.”

The door shut softly behind him.

I sat very still in the sudden quiet.

Nightbane is not Evercrest.

The problem was, I had no idea if that was true.

All I knew was that I was under another pack’s roof, surrounded by wolves who owed me nothing, alive because a rival alpha had chosen not to leave me in the forest. And somewhere beyond the walls of that room, an entire pack knew I was there.

I pulled the blanket tighter around myself and stared at the closed door, feeling the old ache in my chest pulse with every beat of my heart.

I had survived exile.

Now I had to survive being seen.