Rejected Exiled And Claimed

Chapter 8: Breakfast Under Watch

I woke to the sound of a knock.

Soft. Controlled. Not the sharp sound of someone demanding entry, but not hesitant either. I opened my eyes slowly, confused for a moment by the unfamiliar ceiling, the steady hum of the room, the clean scent of sheets and medicine.

Then I remembered where I was.

Nightbane.

The ache under my ribs returned the moment I fully woke, heavy and deep and impossible to ignore. I drew in a breath too quickly and winced at the pain that followed. It was not as violent as before, but it still felt wrong. Empty in a way my body did not understand.

Another knock came.

I pushed myself up more carefully this time, swallowing hard before answering. “Come in.”

The door opened just enough for a young woman in dark gray scrubs to step inside. She carried a tray in both hands and kept her eyes lowered in that instinctive way pack subordinates did around uncertain situations. She couldn’t have been much older than me.

My chest tightened unexpectedly.

That would have been me, once. Moving quietly through hallways. Keeping my head down. Trying not to attract the wrong kind of attention.

The woman set the tray on the small table near the bed. “Breakfast,” she said softly.

I nodded at once. “Thank you.”

She glanced at me only briefly before looking away again. “Mara said you should eat while it’s warm.”

I looked at the tray.

Eggs. Toast. Fruit. Tea. Real food. Fresh food. Not hurried scraps or something pulled together carelessly. It looked too decent for me, and the thought came so naturally that shame followed before I could stop it.

The woman stepped back toward the door. “If you need anything, use the call button.”

I looked at the wall beside the bed and noticed the small control panel for the first time. Another reminder that this place was nothing like the cramped treatment rooms I had worked in. Everything here felt cleaner. More ordered. Better funded.

It made me feel smaller.

“Thank you,” I said again.

She gave a quick nod and left.

The room went quiet.

I stared at the tray for a long time before touching it.

I was hungry. Painfully so, now that food was in front of me. But hunger was tangled with something uglier, something that made my throat feel tight.

I was eating under another pack’s roof.

Sleeping in another pack’s bed.

Wearing borrowed clothes.

Alive because someone stronger had decided I should be.

My fingers curled in the blanket for a moment before I forced them to loosen. Then, carefully, I moved the tray onto my lap.

The tea was hot enough to warm my hands through the cup. I held it there for a second before taking a sip. The heat slid down my throat and into the hollow place in my chest, but it did not soften anything. It only made me more aware of how cold I had felt before.

By the time I had eaten half the food, there was another knock.

I stiffened immediately.

“Come in,” I said, quieter this time.

Mara entered without ceremony, tablet in one hand and that same unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes went straight to the tray, then to me.

“Good,” she said. “You ate.”

I set the fork down. “I was hungry.”

“That usually helps.”

I looked at my lap instead of at her. “I’m sorry.”

The apology slipped out before I thought about it.

Mara paused. “For what?”

“For… yesterday. If I caused trouble.”

The words sounded small even to me. I hated that, but not enough to take them back.

Something in her expression shifted. Not softness exactly. More like surprise.

“You were found unconscious after being thrown out by your pack,” she said. “You weren’t exactly in a position to be convenient.”

Heat crept over my face. I lowered my eyes further.

Mara came closer, stopping beside the bed. “Lie back a little. I need to check your chest.”

My whole body tensed before I could help it.

She noticed, of course. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I know.”

But my hands still shook when I moved the tray away.

She worked efficiently, clinical and focused, checking bruising and asking me to breathe in and out while she watched my reactions. I did what she asked without argument, though every deep breath pulled at that torn, aching place inside me and made my stomach knot.

“The bond damage is still causing the worst of it,” she said, stepping back. “Your body is reacting to trauma on top of exhaustion. That won’t settle overnight.”

I nodded, eyes fixed on the blanket.

There was no point asking how long it would last.

No point asking whether it would ever feel normal again.

Mara tapped a few notes into her tablet. “You can walk to the bathroom if you need to, but not farther. No stairs. No wandering. If you feel dizzy, sit down before you fall.”

I nodded again.

She was quiet for a second. Then, “You really think every mistake is going to get you punished, don’t you?”

My head lifted before I could stop it.

The question had caught me so off guard that for one humiliating second, I had no idea what expression was on my face. Whatever it was, Mara’s gaze sharpened slightly.

“I didn’t say that,” I whispered.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

I dropped my eyes at once.

Shame moved through me, hot and sickening. I hadn’t meant to show that much. Hadn’t meant to let her see anything behind the polite answers and lowered gaze. But maybe it was obvious. Maybe wolves like Mara—older, steadier, stronger—saw girls like me too clearly to begin with.

She didn’t press it.

“Rest today,” she said instead. “That’s all.”

After she left, I sat very still for a while, the untouched fruit on the tray beginning to lose its shine in the morning light.

Every mistake is going to get you punished.

The worst part was that I had not even realized how true it was until she said it aloud.

A few hours later, when the room had gone too quiet again and I had started counting the seconds between sounds in the hallway just to keep from thinking too much, there was another knock.

This one was firmer.

I straightened automatically, then regretted it when the movement pulled too sharply at my ribs.

The door opened before I could answer.

A man stepped inside, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with dark hair and a face that looked carved out of something hard. Alpha. I knew it at once, the same way my body knew storms before the sky broke. His scent was sharper than Lucian’s, colder somehow, and his expression was unreadable in a way that made my stomach drop.

I knew without needing to be told who he was.

Draven Wolfe.

Lucian’s enforcer.

Fear slid coldly through me.

I lowered my gaze almost at once.

He shut the door behind him and stood there for a moment without speaking. I could feel the weight of his attention, and every nerve in my body pulled tighter under it. Unlike Lucian, there was nothing confusing about Draven’s presence. It was not careful. Not quiet. It felt like being measured by something that would not hesitate to find me lacking.

I folded my hands together so he would not see them tremble.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and blunt. “You’re Anastasia Miller.”

It was not a question.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Silence.

Then, “You’re safer here than you were there.”

The words startled me enough that I looked up before I could stop myself.

His face had not softened. If anything, he looked almost irritated to be saying it at all.

I dropped my gaze again immediately. “I understand.”

Another pause.

“You don’t,” he said. “But you will.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. So I said nothing.

After a few seconds, he added, “No one is going to drag you out of this room.”

My throat tightened suddenly, painfully.

He had noticed. Of course he had. The way I watched doors. The way I startled at knocks. The way every voice outside the room made my body tense before my mind even caught up.

I swallowed. “Yes.”

The word came out too thin.

Draven seemed to study me for another long moment. Then he turned toward the door.

At the threshold, he stopped and spoke without looking back.

“Eat all your food next time.”

And then he left.

I sat frozen in the silence after he was gone, staring at the closed door with my heart beating too fast again.

It should not have mattered.

None of it should have mattered.

But this pack was unsettling me in all the wrong ways.

They were harsh.

Direct.

Intimidating.

And somehow still less cruel than the wolves I had once called my own.