Alpha Raphael’s Second Chance Mate

Chapter 11

NORA

The pain woke me up before my alarm did.

This was duller and deeper and it sat right at the base of my abdomen where the scar from the section was still working through whatever it needed to work through.

I pressed my hand against it and lay back for a minute breathing steadily until it settled enough for me to sit up.

Daniel had asked me to come in that morning and I had said yes mostly because arguing with him felt like more effort than just going.

I got dressed slowly and made my way through the pack to the hospital. The morning was cold and the pack was already moving around me and I walked through it with my hand occasionally pressing against my side when the ache flared up.

Daniel was waiting when I arrived. He gestured to the examination table and I climbed up,he worked through the check quietly and methodically the way he always did, not rushing anything,and not making it feel like more than it was.

"The healing is faster than I had thought," he said, pressing carefully around the scar. "But you are still doing too much and too fast."

"I am barely doing anything," I said.

"You walked the full pack grounds this morning."

I said nothing to that.

He finished the physical part of the examination and stepped back and made a few notes and then looked at me in the careful way he always had, the way that meant he was about to say something that was not strictly medical.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Go ahead."

"The wound on your abdomen. It was not just from child birth, right?" He asked plainly,as I stared at him, I wouldn't deny the fact that he had already figured out it was not from child birth and he was now bringing it into the open.

I looked at the wall across from me. "No. It was not."

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

I thought about it for a moment, I don't know if I should trust him. Or just how much to give and what to hold back because old habits die hard and I had learned to portion out my truth carefully a long time ago.

"I was taken to a forest by people who were paid to make sure I did not come back from it," I said. "The wound happened there."

Daniel was quiet. He didn't say any words for over one minute. I appreciated that more than I could have explained.

It makes me feel heard, listen to and appreciated

"Before the forest?" he asked.

"I gave birth without proper care. No medication. No proper support. The doctor was following someone else's instructions and those instructions had nothing to do with keeping me alive." I said almost tearfully, without looking for a reaction.

"I woke up after giving birth and my baby was already gone. Then they walked me out of the pack and handed me to people they told me were officers."

Daniel set his clipboard down on the counter and did not pick it back up.

"How long were you running before you crossed our border?" he asked.

"Long enough."

He nodded slowly and was quiet for another moment and then he said, "Whatever happened to you before you got here was not something you caused."

I looked at him.

"I have been doing this long enough to know the difference between someone who got caught in something and someone who brought something on themselves," he said. "This pack does not operate the way whatever pack you came from did. That is not something I say to every patient. I am saying it to you specifically."

I did not respond to that. I didn't disregard what he said either , I am currently just speechless. No one had ever said whatever happened to me wasn't my mate .

I was always made to believe that everything that happened was as a result of my ill fate, but today for the first time , someone told me I wasn't to blame .

We stayed silent for a few more minutes, and after that, he picked his clipboard back up and finished his notes. He then told me to come back in three days and to stop walking the full pack every morning until the scar had closed fully.

I told him I would think about it.

He looked at me over his clipboard with an expression that said he already knew what that meant and let it go.

I climbed down from the table and picked up my jacket and walked out into the corridor.

Alpha Raphael was waiting for me outside.

He was not pacing or hovering. He was just standing a little way down the corridor with his back against the wall and his arms loosely crossed and when I came out he straightened up and fell into step beside me without making it into anything.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"Fine. He says the healing is on track."

"Good."

We walked in silence for a moment and I noticed, for the first time, the specific way he did this.

Showed up without announcing himself. Stayed close without pressing in. Asked one question and left the rest of the space open. It was the kind of behavior that was either very deliberate or just who he was and I had not yet decided which one it was.

"Did you eat this morning?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Properly?"

I glanced at him. "I had food."

"That is not what I asked."

"It was enough," I said.

He made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite an argument and we kept walking.

The pack was busier now than it had been when I went in. People moving between buildings, a group of younger wolves heading toward the training grounds, two pack members in a doorway deep in conversation who both glanced at me as we passed.

I was aware of every glance. Old habit. You learn to track how people look at you when you have spent enough time in places where the way people look at you is the first warning you get before something goes wrong.

These looks were different from what I was used to.

It was filled with curiosity. Maybe not hostile, like I had expected it to be.

"You are watching everyone," Raphael said.

"Yes."

"Does it help?"

"It always has," I said.

He nodded,he did not tell me to stop staring or looking, Kael would have warned me and threatened me about it.

I can't believe I am actually reminiscing about everything Kael had done to me in a painful way, while walking with my supposed mate.

We reached the point where the corridor split and he stopped, I also paused too.

"There is a meal in the main hall at midday," he said. "Pack meal. You should come."

"You keep telling me things I should do," I said.

"And you keep showing up anyway," he said back.

I looked at him for a second and he looked back and neither of us said anything and then I turned and went the way I needed to go and he went the other way.

My wolf had been quiet through most of the walk. She waited until I was back in my room and then started.

"He waited for you outside."

"I noticed," I said.

"He did not have to do that."

"No," I said. "He did not."

She became quiet after my response and I didn't utter any words to her either.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my hand against the scar and breathed through the low steady ache and thought about what Daniel had said and what I did not say back to him and what it meant that I had not said it and whether that mattered.

It mattered. I just did not know yet what to do with the fact that it did.