chapter 10: The space between watching and choosing
647 Words
(Liam’s POV)
I didn’t leave the healer’s hut that night.
Officially, I posted guards.
Unofficially, I dismissed them all after the second watch and took their place myself.
An Alpha was not meant to stand vigil over a single omega. But tonight, titles felt brittle useless against the sickening realization that danger had been living inside my pack all along.
Mara slept fitfully.
Her breathing hitched now and then, shallow and uneven, as the poison worked stubbornly through her system. The healer had done what he could, but even he had been honest.
“She either stabilizes by dawn,” he said quietly, “or she doesn’t.”
I sat in the chair beside her bed, forearms resting on my knees, jaw clenched.
Every sound felt too loud.
Every shadow felt intentional.
Selena’s scent still lingered faintly in the room masked with herbs, diluted, but undeniable. I could almost replay the moment in my mind: her hand near Mara’s mouth, the shattered vial, the way she’d smiled while warning me about panic and confusion.
Too composed.
Too practiced.
I should have noticed sooner.
I rose quietly and checked the windows, then the doors. Locked. Reinforced. No blind corners left uncovered. Only when I was certain did I allow myself to breathe again.
The bond stirred restlessly inside my chest.
Not pulling toward Selena.
Pulling elsewhere.
Toward her.
She stood outside, perched on the low stone wall across the healer’s hut, eyes lifted to the stars as if they held answers she wasn’t willing to ask aloud.
She didn’t know I was watching.
That hurt more than if she had.
She should have felt safe enough to assume I would be.
I stepped out quietly.
She noticed me immediately not startled, just alert. A calm that had been earned the hard way.
“How is she?” she asked.
“Alive,” I replied. “For now.”
She nodded once. No relief. No illusion.
“Selena will try again,” she said calmly. Not accusation. Statement.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of my agreement surprised her.
“You believe me now?” she asked.
“I believe you believed her long before tonight,” I said quietly. “That’s worse.”
She didn’t deny it.
Moonlight caught in her silver-grey eyes, reflecting something steady and dangerous beneath their calm surface.
“I won’t hide anymore,” she said. “Not because I’m afraid—but because hiding lets others bleed for me.”
The words landed heavily.
“I’ve doubled patrols,” I told her. “And I’m personally overseeing the healer’s hut.”
“For Mara,” she corrected gently.
“And for you,” I added.
She studied me for a long moment. “That’s new.”
“It’s late,” I said simply. “But it’s not nothing.”
She looked away first.
Progress. Painful. Earned.
“I didn’t ask you to reject me,” she continued quietly. “But I won’t let that rejection become permission for cruelty.”
“It never should have,” I said, voice low. “I failed you there.”
She stood, the air subtly shifting around her as if the night itself adjusted to her movement.
“Failing once is human,” she said. “Failing again is choice.”
A warning.
Not a threat.
She walked away without looking back, leaving the scent of wild magic and quiet resolve behind her.
I returned to Mara’s bedside just before dawn.
Her breathing steadied slightly barely perceptible, but real.
Hope.
Dangerous.
But I would take it.
Outside, the pack slept, unaware that the balance of power had already shifted.
Selena thought she was still three steps ahead.
She was wrong.
I wasn’t going to confront her yet.
I wasn’t going to expose her without proof.
I was going to watch.
And this time.....
I would not look away.
- Writer
