His Regret: I Am Not Your Mate

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Flora's POV

The howls started low, scattered, drifting in from somewhere beyond our hidden entrance. Wolves calling to each other across the dark, coordinating, hunting. I felt my own pulse spike at the sound, but it was Eric who changed first.

I noticed it in the dim light filtering through the branches, the way the color drained slowly out of his face, the way his hands, resting on his knees, started to tremble in small, involuntary jerks.

"Eric?"

He didn't answer. His jaw was locked, his eyes fixed on some point past me, unfocused, the same glassy look I'd seen on him twice before now.

"Eric, what's wrong."

Still nothing. His breathing had gone shallow, quick, catching in his throat like something was closing around it.

"Is it happening again," I said, already moving toward him. "The panic. Is it starting?"

He didn't answer that either, but he didn't need to. His whole body curled forward a second later, arms wrapping around himself, cold sweat breaking out along his hairline even in the freezing air of the cave. A low sound came out of him, pained, involuntary, the kind of sound a man makes when he's lost the ability to hide anything at all.

I didn't hesitate this time.

I crossed the small space between us and knelt at his side, my hands finding his arm and shoulder the way they had before, steady despite the pounding of my own heart. I started humming immediately, low and soft, letting the sound fill the cramped space around us, letting my gift pour into him the way I'd been trained to do since I was young enough to barely understand what it meant.

"I'm here," I murmured. "You're not alone. Breathe with me."

His shoulders were rigid at first, fighting it the way they always did, some part of him still trying to hold the wall up even as it crumbled. But this time I didn't just stroke his arm and wait. This time I shifted closer, wrapped one arm fully around his shoulders, and let him lean the weight of himself into me instead of holding it all up alone.

He came apart against me slowly, his forehead dropping until it rested in the hollow of my shoulder, his breath ragged and hot against my collarbone. I pressed my other hand lightly against his chest, feeling the wild, uneven slam of his heart beneath my palm.

"Match me," I whispered. "In. Out. Slow. Like this."

I breathed deliberately, exaggerated, giving him something to follow, and little by little, his own breathing began to bend toward mine, the frantic rhythm smoothing out, the trembling in his hands easing into something less violent.

Minutes passed like that, the two of us curled together on the cold stone floor, the howls outside fading into the background of my focus entirely. I didn't think about the fight beyond the cave, or the danger still circling somewhere in the dark. I only thought about the man shaking against me, about pulling him back from wherever the panic had dragged him.

Slowly, so slowly, he stilled.

His breathing evened out fully. His heartbeat under my palm slowed to something steady, something almost calm. He didn't move away from my shoulder, and I didn't ask him to.

We stayed like that a long while, the silence between us different now, softer, worn thin by whatever had just happened.

Finally, he spoke, his voice rough and low, muffled slightly against my shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I didn't answer right away, waiting to see if there was more.

"For everything I said," he went on. "About your work. About Soothers. I was wrong." He lifted his head slightly, just enough to look at me, his eyes still a little glassy, still raw from what his body had just put him through. "What you do isn't coddling. It's not lullabies for grown men. I felt what happens without it. I felt it twice now." His jaw tightened. "It's not nothing, Flora. It's the only reason I'm still breathing right now, both times."

Something in my chest ached at that, sharp and unexpected.

I thought of Daisy, of something she'd told me once when I was still new to all this, still bitter about the way warriors looked at me like I was less than them. Panic disorder is a warrior's medal, she'd said. But it's also their wound. They earn it protecting everyone else, and then they're mocked for carrying it. That's the cruelest part of all this.

"You're not weak for this," I said quietly. "You never were. You just didn't know it yet."

He held my gaze a moment longer, something unguarded in his face that I'd never seen there before, something that made my own heart do something complicated and unwelcome.

"Thank you," he said. "For not leaving me to it. Either time."

"Don't thank me," I said, shaking my head slightly. "It should be me thanking you. All of you. Every warrior who goes out there and bleeds so the rest of us get to live in peace behind these walls. I just hold the pieces together when they start to crack. You're the ones who go out and get cracked in the first place."

He didn't say anything else for a while. He just stayed there, close, his forehead dropping again briefly against my shoulder before he finally straightened, putting a careful, respectful distance back between us, like he didn't want to overstep whatever this moment had been.

Outside, the howls had faded into silence, the fight moving on or ending entirely, I couldn't tell which. But inside the cave, something had shifted just as much as anything happening beyond those branches.

I sat there in the dark beside him, my hands still faintly trembling from holding his panic at bay, and understood, with a small, sinking feeling, that whatever wall I'd built against him over these past weeks had just cracked wide open.