His Regret: I Am Not Your Mate

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Flora's POV

We stayed in that cave until the first gray light of dawn crept through the branches Eric had woven across the entrance. Neither of us slept much. I dozed in fits, waking each time to the sound of dripping water or Eric's low, steady breathing beside me, and each time I woke, he was already alert, watching the entrance like a man who'd forgotten how to rest.

Aiden found us not long after sunrise, a handful of warriors trailing behind him, relief written plain across his face when he pulled back the branches and saw us both alive.

"Rogues scattered before dawn," he said. "We're setting up a temporary camp here until we can safely move everyone back." His eyes flicked between me and Eric, something curious passing behind them, though he had the sense not to ask whatever question was sitting on his tongue.

The days that followed blurred together in a way I hadn't expected. The temporary camp filled quickly with the wounded, warriors nursing gashes and broken ribs, a few battling the same trembling, hollow-eyed shock I knew all too well. I moved from tent to tent doing what I always did, easing frayed nerves, steadying racing hearts, humming low melodies over shaking shoulders.

Eric was rarely in camp during daylight. He led patrol after patrol, sweeping the surrounding territory for stragglers, making sure the rogues that scattered didn't regroup somewhere close enough to strike again.

I heard about him more than I saw him, actually. The warriors talked, the way warriors always did once the fear of a fight faded into stories told around fires.

"He's always first in," one of them told me, a young fighter with a bandaged forearm, while I checked the wrap on his wound. "First to charge. Doesn't matter how bad the odds look. And he's always last out too. Won't leave until every last one of us is accounted for."

"He pulled me out from under a rogue three winters back," another said, older, gray already threading through his beard. "Half his own arm torn open doing it. Never said a word about it after. Just wrapped it himself and went right back to work."

I filed each story away without meaning to, small pieces stacking up against everything I thought I knew about him, until the picture I'd carried for months started to look less certain than it used to.

Then, on the third day, rogues hit the edge of camp again, fast and sudden, the way they always seemed to.

I grabbed my satchel out of instinct and moved toward the fighting, the way I always did, ready to tend whoever came out of it shaking. But I stopped short when I saw Eric's response, because it wasn't what I expected at all.

He didn't chase the fleeing rogues, even though I could see the pull in him, the way his whole body angled toward the retreating enemy like a hunting instinct too deep to argue with. Instead he turned hard toward the logistics camp instead, where the elderly and the pups and the weaker pack members sheltered, his voice already booming out orders to secure the perimeter there first.

"Fall back and hold the young ones," he shouted. "Let them run. We hold here."

Some of the other warriors hesitated, clearly wanting the chase, wanting the satisfaction of cutting down fleeing enemies. Eric didn't waver. He planted himself at the edge of the logistics camp until every last elder and pup was accounted for, safe, sheltered behind a wall of warriors he'd assembled with nothing but his voice and his presence.

Once the danger passed, I followed at a distance, curious despite myself, and found him crouched low in the dirt in front of a small pup, no older than six or seven, still crying from the fright of it all.

I almost didn't recognize him like that.

Gone was the smirk, the arrogance, the cutting edge he wore like armor around the rest of camp. His voice had dropped into something soft, careful, entirely unlike the man who mocked lullabies and hand-holding not so long ago.

"Hey now," he murmured, one large hand resting gently on the pup's small shoulder. "You're safe. I've got you. Nothing's getting past me, understand?"

The pup hiccupped, still trembling, and Eric reached into his own pack without hesitation, pulling out a small ration of dried meat and pressing it into the pup's hands.

"Eat," he said. "You'll feel steadier."

The pup looked up at him with wide, wet eyes, and something about the way Eric looked back, patient, gentle, utterly without pretense, made my chest tighten in a way I wasn't prepared for.

I stood there longer than I should have, just watching, unnoticed at the edge of the clearing, and felt something shift inside me that I didn't have a name for yet.

This was the same man who'd called my work a waste of time. The same man who'd mocked Panic Disorder as a weak man's disease before he understood what it cost to carry it himself. And yet here he was, kneeling in the dirt, sharing his own food with a frightened child, gentler than I'd ever seen him with anyone.

Over the following days, I kept catching glimpses like that. The way he checked on the wounded personally each evening, quiet, unassuming, never demanding thanks for it. The way he split extra rations without being asked whenever supplies ran thin. The way he never once complained about exhaustion, even though I could see it etched plainly into the lines of his face by the fourth day, dark circles deepening under his eyes each morning.

I started noticing him differently after that. Not the arrogant Gamma who sneered at Soothers, not the man who'd called me useless more times than I wanted to remember. Something else entirely, something I hadn't let myself consider before, something that made the careful walls I'd built against him feel less solid than they had a week ago.

I didn't want to feel that shift. I fought against it, actually, reminding myself of every cruel word he'd ever thrown my way, every sneer, every dismissal.

But watching him kneel in the dirt, gentle with a frightened pup, sharing what little food he had left, I felt something in my chest crack open just a little wider than it had before.

And I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to close it back up again.