His Regret: I Am Not Your Mate

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Flora's POV

The ambush came out of nowhere, the way they always seemed to now, rogues bursting from the treeline just as our small relocation squad crossed the narrow pass between camps. I had a moment of pure, blinding fear, and then Eric was there, shoving me behind a fallen log with more force than gentleness, his blade already swinging.

I don't know exactly how it happened. One second he was cutting down a rogue lunging for me, and the next he'd taken a hit meant for my throat, a long gash tearing across his side, deep enough that I heard the wet sound of it even over the noise of the fight.

He didn't go down. He kept fighting, kept moving, kept himself between me and every single blade that came near until the last rogue finally broke and ran and the fight was over.

Only then did he sway.

"Eric!"

I caught him before he hit the ground, his weight nearly taking us both down together. His face had gone deathly pale, blood soaking dark through his shirt, but somehow, impossibly, he still managed a crooked, pained smile.

"Guess you owe me your life," he said, breath ragged. "Again."

"Shut up," I snapped, already tearing at my satchel, my hands shaking as I pulled out bandages. "Save your strength, you absolute fool."

"Just saying," he murmured, wincing as I pressed cloth hard against the wound. "Should probably start keeping a tally."

"Eric."

"Fine, fine." He actually laughed, weak and breathless, which turned into a groan the second the movement pulled at his side.

I worked fast, packing the wound, wrapping it tight, my hands moving on pure instinct while my mind screamed at how much blood had already soaked through everything. He was too pale. His pulse under my fingers when I checked it was too fast, too thin.

"Stay with me," I said, low, more command than request. "Don't you dare pass out on me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, though his eyes were heavy, his voice thinning at the edges.

Once the bleeding slowed enough that I trusted the bandage to hold, I didn't wait for him to ask. I took his hand in both of mine, pressing my palm flat against his, and began the deep comfort I'd only ever used a handful of times before, pouring calm and steadiness straight through the connection, trying to ease the shock threatening to pull him under.

He went quiet under my touch, his breathing slowly settling, his eyes fixed on my face the entire time, watching me with an intensity that made my own pulse stumble.

I kept my focus on the work. I had to. If I looked at him too long, I wasn't sure I'd manage to keep my hands steady.

"Flora," he said finally, his voice rough, barely above a whisper.

"Don't talk. Rest."

"I need to tell you something."

I glanced up despite myself, caught by the strange, raw seriousness in his tone, so different from the teasing of a minute ago.

"When I killed her," he said. "The she-wolf. That first time, before all this started." His hand tightened faintly around mine. "I didn't know she was pregnant. I want you to understand that. I would never have—" He stopped, his jaw working, pain and something deeper crossing his face. "I didn't know until after. Until I was kneeling over her body and I saw it. And it's been sitting inside me every single day since."

My hands went still against his.

Everything clicked into place at once, the pieces I'd been circling for weeks without ever quite reaching the center of them. The panic in the field. The shaking in his quarters. The wall he threw up every time I asked what happened, the wall he'd never once let me past.

This was it. This was the thing eating him alive from the inside.

"Eric," I said softly.

"I keep seeing it," he went on, quiet, raw, like the words had been dammed up so long they came pouring out now that the wall had finally broken. "Her face. The way her stomach curved, and I hadn't caught it in time, I hadn't smelled it, hadn't seen it, and by the time I did, it was already—" His breath hitched. "I've killed plenty of enemies, Flora. I never lost sleep over any of them. But this one. I can't stop seeing her."

I held his hand tighter, my chest aching with the weight of everything he'd been carrying alone, night after night, too proud and too afraid to let anyone close enough to help.

"It wasn't your fault," I said, steady, certain, meeting his eyes so he'd know I meant every word. "You didn't know. You couldn't have known, not in the middle of a fight like that. You were protecting your pack, Eric. That's all you were doing."

"That doesn't make her any less dead," he said, voice breaking slightly.

"No," I agreed gently. "It doesn't. And you're allowed to carry grief over that. But grief isn't the same as guilt, and what happened isn't a crime you committed. It's a war neither of you chose to start." I pressed my other hand over his, holding it between both of mine now. "If you'd hesitated, if you'd held back not knowing what you know now, it might have been one of ours instead. A pregnant she-wolf on our side, cut down because you froze. You didn't have the luxury of knowing everything in that moment. None of us ever do."

He stared at me for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes, some tight, clenched thing finally starting to loosen after carrying its full weight alone for so long.

"I've said some horrible things to you," he said quietly. "About your work. About what you carry too."

"You have," I agreed.

"I'm sorry. For all of it."

"I know," I said, and found that I actually believed him.

His hand gripped mine then, firm, steady despite the blood loss and the pain still etched across his face, like he was holding onto something solid in the middle of everything else falling apart.

I gripped back just as firmly, and something passed between us in that moment that hadn't been there before, not through all the insults, not through every clash and every grudging truce. Trust. Real trust, finally, given freely on both sides instead of demanded or refused.

We stayed like that a long while, hands locked together in the dirt, the fight finally over around us, something new and fragile beginning to take root in its place.