His Regret: I Am Not Your Mate

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Flora's POV

Aiden caught up with me before I made it back to camp proper. He looked shaken still, glancing over his shoulder like he expected Eric to appear behind him any second.

"Please," he said, keeping his voice low. "Nobody can know about this. If the men find out their Gamma had an attack in the field, it'll tear through camp faster than any rumor I've ever seen. Morale can't take that right now."

"I wasn't planning to tell anyone," I said. I wasn't in the business of humiliating people, even people who'd made a habit of humiliating me.

Aiden's shoulders eased slightly. "There's more," he said. "He needs help. Real help, not just today. Can you give him intensive comfort over the next few days? Whatever that takes."

I almost said no. The word sat right there on my tongue, ready to go. Let him suffer through it alone the way he'd made me feel small in front of half the camp, more than once, without a shred of guilt.

But I thought about the way he'd shaken under my hands, the way his voice cracked when he said my name like he didn't recognize the sound of his own fear. Nobody deserved to go through that alone, not even him.

"I'll do it," I said.

The next evening, I gathered what I needed. Warm oils, soft cloth, a small bundle of calming incense, and made my way to Eric's quarters with my satchel heavy against my hip and my nerves not much lighter.

He opened the door before I even knocked, like he'd been standing there waiting. He looked better than yesterday, color back in his face, though there was something guarded in his eyes that hadn't been there before, like he was bracing for me to bring up what happened.

"I need to know what works for you," I said, keeping my voice brisk and professional. "Everyone responds differently. Some warriors do best with pressure points, some with scent, some with sound. What helps you?"

He seemed to think about it a moment too long. "Stroking," he said finally. "And... hugging, I suppose." A pause. "Incense might be nice too."

"Fine," I said, setting my satchel down and pulling out the little bundle of dried herbs I'd brought for exactly that purpose. I lit it carefully, letting the smoke curl up between us, soft and sweet.

I moved to sit beside him on the edge of his cot, and started working slow, steady strokes down his arm the way I would for any warrior. His eyes tracked my hands the whole time, which I told myself meant nothing.

"You're good at this," he said, his voice quieter than I was used to hearing from him.

"I've had practice."

"I mean it," he said. "You're—" He stopped, studying my face like he was seeing it for the first time. "You're beautiful, you know that? I don't think I ever really looked before."

I pinched his arm, hard, right where I'd just been stroking it.

"Ow—"

"Focus on the process," I said flatly. "Not on flattering me into forgetting every rotten thing you've said about my profession."

He actually laughed, short and surprised, like the sound had escaped before he could stop it. It was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh, and I hated how much I liked the sound of it.

"Fair," he said, rubbing the spot where I'd pinched him. "Noted."

I kept working, my hands steady even as something inside my chest wasn't quite as steady as I wanted it to be. After a while, once his shoulders had loosened and his breathing had settled into something easy, I set the oils aside and looked at him directly.

"Eric," I said. "What happened out there? What scared you so badly?"

His whole body went stiff again, the ease I'd just coaxed into him vanishing in an instant.

"Nothing," he said.

"It wasn't nothing. I saw you. I held you together with my own hands while you shook apart. Whatever it was, it's still sitting inside you, and it's not going to let go on its own."

His jaw locked tight. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters if you want this to actually work," I said, keeping my voice even despite the frustration building underneath it. "I can stroke your arm and burn incense every night for a month, but if you won't tell me what's underneath the panic, all I'm doing is putting a bandage over something that's still bleeding."

He looked away from me, out toward the small window, his hands curling into fists against his knees.

"I can't," he said finally, quiet, almost too quiet for me to catch.

"Can't, or won't?"

He didn't answer. The silence stretched long enough that I knew I wasn't getting anything else out of him tonight, no matter how I pushed.

"Fine," I said, standing and gathering my things back into my satchel, my movements sharper than I meant them to be. "But I want you to understand something. If you won't communicate with me, if you won't trust me even a little, then whatever we do here is going to be limited. I can ease the symptoms. I can't heal what you won't let me see."

He still didn't look at me. His jaw stayed tight, his eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder, somewhere I couldn't follow.

"I'll come back tomorrow," I said, softer now, some part of me unable to stay as sharp as I wanted to be with him sitting there so clearly wrestling with something too heavy to name. "Same time. Think about what I said."

He nodded, barely, still not looking at me.

I left him there in the dim light of his quarters, the incense smoke still curling toward the ceiling behind me, and walked back out into the cold night air feeling more unsettled than I had any right to feel over a man who'd called me useless not two days before.

Whatever he was carrying, it was eating him alive from the inside. And some stubborn, foolish part of me had already decided I wasn't going to stop until I found out what it was.