THE ALPHA’S WET NURSE

Chapter Three

"Hold still, Alpha."

Aldric said nothing.

He sat on the edge of the treatment table with his shirt off and his jaw set and watched Physician Corra work with the detached patience of a man who had learned long ago that showing discomfort was an invitation for people to talk about it.

Corra pressed a cloth soaked in salve against the gash running from his left shoulder blade down across his ribs and Aldric felt the burn of it travel the full length of the wound without moving a muscle.

"The healing is faster than it should be." Corra said, more to himself than to Aldric, leaning in to examine the edges of the wound more closely. "Significantly faster. Whatever was administered to you in those woods —" He paused.

“It wasn't a standard healing compound. I've never seen tissue repair at this rate."

"What was it?" Aldric asked, his eyes narrowed coldly.

Corra hesitated. "My best assessment?" He straightened.

"Wolf milk. Fresh. Administered directly." He cleared his throat. "It's the only thing that explains the rate of recovery and the composition I found in your system when you were brought in."

The room was very quiet.Three attendants stood along the far wall waiting to be useful, all of them studying the floor with great concentration. Nobody looked at the Alpha directly.

Nobody in this room ever looked at the Alpha directly unless he specifically required it — a habit that had developed organically over the years and that Aldric had never discouraged.

"Apply the ointment and get out." Aldric ordered with a stern voice. Corra worked quickly after that.The salve went on in three careful layers — the first to clean, the second to seal, the third a thicker compound that smelled of pine and something sharper underneath.

Aldric stared at the wall across from him and let the physician work and thought about the woods.

He remembered fragments. The ground. The cold. The sound of his own breathing becoming something he had to concentrate on. And then — warmth.

Unexpected and immediate, a hand at the back of his head, a voice saying something low and careful, and then nothing until he woke in his own bed with Corra standing over him looking deeply relieved.

He had caught only the briefest impression of her before his eyes closed. A figure. A back. Brown hair loose and dark against the night.Nothing else.

"Done." Corra said, stepping back. He began packing his bag with the practiced efficiency of a man who understood that his welcome had a precise expiration. "The wounds should be fully closed within two days. I would recommend rest, limited —"

"Thank you." Aldric said.

Corra recognised the tone. He picked up his bag, nodded once and left. The three attendants filed out behind him without being told.

The door had barely closed when it opened again.Hoger filled the frame the way he always did — broad, straight, with the permanent expression of a man carrying information he wished he didn't have to deliver.

He had been chief commander of the Ironveil pack warriors for eleven years. He had delivered bad news to Aldric many times. He was still not comfortable with it.He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Tell me." Aldric said with an air of authority.

."We searched the full perimeter." Hoger said. "Three miles in every direction from where we found you. We tracked every scent trail we could pick up from that location." He stopped.

"And?"

"Her scent disappeared about half a mile from the border." Hoger said. "Clean. No trail. Like she knew exactly where to stop." He paused. "We found nothing, Alpha. No identity. No direction. Nothing."

Aldric's hand closed slowly into a fist at his side.His jaw shifted. His eyes, which had been sharp and cold from the moment he woke, sharpened further in a way that made Hoger's posture adjust slightly without him meaning it to.

"Then keep searching." Aldric said quietly.

"Alpha, we've covered every —“

“Every residential quarter." Aldric said. "Every trading route. Every farm on the outer territory border." He looked at Hoger directly. "Did I say stop?"

"No." Hoger said."

Then keep searching." He said. "Expand the radius. Cross-reference with border crossing records for the past month. Someone knows who she is."

Hoger pressed his fist to his chest. "Yes, Alpha." He turned to leave.

"Hoger."He stopped.

"Quietly." Aldric said. "I don't want the territory knowing what I'm looking for." Hoger nodded once and left.

The silence lasted approximately four minutes.Then Elder Rowan knocked twice and let himself in without waiting — one of three people in Ironveil who had earned that particular privilege over a long enough period of time that Aldric had stopped addressing it.

Rowan was seventy, thin, with white hair he kept short and eyes that missed very little. He carried a leather folder under one arm and moved to the chair across from the treatment table and sat down like he had been invited.

"You look better than expected." He said.

"What's happened?" Aldric asked, his voice steady.

Rowan opened the folder. "Border tithe dispute in the southern quarter — two pack families claiming the same grazing land. It's been building for three weeks. It needs a ruling before it becomes something louder." He turned a page.

"The trade delegation from Harrow Pack arrives in ten days. They'll want a meeting within twenty four hours of arrival — I'd recommend you give them one. Letting them wait makes it political." Another page. "And the merchant guild is requesting a reduction on the winter levy. Their numbers are down and they're not wrong about it."

Aldric listened without interrupting."The grazing land." He said when Rowan finished.

"Survey the boundary and divide it at the natural waterline. Each family takes one side. Non-negotiable." He reached for the shirt folded on the table beside him and pulled it on carefully.

"The Harrow delegation gets their meeting on the second morning. Not the first — let them settle. And tell the merchant guild I'll review the levy numbers myself before the month ends."

Rowan was writing before Aldric had finished speaking."Anything else?" Aldric asked.

“Nothing that can't wait." Rowan closed the folder and stood. He looked at Aldric for a moment with the particular look of an old man deciding whether to say the thing he is thinking.

"You should rest." He said finally. "Properly.”

“I know." Aldric nodded.

Rowan left.

The room was quiet for the first time since he had woken. Aldric stood slowly and moved to the window. The castle grounds spread below him in the dark, the outer walls lit at intervals, the forest beginning at the far edge of the territory and running until it disappeared into night.

Somewhere out there in those trees a woman had knelt in the cold and the dark and kept him alive without knowing who he was.

Without asking anything. Without waiting to be thanked. His wolf had been restless since he woke — pacing, unsettled, turning in circles the way it did when it wanted something it couldn't name yet.

Aldric had felt that restlessness before. He knew better than to ignore it. He pressed one hand flat against the glass and looked out at the tree line.

The night was quiet. The stars were out, scattered and indifferent, the same stars that had been above those woods when she sat in the dark and held him together with nothing but her hands and her warmth and whatever it was she carried inside her that had pulled him back from somewhere he wasn't coming back from on his own.

He didn't know her name. He didn't know her face.He knew almost nothing. His hand pressed harder against the glass

“I will find you." He said quietly.

The stars said nothing back.