THE MATE I LEFT BEHIND

CHAPTER THREE

SELENE'S POV

The silence after Ivy's accusation stretched long enough that I could hear the rain starting outside.

Fat drops ticking against the window one at a time before they gathered into something heavier.

Kaelan hadn't moved.

His hand was still locked around my wrist like he needed the contact to believe any of this was real, and I understood the impulse completely, because some traitorous part of me needed it too.

"She's not dead," Kaelan said finally, before I could find any words of my own. "Obviously. Ivy, look at her. Really look."

"I am looking at her," Ivy said, voice shaking. "That's the problem."

Rourke Draven smiled like he'd walked into a party, not a hospital room stuffed with people who wanted him dead.

"Touchy," he said. "Someone really doesn't like you, Ashcombe. Or maybe they like your territory more than they dislike you personally."

"Get out," Ivy said, stepping between him and the bed, claws pricking through her fingertips.

Rourke's gaze slid past her to me. "And who's this. New doctor, or old ghost? Familiar bone structure, for a stranger."

My blood dropped ten degrees.

He knew.

Or knew enough to be dangerous.

"Dr. Voss," I said, offering nothing. "You're interrupting a medical exam."

Something calculating flickered behind his eyes.

He looked at Kaelan, amusement dropping off his face like a mask. "Watch your back. Whoever's coming for you isn't finished."

He left.

The room exhaled.

Kaelan still gripped my wrist. "Let go of the doctor, Kaelan. You're hurting her," Ivy said.

He wasn't.

He let go anyway, fingers dragging against my skin like he was releasing something he'd waited five years to hold.

"Everyone who isn't medical staff, out," I said.

"Neither of us is leaving," Kaelan said, and we both knew he didn't mean the room.

Ivy lingered in the doorway a moment longer, arms crossed so tight her knuckles had gone pale, looking at me like she was trying to decide whether five years of grief entitled her to hate me or whether five years of grief had earned her the right to demand an explanation instead.

In the end she said nothing.

She turned on her heel and left to fetch supplies neither of us actually needed, the door swinging shut behind her hard enough to rattle the frame.

That left just the two of us, and the particular silence that comes after a storm passes but before anyone's decided it's safe to speak again.

I busied my hands with gauze and antiseptic, grateful for the excuse not to look at him directly, because every time our eyes met I lost another inch of the careful distance I'd spent seven years learning how to hold.

I cleaned the wound in silence once Ivy left to fetch supplies neither of us needed. My hands remembered this poison. My body remembered him more.

"You left," Kaelan said quietly.

"I dove that river myself, more times than I can count, in weather that should have killed me. And you let me."

"I had to," I said, before Dr. Voss could stop Selene Ashcombe's mouth.

His breath caught. "Had to."

"Someone inside your pack tried to kill you five years ago, before the binding. I found proof. I couldn't prove who, but I knew enough as long as I was your weakness, you'd never be safe.

So I disappeared.

I made the whole valley believe I was dead, so whoever wanted you gone would think they'd already broken you, and stop."

"You let me grieve you. To protect me."

"Yes."

"And it didn't work."

His voice went flat.

"Someone just tried again."

"I know." My hands shook against his skin and I let them.

He reached up, slow enough that I could have stepped back, and pressed his palm to my cheek the way he used to.

"You're here now," he said, and it sounded like an accusation and a plea in the same breath.

The door slammed open.

Ivy again.

Terrified this time, adrenaline rolling off her sharp enough to taste.

"Kaelan. Marcus just collapsed the east fence line. Fresh wolf tracks, not ours, circling the property all night, scouting."

Kaelan was already moving, off the bed with a speed no injured man should manage.

"You can't get up," I snapped.

"Someone's on my land."

Gold flooded his eyes fully, burning bright at the edges.

"Then I'm coming with you," I said.

"Fine. You stay behind me."

Three steps into the hallway, the lights cut out entirely, and somewhere close enough to feel in my teeth, a wolf howled low, furious, a challenge aimed straight at the building.

I had spent one full minute, standing in that room with Ivy's fury pressed up against my sternum, trying to find words that would make five years sound like anything other than a betrayal.

I hadn't found them.

I still hadn't.

And now the entire building had gone black around us, and there wasn't time left to try.

"Talk later," Ivy said grimly, already shifting a hand into something halfway to claw, the argument shelved but not forgotten, filed away behind eyes that promised she'd collect on it eventually.

"Move now."

Kaelan's hand found my shoulder in the dark, steadying more than guiding, and for one strange, suspended second, with the whole building holding its breath around us, it felt exactly like it used to.

The two of us moving through danger together instead of apart, like five years and a fake funeral had never happened at all.

I hated how easily my body remembered how to fall into step beside him.

Like no time had passed.

Like the last five years were something I could simply set down the moment he needed me again.

Then the second howl came.

Closer than the first, and whatever comfort that second had offered vanished as fast as it arrived.