THE HEALER'S HIDDEN FANGS

CHAPTER 3

Runa's POV.

"Looking for me," I repeated, because my brain had apparently decided that stalling was better than actual speech.

"You disappeared after the infirmary yesterday."

Cassian stepped into the small room, and it felt smaller instantly, the air thinner, my chest tighter with every inch he closed.

"I wanted to apologize if I made you uncomfortable. I don't usually…"

He stopped, and ran a hand through his dark hair.

And for a second the powerful Alpha of Blackthorn looked almost boyish, almost unsure of himself.

"I don't usually feel things like that. Around anyone."

I forced myself stand, tucking the satchel with his father's journal behind my hip as casually as I could manage, praying the leather didn't creak, praying my heartbeat wasn't as loud to him as it suddenly was to me.

"It's fine," I said. "I should get back to the infirmary."

"Runa."

The way he said my name stopped me cold.

Not commanding, though Alphas were supposed to command. That was the only way I'd ever heard men like him speak.

Almost pleading.

Like he needed something from me but didn't have the right words for yet.

"You felt it too," he said. "Don't tell me you didn't.

I've seen mate bonds in other wolves, and I always thought it sounded like something poets exaggerate for songs. But yesterday, when I looked at you, something in my chest just…"

He pressed a fist against his sternum.

I watched a powerful, controlled man struggle for language the way I had struggled for breath the moment I first smelled him.

"It clicked into place. Like it had been waiting the whole time."

Every rational plan I had built over five years told me to lie.

Deny it.

Walk away.

Bury myself back in ash-root and juniper until the scent covered the pull. But standing there, close enough to see the faint gold flecks scattered through his amber eyes, the lie simply would not come.

"I felt it," I admitted.

The words cost me something I didn't have a name for.

Saying it out loud made it real in a way that terrified me more than the journal in my satchel ever could.

A confession is dangerous. A truth spoken between two mates is worse.

Something shifted in his face, relief, hope, a fragile kind of joy that made him look younger than his twenty-six years. He took a step closer, and my body, traitor that it was, leaned toward him before my mind caught up and yanked me back a full pace.

"I can't," I said quickly. "This can't happen."

"Why not?"

Because your father murdered my family, I thought, the words screaming behind my teeth, held back by five years of discipline that was currently the only thing standing between me and complete disaster.

"Because I have responsibilities. The infirmary. Patients. I don't have room in my life for this."

"For a mate bond." His voice had an edge now, not angry, just disbelieving. "You're telling me you want to ignore the single rarest thing our kind experiences because you're busy?"

"I'm telling you I need time." That much, at least, was entirely true. "Please. Just give me time."

He studied me for a long moment, and I forced myself to hold his gaze, to let him see nothing but a tired, overwhelmed healer and not the girl underneath frantically calculating exactly how much danger she was standing in.

"Time," he finally agreed, though his jaw stayed tight with the effort.

"But, Runa, I don't intend to just let this go. Whatever's holding you back, I want to understand it. I want to earn whatever trust I need to earn."

He stepped back, giving me the space I had asked for, and something about that restraint a powerful Alpha choosing patience over demand, cracked something soft and dangerous open in my chest.

"Don't," I whispered, more to myself than to him.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be kind. It makes this so much harder."

I didn't wait for his answer. I walked past him, close enough that our arms brushed, close enough that the hook in my chest pulled so hard I nearly stumbled, and I didn't let myself look back until I had rounded two corners and shut myself into the herb store closet, chest heaving, his father's journal burning against my hip like it already knew exactly what kind of trouble it had just become.

I didn't get five minutes of peace before Nadia found me there.

And one look at my face told her everything she needed to know.

"He knows something's wrong," she said, not a question.

"He knows I'm hiding something. He doesn't know what." I pulled the journal out with shaking hands and set it on the shelf between us. "I found this today. In the records room."

Nadia read the passage I pointed to, and I watched the blood drain slowly from her face.

"Runa," she said, very quietly. "This is proof. Actual proof."

"I know."

"What are you going to do with it?"

That was the question I had been avoiding since the moment I'd read those words. Five years, I had told myself the plan was simple, find proof, expose the truth, watch Blackthorn's council strip the Vane name of everything it stole from mine. Simple, clean, satisfying.

Except now there was a mate bond sitting in my chest, tugging toward the very throne I meant to burn down, and I no longer knew which version of myself would win in the end.

"I don't know," I admitted.

Nadia's eyes stayed kind, but her next words were not gentle at all. "You had better figure it out fast, because Garrick's been asking questions about you all week, and I don't think that's a coincidence anymore."

My blood went cold.

Garrick.

Cassian's beta.

His oldest friend.

A wolf with a nose for lies sharper than anyone else's in this entire territory.

If he was already asking questions, my time was running out faster than I had ever let myself believe.

I closed my eyes and thought about the journal, about my mother's laugh, about the fire that had taken everything except my nerve.

Whatever came next, I would not be the one who ran first.

Not again.