Chapter 14
1507 Words
MAETHYS POV
The question felt strange after everything else. My age never mattered before.
“Eighteen.” I said.
Her face scrunched up a bit. “When did you turn eighteen?”
I frowned. “Last night, I think.”
Heather went very still.
The clock ticked again.
I shifted under the blanket. “Why?”
She stood too quickly.
“I’m going to check on those results.”
My chest tightened. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” She forced a small smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No, honey. You didn’t do anything wrong. Eat. I’ll be right back.”
Then she left.
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
I stared at it.
The room felt quieter after she was gone. The kind of quiet that made every small sound too noticeable—the scrape of my spoon against the bowl, the faint hum of the lights, the steady ticking of the clock.
I tried to keep eating.
My stomach still wanted food, but my mind had turned sharp and restless.
Eighteen.
Last night.
Valik had asked if I knew what it meant to be his mate. Heather had asked when I turned eighteen. The clock had mattered somehow, though no one had explained why.
I was tired of pieces.
Tired of everyone else seeing patterns while I sat in the middle of them like bait in a trap.
I set the spoon down.
The door opened.
I looked up, expecting Heather.
Zach stepped inside instead.
He shut the door behind him.
Not loudly.
A practiced, intentional quiet.
The door eased into place without a sound.
My fingers tightened around the edge of the tray.
He looked different without the others beside him. Still composed. Still controlled. But colder. His eyes moved over the room once, taking in the food, the bed, the blanket over my lap, the way I had gone still.
Then they settled on me.
He moved towards me, but stopped.
He was close enough to block the only easy exit.
Like he didn’t want me to run out the door.
I was being contained.
He had done this before. I could tell by how little effort it took.
I felt the threat of it in my bones.
“What are you really doing here?” he asked, voice dropped low and harsh.
I stared at him, blank-faced, uncertain what he was asking about.
My hands trembled against the tray. My heart hammered hard enough to make the food in my lap shake.
I opened my mouth, but thought better of it and shut it again.
His jaw tightened.
“Speak!”
The word cracked through the room.
I flinched so hard the tray shifted. Broth sloshed over the rim, hot against my hand.
Words tumbled out before I could arrange them.
“I’m getting checked. Heather brought me from—”
“I don’t mean this room,” he cut in, already calm again. “I mean our pack.”
The word ‘our’ landed like a line drawn in dirt.
Something tight pulled low in my chest—not pain, not exactly. Just a quiet sting I hadn’t expected. I knew I hadn’t been invited. I knew I didn’t belong.
But hearing it framed like that made it final in a way I hadn’t prepared for.
I swallowed. “I didn’t come looking for a pack. I was confused. When I first shifted, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I just needed help.”
His eyes sharpened a fraction.
“And you found it,” he said.
Not a question.
I nodded slowly.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “You find help. Shelter. Protection.” His head tilted. “But you didn’t come back for your mate.”
The words slid under my ribs and twisted.
“I didn’t know,” I said too quickly. “I didn’t even know what a mate bond was until Val—”
“That’s Alpha to you.”
The correction cracked sharp through the room.
Heat crept up my neck.
I hadn’t known there were rules.
Valik hadn’t said—
Zach took my silence as confirmation.
“So,” he continued, voice low, controlled, “you ran. Then you came back. But not for him. Just for yourself.”
Something about the way he said it made my stomach turn. Like I had stepped into a snare I hadn’t seen.
“I didn’t think of it like that,” I said honestly. “I’ve survived on my own before. I know how to do that. If this was about survival, I wouldn’t have come back at all.”
That was the part that confused me most.
If I could live alone—had lived alone—why had I been so certain they would help?
Was it the pull I felt?
Or was it something simpler?
The need not to be alone.
Zach’s fingers tapped once against his thigh.
His eyes moved to the door, then back to me.
“We questioned the men who came after you.”
My breath caught.
“They weren’t rogues,” he said. “Not really. They were sent.”
The room seemed to tilt slightly.
“Sent by who?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
But the answer sat in his eyes before he said anything else.
Suspicion.
Not of them.
Of me.
“I don’t know who they are,” I said.
His expression didn’t change. “Convenient.”
“I don’t.”
“Men cross our border chasing you. One escapes and comes back for you. Heather is nearly killed. Now we learn this was organized. That someone wanted you dead before you ever reached us.” His jaw tightened. “And you expect me to believe you know nothing?”
The food in my stomach turned heavy.
“I don’t have answers,” I said. “I wish I did.”
“Wishing doesn’t protect a pack.”
The words hit harder than I wanted them to.
He stepped closer.
Not much.
Enough.
Pressure moved with him, the same sharp weight I remembered from the clinic floor. Not as overwhelming now that I was human and awake, but still enough to make my shoulders tense and my breath thin.
“Stop keeping secrets,” he said. “Or you can disappear in the night again. And next time—he won’t go looking for you.”
My breath caught.
Go looking for you.
My heart stumbled, once, hard enough to notice.
He had searched for me.
The thought bloomed sharp and unwanted—hope threaded through fear. I didn’t know why he would have. I didn’t know what it meant.
But the idea that I had not been forgotten hurt more than it comforted.
“I’m not keeping secrets,” I said, voice shaking despite my effort to steady it. “I just don’t have answers. I knew I had to come back. I don’t know how much the mate bond influenced that—I didn’t even know it existed. I just knew I wasn’t safe out there anymore.”
Zach watched me for a long moment, expression unreadable.
“I don’t want trouble,” I said softly. “I don’t want to bring danger here. I just wanted somewhere to be. Somewhere I wasn’t alone.”
The room felt smaller with every word.
The tray sat heavy in my lap. The food smelled too rich now, too warm, too normal for the way my chest had started to ache.
Zach’s gaze flicked to the door.
Footsteps approached.
The change in him was instant.
His shoulders relaxed. His face softened. The hostility rolling off him vanished so completely I almost wondered if I had imagined it.
The door opened behind him, light spilling in from the hall like nothing had changed.
Heather stepped inside with a folder in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, gaze moving between us. “Beta Zach. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Just checking in,” he said.
His voice had shifted. Calm. Respectful. Familiar.
“A few follow-up questions.”
Because he was not a stranger here.
He was trusted.
Heather’s eyes flicked to me. “Maethys?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Zach gave me one last look.
Not long.
Not obvious.
Enough.
“Rest,” he said. “You’ll need it.”
Then he walked out.
The door stayed open after him, but the room felt smaller than it had with it closed.
Heather said my name again.
Softer this time.
I looked down at the blanket over my lap. At the tray of food gone cold. At the borrowed clothes folded on the chair.
Borrowed.
All of it.
I wasn’t being sent away.
Not yet.
But I was being watched.
And whatever safety I had found here, it wasn’t mine.
It came with conditions.
Conditions I did not understand.
Conditions someone else could decide I had broken.
- Writer
