Rejected by My Alpha Mate: My Alpha's Regret

Too Close

The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and old blood, and under both, faint but constant, the sour edge of wounds that refused to close the way they should.

Ivy counted six cots occupied, warriors in various states of misery, bandages dark in places they shouldn't have still been bleeding this many days out. A pack healer Ivy didn't recognize hovered near the far bed, young, overwhelmed, relief flooding her face the second she spotted Ivy in the doorway.

"You're the one Elias found," the healer said. "Thank the moon. I've done everything I know and it's not enough. These wounds — they're not infected, not exactly, but they won't seal. It's like something's actively working against the stitches."

Ivy crossed to the nearest cot before she'd even fully processed the words, old instinct taking over. The warrior on it was young, barely past his teens, his shoulder torn open in a jagged line that should have knitted itself closed within a day for a wolf his age. Instead it wept steadily through fresh gauze, angry and raw at the edges.

"Rejection wound," Ivy murmured, half to herself, pressing careful fingers to the skin around it. "Not from a blade. This came from a bond break, didn't it? Pack bond, not mate bond."

The healer blinked. "How did you—"

"I've had practice recognizing what a bond tearing does to a body." Ivy didn't look up, didn't let herself glance toward the doorway where she could feel Kai still standing, watching, silent in a way that pressed on her more than words would have. "When a warrior's pack bond gets severed mid-fight — banishment, death of the wolf they were bonded through, anything violent enough — physical wounds taken in that same window heal wrong. The body's too busy handling the psychic tear to prioritize the physical one."

"That's exactly it." The healer looked at her like she'd just performed a miracle instead of stated a diagnosis. "How do we fix it?"

Ivy took a breath, and felt the answer arrive the way it always did lately — not as knowledge exactly, more like her hands simply knowing what to do before her mind caught up. She placed both palms flat over the wound, closed her eyes, and let whatever lived inside her do the thing it had been doing on strangers in the back of a pharmacy for over a year now.

Warmth spread from her palms first, then something deeper, a pull she felt all the way down to her spine. The warrior on the cot gasped, back arching slightly, and beneath her hands Ivy felt the wound's edges knit together in real time, faster than any stitch, faster than anything a normal healer should have been able to do.

When she opened her eyes, the gash had closed to a thin pink line.

The room had gone silent. Ivy became abruptly aware of every set of eyes on her — the healer, staring like she'd witnessed something sacred, two other warriors half-sitting up on their cots despite their own injuries, and Kai, still in the doorway, his expression unreadable in a way that somehow felt louder than shock would have.

"How," the healer breathed, "are you doing that?"

"I don't fully know." It was the most honest answer Ivy had given anyone in three years. "It started about a year ago. I've never told anyone what it actually is, because I don't have a name for it either."

"You need to see the others," the healer said, already moving toward the next cot. "Please. If you can do that for all of them—"

Ivy nodded and got to work.

It took nearly two hours to move through every warrior in the wing. By the fourth cot, exhaustion had settled into her bones, heavier than the physical work should have accounted for, like the gift pulled from somewhere deeper than muscle. Kai never left the doorway. She felt him there the entire time, a low, steady presence at the edge of her awareness, and somewhere around the fifth cot she stopped bothering to pretend she didn't notice.

The last warrior was the worst of them — an older beta with a wound along his ribs that had gone an ugly shade of grey at the edges, infection setting in on top of whatever refused to let it heal properly. Ivy pressed her hands to it and felt the pull go deeper than it had all night, her vision swimming for a half second before she forced it back under control.

"Ivy." Kai's voice, close, closer than she'd registered him moving. She looked up to find him crouched at the other side of the cot, closer than strictly necessary, gold bleeding into his eyes with something that looked like worry he had no right to still feel for her. "You're pale. You need to stop."

"One more and he's fine." Her voice came out thinner than she wanted.

"Ivy."

"I said I've got it—"

Her vision tunneled without warning, the room tilting hard to one side, and the last thing she registered clearly was Kai's hands catching her before she hit the floor, one arm banded solid around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head like she was something breakable he'd sworn to protect a lifetime ago and never stopped meaning it.

"I've got you," he said, low, rough, his mouth far too close to her ear for either of their sanity. "I've got you. Breathe."

She should have pulled away. Every instinct she'd spent three years building told her to pull away, to put distance between herself and the heat of his body wrapped around hers, the scent of him flooding every rational thought out of her head. Instead her hands found the front of his shirt and gripped, and for one long, terrible, honest moment, she let herself lean into him instead of fighting it.

His arms tightened. His breath went unsteady against her temple, and she felt the low, involuntary rumble build in his chest — the sound wolves made only for their mates, an ancient, possessive thing neither of them had asked for and neither of them, apparently, could fully suppress.

"Ivy." Her name again, wrecked this time, barely a whisper. "Tell me to let go and I will."

She didn't say anything. She hated herself for not saying anything.

Somewhere behind them, the healer cleared her throat, deliberately loud, and the spell shattered. Ivy pulled back so fast she nearly stumbled again, and Kai let her go instantly, hands raised slightly like he was showing her he could be trusted not to grab again even though every line of his body screamed the opposite.

"I'm fine," Ivy said, too fast, refusing to look at him. "I just used more than I should have. I need food and rest, that's all."

"I'll have something sent to your room." Kai's voice had gone carefully flat, the Alpha mask sliding back into place even as his eyes stayed locked on her, hungry in a way he clearly hadn't managed to fully lock down yet. "You have my word, Ivy. Nobody in this pack will bother you while you're here."

"Except you," she said quietly, before she could stop herself.

Something flickered across his face — not denial. He didn't even try to deny it.

"Except me," he agreed. "I never said I'd be able to keep my distance. I said no one would bother you. I intend to be the exception to my own rule, whether either of us likes it."

He left before she could find an answer to that, and Ivy stood in the middle of the medical wing with her pulse hammering and her whole body still humming from the ten seconds she'd spent wrapped in his arms, furious at herself for how badly she wanted them back around her.