The Alpha's Rejected Mate

Chapter 4 HIS REGRET

CHAPTER 4

His Regret

By the time Lira reached the stronghold, the smoke had thinned to a grey haze and the fighting, whatever it had been, was already over — but the aftermath told its own story. Scorched grass along the northern fence line. Splintered timber where the outer gate had taken a hit it wasn't built to survive. Pack warriors moving in the particular hurried quiet of people who'd been frightened and hadn't finished being frightened yet.

She was still catching her breath at the edge of the courtyard when Kade found her.

He looked different than he had on the dais four nights ago — not less powerful, but less certain, a tightness around his eyes that hadn't been there when he'd stood in torchlight and rejected her in front of the entire pack. There was a shallow cut along his jaw, already healing the way wolf wounds did, and his shirt was torn at the shoulder in a way that suggested the fighting had gotten closer to him than an Alpha's heir generally allowed.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, which was such an infuriating thing to say to her, of all people, after everything, that Lira felt her spine straighten on pure reflex.

"I live here," she said. "In case you'd forgotten, in between rejecting me and apparently getting attacked."

Something crossed his face — not quite a flinch, but close. "I haven't forgotten anything about that night," he said, low, like the words cost him something to say out loud. "Lira. I need to talk to you. Not here."

She wanted to say no. She wanted, with a purity of feeling that surprised her, to turn on her heel and walk away and let him stand there with whatever he'd come to say still lodged in his throat, the way he'd let her walk away with her humiliation still lodged in hers. But the marks on her arm were warm again, restless, and some instinct she didn't fully trust yet told her this conversation mattered more than her pride wanted it to.

They ended up in the small council room off the main hall, empty at this hour, lit by a single lamp. Kade shut the door behind them and stood with his back against it for a moment, like a man bracing himself.

"I rejected you," he said, "because a mating bond marks both people to anyone who knows how to look for it. And four months ago, my father started receiving intelligence that Ashgrove was hunting for something specific inside Emberfall's bloodlines — something they were willing to break the border truce over. I didn't know what. I still don't, not entirely. But I knew that if the Choosing Moon named an unmarked, untrained mate for the future Alpha, and Ashgrove found out before she was strong enough to defend herself, she wouldn't survive the year."

Lira stared at him. "So you decided, alone, without asking me, that humiliating me in front of the entire pack was the kinder option."

"I decided," Kade said, and there was real anger in his voice now, though she understood, distantly, that it wasn't aimed at her, "that a public rejection was the only lie big enough to make Ashgrove believe you weren't worth their attention. I have hated every hour since that ceremony. I want you to know that. I don't expect it to matter. But I want you to know it."

The silence after that stretched long enough that Lira could hear her own pulse in her ears.

"It would have mattered," she said finally, quietly, "if you'd trusted me enough to tell me before you did it in front of everyone I know."

Kade didn't argue with that. She almost wished he had — it would have been easier to stay angry at a man who defended himself than one who simply absorbed the accusation and let it land.

"Whatever your reasoning was," she said instead, "it clearly didn't work. Something attacked this pack in broad daylight."

"It gets worse." Kade's jaw tightened. "The scouts who survived the attack said the raiders weren't after territory. They breached the fence line, took losses doing it, and retreated the moment they realized whatever they were looking for wasn't in the northern quarter." He met her eyes, and whatever was in his expression made the warmth in her arm flare hotter, sharper, almost painful. "They were chanting a name while they fought, Lira. Yours."

The room seemed to tilt slightly around her. "That's not possible. Nobody outside Emberfall even knows who I am."

"They do now," Kade said grimly. "Which means either someone inside this pack told them, or whatever changed in you after that ceremony was loud enough for Ashgrove to hear from across the border." He pushed off the door, closing the distance between them for the first time since the rejection, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his gaze. "I need to know what happened to you in the Hollow Woods. All of it. Because if my enemies already know more about what you are than I do, that's not a gap I can afford to leave open."

Lira looked at him — this man who had broken something in her on purpose, for reasons that were starting to look less like cruelty and more like a desperate, badly-executed attempt at protection — and felt the old anger and the new fear tangle together into something she didn't have a name for yet.

"Help me first," she said. "Tell me what you know about Moonfire, and I'll tell you what I remember about those woods."

Something flickered in Kade's gold eyes — surprise, maybe, or the first flicker of something warmer he clearly hadn't given himself permission to feel yet. "You already know the word," he said slowly. "Moonfire."

"I know the word. I don't know what it means for either of us." She held his gaze, refusing to be the first one to look away. "But I'm starting to think you already do."

Kade didn't answer. He didn't have to — the sudden stillness in his face, the way his eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second to the sleeve covering her marked arm, told her everything his silence was trying to hide.