The healer and the broken alpha

Chapter two: two weeks away !

Night had nearly fallen by the time Diera's wounds finished closing. Healing her hand and ribs had drained what little strength she had left, and she could barely stand by the time headlights swept up the road. She flinched into the dark, and when the car door opened and a figure approached, she cowered and knocked her bicycle over in fright.

"Hey. It's okay. It's just me," Noah said.

He helped her into his car, stowed her bag, and settled into the driver's seat without pushing her to talk. They sat in silence for a while before she finally spoke.

"It was the pack again."

"What did they do?"

"The usual. Hurt me, then make me heal myself. The worst part is the ones who did it are the same people I grew up calling family."

Noah checked the time and started the car. When Diera winced trying to buckle her seatbelt with her still-tender hand, he reached over to do it for her — and looked up to find their faces inches apart. His hand brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

"You're a beautiful girl, Diera," he said, leaning closer, eyes dropping to her lips.

She froze — until he burst out laughing and pulled back. "Calm down. I'm not going to kiss you. Though from the way your heart was racing, that would've been your first."

Mortified, she shoved his shoulder. "There's no shame in saving your first kiss for your mate!"

"Oh, you're one of *those* girls," he said, pulling back onto the road, sarcasm thick in his voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The ones who wait around for a mate to sweep them off their feet."

"Sorry for believing in love. A mate isn't something I'll find in this pack, which means he's out there somewhere. When we find each other, there won't be anyone else on his mind. Just me. I want someone who'll hold me close at night."

She caught a flicker of guilt cross his face as the pack house came into view, but brushed it off. At her door, he lingered.

"Diera, you're a nice person," he said, looking down. "I'm sorry."

He was gone before she could ask why.

Inside, the house was quiet — the boys out on a run, Kate likely already asleep. In the dark kitchen she hurled a bowl of apples at a silhouette by the fridge before realizing it was Alpha Neal.

"Diera, care to explain the assault by fruit?" he teased.

Neal was the closest thing she had to a father — the one who'd wiped her tears when the bullying started at sixteen, before she'd learned to hide it from him entirely. They ate together on the couch, and for a little while, the day's cruelty faded.

It didn't stay gone.

The next day, leaving her last lecture, a boy called out that he'd be happy to hold her "in many different ways all night long," his friends howling with laughter as they walked off. A girl mocked whether "little Diera" got lonely at night. Then her phone buzzed — a video message. It was a recording of her private conversation with Noah, overlaid on a picture of her asleep, hair a mess, mouth open, captioned *Desperate to Mate.*

Tony and Andrew clapped Noah on the shoulder. Dean and Ryan shook his hand like he'd earned it. "You're officially welcome at Northern while you're with the White Thorn Pack," someone said. Noah smiled and soaked it in.

"You didn't actually think he was your friend?" Andrew said to her.

"It was his initiation task. He delivered," Ryan added, and the courtyard erupted into laughter again.

Diera looked at Noah just long enough to watch his smile falter, then turned away, carrying the humiliation with her for days. Every hallway held a fresh comment about mates she'd never have. It reopened wounds she thought she'd sealed over — not the routine bullying, which she'd grown numb to, but the fact that she'd let herself trust someone, and he'd sold that trust for popularity.

Days later, a group of girls cornered her near the food court, smiles sharp as knives.

"I just wanted to say, as a concerned pack mate," one of them started, resting a hand on Diera's shoulder, "you have no chance of finding a mate. Your father was weak — couldn't even protect his family from humans. You don't have a face your dead mother could love. We'll grow into strong wolves with mates and pups while you die alone. Do yourself a favor and let that dream go."

The girl's friends giggled behind her, delighted. It wasn't the first time someone had said these things, but hearing her dead parents used as a weapon still landed like a blow. Diera felt the tears come before she could stop them, yanked her hood up, and pushed through the circle that had closed around her, laughter chasing her the whole way out of the food court.

She ran until the gravel path swallowed the noise behind her, slowing only when she reached a rock hidden deep in the trees. She climbed onto it and let herself cry — not for the insult this time, but for her parents, straining to hold the shape of her father's smile and her mother's eyes in her mind before the memory could fade any further, the way it seemed to a little more every year.

The forest had always been the one place that asked nothing of her. As a child she'd run beneath her father's wolf form for hours, climbing onto his back when her legs gave out, watching the trees blur past while the wind caught her hair. She hadn't had to prove anything to him. She hadn't had to prove anything to anyone. Those were the only memories she trusted completely — because no one had been alive since to twist them into something else.

By the time she made her way home, the driveway was full of cars. A pack meeting. She slipped off her shoes, hoping to reach her room unseen — Dean had made it clear a year ago, with a scar to prove it, that she wasn't welcome at these meetings.

"Diera. Join us once you've put your things away," Alpha Neal said from the head of the table.

Dean's jaw tightened. "Alpha, she's not a wolf. This meeting doesn't need her."

"Watch your tone. I am the Alpha, not you, and I don't need your help running this pack. Quiet down," Neal said, before turning back to her, voice gentler. "Come down right away."

She changed quickly and returned to a seat left open beside Neal, directly across from Dean's glare.

The murmur around the table died the moment she walked in, every head turning toward her before drifting back to whatever they'd been discussing. As the Alpha's daughter she was technically owed a seat at every meeting, but Dean had made sure, more than once, that she understood how unwelcome she was here.

"We've received a request from the Black Moon Pack," Neal began once she'd settled in. "You've all heard of the Shadows — a rogue pack formed centuries ago, back when the Goddess first made wolves. Alpha Jagger believes there's an informer among his own people, and with the Shadows expected to move during the Black Moon Festival, he's asked for backup if the attack comes."

"How will you respond?" an elder asked.

"I'll lead twenty-five warriors myself, along with medical aid — which Diera will oversee. Beta Rick stays here in my place."

Dean shot up, chair clattering back. "Why send her when I could lead the warriors and have the aid delivered separately? She's not even a wolf! I'm next in line — let me go!"

Neal's growl silenced the room. "Sit down. You have no right to order me. You're being considered for Alpha only because no one else has inherited the gene — you are a suggestion, not a decision. And unlike you, Diera is a healer." Dean sank back, jaw clenched, submitting under his father's stare.

"Diera, we leave at six tomorrow morning. I've arranged two weeks' leave from Northern. Pack a bag," Neal said. "Meeting adjourned."

As the elders filed out, Dean lingered just long enough to lean toward her, voice low and vicious. "Try anything in the next two weeks, and I promise you won't recognize yourself when I'm done."

Diera shut her bedroom door and sank against it, breath shaking. Two weeks away from home. From Northern. From her brothers. From all of it.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, she found herself smiling at the empty bag waiting on her bed.