Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 4: Do You Hate Me?

Elowen's POV

I woke up in a room I didn't recognize.

The ceiling was white stone instead of the rough wooden beams in the cabin, and the bed beneath me was softer than anything I'd slept on in weeks. There was a window to my left with pale light coming through thin curtains, and the air smelled like dried herbs and clean linen instead of pine smoke and porridge.

I tried to sit up and my arms shook so badly I barely got my elbows under me before I had to stop. My head felt like it was stuffed with wool and my mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of it.

Then I heard voices through the door.

The first one was Maren's, higher than I'd ever heard it and shaking. "She… doesn't eat much. Her blood sugar dropped, that's all."

The second voice made my stomach clench because I knew it instantly, low and cold and steady, the kind of voice that didn't need to be loud because everyone already knew to listen. Kael. "Doesn't look that simple to me."

Maren started talking faster, the words tumbling over each other like she was trying to get them all out before he stopped her. "She might be ill. She sits up all night staring at nothing. If I blow out the lanterns she screams. She can't stand the smell of meat, the first day I made broth and she drank it and threw everything up. She's barely eaten since then, just plain porridge, no real nourishment. Of course her blood sugar dropped."

There was a pause and then her voice went thin and desperate. "She's just… too fragile, Alpha Kael."

The silence that followed was long enough for me to count my own heartbeat three times before Kael broke it.

"Collect your pay," Kael said. "Leave."

"But I—"

"Now."

I heard footsteps, quick and uneven like someone trying not to run, and then a door opening and closing and then nothing.

My heart was pounding and I didn't know if it was because he was here or because he'd come too late or because some small stupid part of me was glad he'd come at all.

The door to my room opened and a man I'd never seen walked in. He was tall with sandy hair and an easy face that would have been handsome if he hadn't been frowning so hard at the chart in his hands.

He wore a healer's white tunic with the sleeves pushed up past his elbows and moved through the room the way someone does when they've done the same thing a thousand times.

"So you're awake," he said without looking up. "I'm Stellan. I'm the one who's been keeping you alive for the past few hours, which was harder than it should have been given that you're seventeen and not seventy."

He pulled a chair to my bedside and sat down and finally looked at me, and his frown softened into the kind of expression you'd use on a stray pup that had wandered in from the rain.

"Blood sugar collapsed. Malnourished. Sleep-deprived." He counted them off on his fingers. "And the rash on your chest from those cheap clothes is a textile allergy that should have been treated two weeks ago. A female healer applied a salve while you were out."

I pulled the blanket up higher without thinking.

Stellan noticed and held up both hands. "I didn't look. The female healer handled everything and reported it to me. That's all."

He stood and walked to the door and I heard him step into the hallway where Kael must have been standing because Stellan's voice dropped but not enough for me to miss what he said.

"So this is how you take care of her?" Kael didn't answer and Stellan kept going.

"Her blood sugar and the allergy are the surface problem. The real issue is what's going on in her head. She watched her parents die, Kael. She saw it happen."

His voice dropped lower but I could still hear every word. "And then you brought her to a new territory and left her alone in a cabin with a stranger who clearly pocketed half the coin you gave her and spent the rest on the cheapest fabric she could find."

"…I didn't ignore her."

"Money and a housekeeper aren't care. She needs someone she can rely on. Someone who stays." Kael said nothing and Stellan pressed harder.

"And it's obvious her mother raised her well. That housekeeper bought the cheapest clothes she could get away with and the fiber allergy spread across her entire chest—"

"You looked?" Kael's voice cut through so sharp I flinched from inside the room.

"A female healer examined her and reported it to me. And even if I had looked, I'm a healer. That's my work." Stellan didn't back down. "Have a female healer handle her care from now on if it makes you feel better. But the girl needs more than medicine."

I heard Kael exhale and then footsteps moving away from the door and then coming back, and when my door opened again it was him.

He looked the same as the last time I'd seen him, tall and sharp-featured and completely unreadable, except for one thing. His jaw was set tighter than usual, like he was holding back words he didn't know how to say.

I turned my face toward the window because I didn't want him to see what was in my eyes. I didn't even know what was in my eyes. Anger, maybe. Or relief. Or the worst one, hope.

He pulled a chair to my bedside and sat down and for a long time neither of us said anything. I could feel him looking at my back and I knew he could see how thin I'd gotten because the hospital gown hung off my shoulders like it was made for someone twice my size.

"Will you eat?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Do you… hate me?"

The question came out before I could stop it, quiet and raw, and I kept my face toward the window because if he said yes I didn't want to be looking at him when he did.

"No," he said.

"Then… are you not coming back to the cabin? Are you just going to keep hiring strangers to watch me?"

"I'll hire two next time. Better ones."

"Oh." I couldn't keep the disappointment out of my voice no matter how hard I tried.

"What is it that you want, Elowen?"

I finally turned to face him and those pale amber eyes were watching me the way they always did, steady and cold and impossible to read. But he'd asked, and nobody had asked me what I wanted in weeks, so I told him.

"I'm not used to living with strangers. Could you… move back in?"

"No." He said it so fast there was no room to breathe after it. "You're a young woman. It wouldn't be appropriate."

"But… aren't you family?"

We'd only met once before but my mother had talked about him so often that he was the one person I'd clung to when everything fell apart, the only name that felt like safety in a territory full of strangers.

Kael didn't answer. His face made it clear the conversation was over.

The rash on my chest chose that moment to flare and I pulled the blanket up to my chin and tried to scratch through the fabric without being obvious about it.

"Stop scratching," he said, low and firm.

I froze and then slowly let my hand drop. I looked at him for a long time, at those cold amber eyes and that hard jaw and the scars on his hands, and I thought about all the ways he could say no and all the reasons I should stop asking.

"Can we… live together?"