Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 7: Open the Door

Elowen's POV

For the rest of my week in the healer's ward, Kael showed up every night with documents in hand and sat beside my bed signing them until I fell asleep. He never said he was doing it for me, and I never asked.

But every night his scent settled into the room with him, cedar and smoke and a sharp winter freshness underneath that my body recognized before my mind did, and the scratch of his pen put me under faster than any healer's tonic could have.

I couldn't figure him out. Whenever I started to think he might not be that bad, one cold remark would shatter it. And whenever I decided he was completely impossible, he'd show up with porridge or soft clothes or the quiet scratch of a pen at my bedside, and I'd hesitate all over again.

On the day I was discharged, Kael didn't come. Ronan was the one who walked into my room with his coat slung over one shoulder and that easy grin already in place.

"He's tied up in a council session," Ronan said as he picked up my bag before I could reach for it. "Asked me to bring you home first."

I smiled and thanked him and followed him out into the corridor where the late summer heat hit me like a wall the moment we stepped outside. The sun was so bright after a week indoors that I had to shield my eyes with my hand.

The warmth on my skin felt strange and almost too much after so many days of cool stone and herb-scented air.

Ronan's carriage was waiting at the front of the ward, a sleek black thing with polished brass fittings that drew stares from every healer and patient walking past.

"Sere, I've got plans tonight," he said once we were moving, his tone shifting into the casual warmth I was starting to recognize as his default. "I'd love to bring you along, but if Kael found out he'd gut me. So I'm taking you straight to the cabin."

I wasn't so sheltered that I didn't know what kind of plans he meant, the kind that involved taverns and pretty company and staying out until dawn.

"Ronan, are you scared of him too?"

He gave a visible shudder that was only half joking. "Every one of us younger cousins is. But honestly there's more respect than fear. Wherever Kael is, that's solid ground. The rest of us breathe easier knowing he's around."

I believed him because I'd felt it myself, that sense that the air got steadier when Kael was close and thinner when he wasn't.

"So did he say if he's coming back to the cabin tonight?"

"Didn't mention it. New Alpha of the Northern Reach with a territory to run and a hundred problems on his desk. His schedule's packed tighter than a wolf den in winter." Ronan glanced at me sideways. "Probably won't make it."

I went quiet for a moment and then asked before I could think better of it. "Does he go to the same kind of gatherings you do?"

Ronan laughed. "Kid, stay out of grown-up business."

By the time we reached the cabin it was already getting dark. Ronan rattled off a few reminders about locking the door and eating properly before heading off to his evening, and I stood in the doorway and watched his carriage disappear down the trail the same way I'd watched Kael's carriage disappear weeks ago.

The moment the door closed behind me Sable meowed and bounded straight into my arms from across the room.

I lifted her and blinked in surprise. "How did you get so heavy?"

A glance at her food bowl answered the question. He'd been filling it to the brim, three days' worth at least piled into a dish meant for one meal. I could picture Kael crouched over the bowl, dumping in an entire sack of dried fish because measuring portions for a cat was beneath a man who ran a territory.

The image made me laugh, and for a second the cabin felt warm.

Then the laugh faded and the quiet rushed back in. I sat on the floor with Sable in my lap and the cabin smelled like dust and cold stone and nothing else, no cedar, no smoke, no trace of him left behind.

In the ward Ronan had always been dropping by to c***k jokes, Stellan checked on me every afternoon, and Kael's presence alone had been enough to keep the loneliness from settling in too deep.

Now the cabin was empty and the silence pressed against my ears the way it always did when I was alone here. I scratched behind Sable's ears and she purred, but a cat's purr only fills so much of a room and the rest of it stayed hollow.

I tried not to think about whether Kael would come back tonight because he'd never actually said he was moving in, and hoping for it would only make the disappointment worse. But I couldn't help checking the door every few minutes, walking to the window and peering down the trail and then going back to the couch and telling myself to stop.

The candle burned lower and the trail stayed empty.

Somewhere far off in the pines a wolf howled, long and low, and another answered from deeper in the territory. The sound made the cabin feel smaller and my chest feel tighter because I couldn't answer back even if I wanted to.

I tried to distract myself by cooking, because I'd promised him I could and I wanted to prove it wasn't a lie. I found some vegetables in the cold store and pulled out a pan and got as far as heating oil before the first thing burned.

Then the second thing burned. Smoke filled the kitchen so thick that I had to throw open every window and fan the air with a cloth, and by the time I gave up the pan was ruined and the only evidence of my effort was a pile of charred scraps in the bin.

I cleaned up the mess, mopped the floor, and told myself at least nothing had actually caught fire.

By the time the moon hung full and white above the pines and the candle on my table had burned down to half its length, I gave up waiting and pressed the signal stone.

It pulsed warm in my palm three times before the connection opened. He didn't say a word.

"Hello?" I said softly, drawing in a slow breath to keep my voice from shaking. "You're really not coming back?"

Three seconds of silence passed, long enough for me to close my eyes and brace for the answer I didn't want.

Then his voice came through, low and slightly rough like he'd been talking all day and his throat was tired of it.

"Open the door."