Claimed By The Hidden Alpha

Chapter Six

LYRA

Consciousness returns like drowning in reverse—each breath dragging me up through layers of fever dreams until I break the surface gasping.

The first sensation is weight. My bones feel like they've been filled with lead, each finger a monument to exhaustion. Then comes the dryness—throat scraped raw, lips cracked, tongue thick and useless against the roof of my mouth. The simple act of swallowing becomes Herculean.

Herbs saturate the air. Feverfew's bitter edge mingles with lavender, honey, and something medicinal that burns my nostrils. Beneath it all lurks the antiseptic tang of the medical wing, that particular cocktail of bleach and fear-sweat that no amount of sage can mask.

Sound filters through the fog. A chair creaking. Pages turning. Someone crying—soft, muffled sobs that might be relief or grief or both. The normal sounds of pack life drift from beyond the door: footsteps in the hall, distant laughter, the lunch bell ringing three times.

My eyelids might as well be welded shut. The first attempt to open them fails completely. The second manages a crack of light that sends pain lancing through my skull. On the third try, the world swims into focus like watercolors bleeding across wet paper.

White ceiling tiles. Fluorescent lights dimmed to twilight. The familiar crack in the corner plaster that looks like a wolf running. I'm in the medical wing's isolation room, the one reserved for serious cases.

"Easy, child. Don't try to move yet."

Nana's face materializes above me, and I've never seen her look so old. New lines bracket her mouth, and her eyes carry the kind of exhaustion that comes from keeping vigil too long. Her fingers ghost across my forehead, cool against fever-hot skin, and I catch a flash of her thoughts before she realizes and pulls back—three days, too long, thought we'd lost her, stubborn girl just like her mother—

Three days.

The knowledge hits like cold water. Three days unconscious while the world kept spinning. Three days while he—

I try to sit up. My body has other ideas. The room tilts violently, and my stomach lurches, threatening to expel whatever nothing it contains. Nana's hands guide me back, gentle but implacable.

"None of that foolishness. You've been burning yourself from the inside out. The fever only broke an hour ago."

My hands feel like they belong to someone else as I sign: Riley?

"Safe. In the guest quarters with Earl." She reads my next question in the tremor of my fingers. "Yes, he made it across the border. The strike team brought him and one of the scientists from that awful place."

His father?

Her expression crumbles at the edges. "Gone, child. You knew that."

I did. Felt Michael Stoker's last breath through the mate bond, tasted his blood in my mouth as surely as if I'd been there. But confirmation sits like stones in my chest.

"The boy is grieving. Angry. Nearly burned down Earl's study yesterday." Something almost like amusement flickers across her weathered face. "Your paintings didn't quite capture that particular talent."

Fire. Like mother, like son. I remember Serenity's face from the vision, remember how the snow melted around the basket she left. So much power in that bloodline, so much pain.

Can I see him?

"Absolutely not. You've been comatose for three days, child. Your body needs rest, not whatever foolishness you're planning."

But I'm already moving, slower this time. My muscles feel like overcooked pasta, but I manage to swing my legs over the bed's edge. The floor seems very far away.

"Lyra Springfield, you get back in that bed this instant."

I shake my head, immediately regretting it when the world spins. But the pull is too strong now. Three days of dreams where he calls my name, three days of feeling him pace the guest quarters like a caged wolf. I need to see him breathing. Need to know he's real and whole and here.

Please.

"Moon save me from stubborn omegas." But she's already reaching for the robe hanging behind the door, the one that smells like home and safety. "Five minutes. And I'm coming with you."

Standing requires negotiation with gravity. My knees buckle immediately, but Nana catches my elbow through the robe's fabric, steadying me without skin contact. We've perfected this dance over twenty-three years—her love always filtered through cloth to protect me from the chaos of her thoughts.

The hallway stretches like a tunnel. Each step costs more than I have to give, but I keep moving. Pack members pass, offering quiet greetings. Their relief at seeing me upright fills the air like perfume—Tom from the kitchens, Ruby who teaches the cubs, Oliver with his arms full of firewood. News of my collapse traveled fast. News of my recovery will travel faster.

"He's been asking about you," Nana says quietly as we navigate the stairs. "Earl told him about the healer who knew he was in danger. The boy has questions."

Questions I have no answers for. How do you explain recognizing someone's soul before meeting their face? How do you tell someone they're your mate when they're drowning in grief for the only father they've known?

The common room door stands open. His scent hits me first—pine smoke and barely leashed rage, grief so thick it has its own presence. Underneath runs something wilder, something that makes my omega instincts purr. Power. Raw, untrained, magnificent power.

He stands at the window with his back to us, silhouetted against afternoon light. Taller than my paintings suggested—six-four at least, shoulders broad enough to carry the world's weight. His dark curls catch gold from the sun, and when he turns—

The mate bond snaps taut between us, electric and undeniable.

Green eyes meet silver, and everything else disappears. Not the gold of his wolf, but human eyes filled with loss and confusion and something else. Recognition sparking to life, a question he doesn't know how to ask.

"You're awake." His voice rolls through me like thunder, exactly as I'd imagined. Deep, rough around the edges from exhaustion or tears or both. "They said you were sick because of me."

My hands move before thought forms: Not your fault.

He watches my signs with those impossible eyes, and I see the frustrated furrow between his brows. "I don't understand sign language. I'm sorry."

"She says it's not your fault," Nana translates, her voice carefully neutral. "This is Lyra, our healer. She's the one who saw you were in danger."

"Saw?" He takes a step closer, and I have to lock my knees to keep from swaying toward him like a flower toward sun. "How could you see something ten miles away?"

Visions, I sign, watching him track the movement of my hands. I see things sometimes. Things that might happen.

"And you saw me?" Raw need in his voice—need for answers, for understanding. "At the facility?"

I nod, not trusting my hands to stay steady enough for complex signs.

"But how did you know to look? Earl said you warned them before the rogues even attacked. That doesn't make sense unless—" He stops mid-sentence, nostrils flaring as he scents the air. "Why do you smell familiar?"

The mate bond pulses between us, begging to be acknowledged. But he's standing there in borrowed clothes with his father's blood still under his fingernails metaphorically speaking, drowning in a world that shouldn't exist. The last thing he needs is a mute omega claiming him.

We should go, I sign to Nana, even though leaving feels like tearing off my own skin. He needs space.

"What did she say?" His eyes never leave mine, green boring into silver like he can find answers in my irises.

"She thinks we should give you space."

"No." The word cracks out sharp enough to cut. He seems to catch himself, runs a hand through those dark curls. "I mean, please. I have questions. About what happened, about what you saw. They tell me you saved my life."

The strike team saved you.

"Because you warned them. Because you knew somehow." Frustration bleeds through his voice. "None of this makes sense. Werewolves, visions, my birth mom leaving me on hospital steps. And you—" He stops again, that confused recognition flickering across his face like heat lightning. "Have we met before?"

The lie would be easier. Shake my head, let him think the familiarity is just wolf recognizing wolf. But I've never been good at easy, and the truth burns too hot to swallow.

Raleigh. Six months ago.

Nana translates, and his whole body goes rigid. Every muscle locks as the memory surfaces.

"Raleigh." He breathes the word like a prayer, like revelation. "Outside the university. January. I attended a seminar-- You were there with two women, and our eyes met, and I—" His breath catches, chest rising sharp. "I thought I was losing my mind. Couldn't stop thinking about that moment for weeks."

My heart hammers hummingbird-fast against my ribs. He remembers. He felt it too, even if he doesn't understand what it was.

"That's when everything started getting worse. The dreams, the hunting, the fires." He's piecing it together, and I watch realization dawn across his face like sunrise. "It was you. In my dreams, there was always a woman with silver eyes who never spoke. Who watched me from shadows and reached out but never quite touched. That was you."

I nod, tears building that I refuse to let fall. Not here, not now, not when he's looking at me like I'm the answer to questions he didn't know how to ask.

"The strike team said you collapsed when they brought me across the border. That your fever spiked to one-oh-eight, same as mine during shifts." His voice drops to barely above a whisper, intimate despite the distance between us. "Why? Why are you connected to me like this?"

The truth burns in my throat, begging to be signed. Three little words that would change everything. But Luna Miranda appears in the doorway before I can decide whether to damn us both with honesty.

"Lyra, you shouldn't be up yet." Her tone brooks no argument, Luna authority wrapped in maternal concern. "Back to bed. Now."

Five more minutes, I plead, hands desperate.

"No. You've been in a coma for three days. Your body needs rest." She looks at Riley, expression softening with the particular gentleness she reserves for broken things. "You can talk more when she's stronger. I promise."

He looks ready to argue, jaw clenching in a way that makes the resemblance to Earl even stronger. But something in Miranda's face stops him. Even humans raised outside pack dynamics recognize that particular authority.

"Will you..." He pauses, seems to gather courage from somewhere deep. "Will you come back? When you're better? I need to understand what's happening to me, and everyone here speaks in riddles and half-truths, but you—you knew. Before any of this started, you knew."

Tomorrow, I sign, even though I want to sign always and yours and please don't make me leave.

"She'll come find you tomorrow," Nana translates, though I suspect she's editing my desperation out. "If she's well enough."

I let them guide me away, but I feel his eyes following our retreat. Feel the exact moment he realizes what his wolf already knows—that the woman in his dreams and the mute omega who saved his life are the same person. That maybe, just maybe, there's a reason he couldn't stop thinking about a stranger he glimpsed for three seconds on a cold January morning.

The journey back to the medical wing takes twice as long. My legs shake with each step, and by the time we reach my room, I'm leaning heavily on Nana's arm. She helps me into bed with extra gentleness, pulling the quilts up to my chin.

"You didn't tell him."

He's grieving. It would be cruel.

"And when he's done grieving? When he realizes what you are to him? The bond only gets stronger with proximity, child. You know this."

Then he can choose.

She shakes her head, grey braids swaying. "Stubborn as your mother. Mate bonds aren't about choice."

They should be.

"The world isn't built on 'should be', child. It's built on 'is'." She dims the lights, pauses at the door with her hand on the frame. "He felt it too, you know. The connection. I could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at you. Like a man seeing the sun after years underground."

She leaves me alone with that impossible hope. I close my eyes and for the first time in six months, I don't dream of green eyes and dark curls.

I don't need to.

He's here. Real and solid and breathing the same air.