The lead Healer spoke with grave concern.“The situation is critical,Mate.The pup may not survive the trauma,but we can attempt a full bond restoration—”
“There is no need,”Elara whispered,closing her eyes.
Tears,hot and silent,slipped down her temples and into the cold metal beneath her head.On the unforgiving surgical slab,the bright,sterile surgical light burned her eyelids.The metallic sounds of the tools were sharp and mechanical,and every movement felt like a piece of her very Claimed flesh was being cut away.
Elara bit down hard on her lip until she tasted the sharp tang of her own blood,refusing to make a sound.She refused to scream.She refused to let the Alpha feel the pain of his dereliction.She refused to feel anything at all.
A moon cycle later,sunlight streamed through the gauze curtains of the Pack’s private Healer’s Den,casting a deceptive warmth on the sterile cot.
Elara put down her comm-link.The screen still displayed Lyra’s latest video log,widely shared across the allied Clan channels.In the visual,Ryder was kneeling,his powerful frame contorted as he meticulously adjusted Lyra’s laced combat boots,his focus entirely on her.They shared a laugh—a sound of genuine,unbound joy.
Expressionless,Elara locked the screen.She felt no shock,only the dull,steady ache of acceptance.
Suddenly,the door swung open with a heavy thud.
“Elara!”Ryder,the Alpha King,rushed in,his face etched with a fleeting,unfamiliar panic.“How are you—”
As he got closer,he noticed the alarming pallor of her skin.Her lips were almost devoid of natural color—the color of a wolf who had lost too much blood.
His brows furrowed,the instinct of the Alpha Mate finally kicking in,albeit belatedly.“Is it the irregularity in your heat cycle again?Why did you keep this from me?”
Elara had long grown accustomed to managing her own human ailments.Since she had fiercely instructed the servant to never mention the lost pup,Ryder simply assumed she was recovering from a usual,minor health crisis.He took the convenient excuse for granted.
Elara looked at him quietly.
In the past,whenever she felt weak,she would use the opportunity to demand his presence—to ask him to share her cot.
But this cycle,she hadn’t even tried to call.
Seventeen unanswered calls.To the bond,it was no different from calling zero times.Why should she continue to set herself up for the bitter taste of his dereliction?