Chapter 5 The Pull Beneath the Skin

Rhian didn't speak much after they saw the smoke. He moved like a man walking the edge of a blade, sharp with thought but distant, guarded. Selene didn't press. She'd learned early in life that some wounds closed better in silence. She walked beside him, letting their steps speak for them.

That night, they shared the cave again. The fire burned low. She watched him from the edge of her blanket, studying the angles of his face when he wasn't aware-how the lines around his eyes tightened when he was deep in thought, how his hands always stayed near his sides like they were ready for battle even in sleep.

She wondered who he had been before the grief. Not the Alpha. Not the fighter. The man. The partner. The mate.

He caught her watching and said nothing. Just held her gaze for a few seconds longer than necessary before rolling to face the wall.

She didn't sleep.

Not right away.

When the fire dimmed to embers, she sat up and reached for her cloak. Something in the cave felt too tight tonight. Not the space, but the air between them.

Selene stepped outside.

The wind was cooler now. Cleaner. The kind that came after storms and cleared the rot from the underbrush. She sat on the flat rock near the tree line, pulling her knees up to her chest.

She didn't hear Rhian approach, but she felt him. A shift in the air. A weight near her ribs.

He didn't speak right away. Just sat beside her.

She didn't look at him.

He broke the silence. "I stayed with her until the end. My mate. I held her hand while she screamed, and I lied to her. Told her the baby was fine. Told her she was strong. I think... I knew she wouldn't make it."

Selene didn't interrupt.

"I blamed everyone else after. The healers. The midwife. Even the pack for celebrating when they found out she was pregnant. I wanted someone to pay for what I lost. But deep down, I think I blamed myself the most."

His voice cracked. Just once.

Selene looked at him. Not with pity. Just presence.

"You tried to save her," she said.

He nodded slowly. "And I failed."

She reached out, her fingers grazing his hand. He didn't pull away. His hand turned, met hers palm to palm, his skin calloused but warm.

She didn't say more. She didn't have to.

Sometimes just not leaving is enough.

They sat like that until the sky began to gray, until her fingers were cold and his breathing had evened out. When they went back inside, he didn't go to the far wall.

He sat near the fire. So she did too.

He didn't speak of his mate again.

But the silence between them was different now.

Less lonely.

More shared.

That was how it started.

Not with heat or want or anything tangled in need.

But with being seen.

And not being asked to be more.

The bond between them pulsed softer now, like it understood that this time, it didn't have to demand. It could wait.

Selene drifted to sleep beside the dying fire, not touching him, not needing to. For the first time in years, she felt something in her bones settle.

She wasn't the cursed girl tonight.

Just a woman breathing beside a man who had bled.

And lived.

And still chose to stay.