Chapter 3

Chapter 3 FLORA After Eric left, the young fighter nearby who had been watching the whole scene, while pretending not to, let out a low whistle, his eyes filled with a kind of gleam that showed me he was very excited and happy to witness a clash out between the general and me. "Don't let him get to you, Soother," he said. "He doesn't mean it like that. His ex was a Soother too." I shoved my supplies back into my satchel harder than I needed to, not taking care not to damage them. The buckle scraped my knuckle and I barely felt it, the shoulder ache more prominent than any other minor pain. "Then he should understand our worth better than anyone," I muttered. The fighter didn't say anything else to that. Smart of him. I walked back through camp with my jaw locked tight, past the same warriors sharpening the same blades, past the same set of warriors who called out leech whenever they saw me approaching. Nobody said leech out loud this time. They didn't need to. I could feel the word anyway, sitting in the air between us like a brand on my face, present for all to see. By the time I reached the small room I shared with Daisy, my mood had turned dark and heavy. Daisy took one look at my face and set down the herbs she'd been sorting. "Eric again?" she asked, her voice gentle. I dropped onto my cot with a long sigh, staring up at the cracked ceiling like it owed me an answer. She sat beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and for a second I let myself lean into her the way I used to when I was younger. "He's a good man underneath it all," she said. "Without him fighting off the border raids, we wouldn't have the peace to brew tea and mend wounds. Maybe..." She paused, watching me carefully, the way she did when she was about to say something she knew I wouldn't want to hear. "Maybe you should tell him. About the bond." I went stiff under her arm. "Don't," I said. "Flora." "I said don't." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. Daisy didn't flinch, but I saw the hurt flicker across her face before she smoothed it away, and I hated myself a little for putting it there. Three months ago, our supply lines got ambushed. I could still see it if I closed my eyes — the smoke, the screaming, the world tilting sideways as I got shoved to the ground and pinned. I was sure I was about to die. Then Eric tore through the enemy line like something out of a nightmare, except the nightmare wasn't for me this time. It was for them. His hand closed around my arm to drag me up, to pull me out of the wreckage, and the second his skin touched mine, something inside me lit up like fire catching dry grass. Mate. I felt it instantly. Undeniable. Burned into me so deep I thought for a second the whole world had shifted underneath us both. I remember looking up at him, waiting, breath caught in my throat, waiting for him to feel it too. He didn't. His eyes were wild with battle, his wolf too close to the surface, blood and rage running through him with nowhere else to go. He shoved me behind him like I was nothing more than something in his way and snarled, "Get back to camp before you get someone killed." Whatever gratitude I felt for being saved died right there on the spot. It curdled into something small and bitter, something I'd been carrying around ever since, tucked behind my ribs next to everything else I didn't let myself feel. "I'll never tell him," I said flatly now, staring up at the ceiling instead of at Daisy, because if I looked at her I might cry, and I was so tired of crying over a man who thought I was useless. "He's arrogant. Self-righteous. He'd probably think I was lying just to trap him into some kind of obligation." Daisy didn't say anything. But her silence pressed down on me anyway, heavy with everything she wasn't saying, and that was almost worse than if she'd argued. "Besides," I added, softer now, my voice starting to shake even though I fought to keep it steady, "mate bonds don't mean what they used to. The Goddess is barely a whisper anymore. Most wolves never find their true mate. We date. We choose. We live like humans do." I pulled my blanket up to my chin, trying to bury the ache spreading through my chest. "And I choose not to be tied to a man who thinks I'm useless." Daisy stayed quiet for a long moment, long enough that I thought she'd let it go. Then she said, so soft I almost missed it, "Bonds don't care what we choose, Flora." I closed my eyes and said nothing. But her words sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and impossible to ignore, dragging at everything I'd tried to convince myself of for three months straight. None of it mattered. He didn't feel the bond. He probably never would. And even if he did, I wasn't sure I'd want him to — not a man who called my gift a waste of time, not a man who thought Panic Disorder made a warrior weak, not a man who'd shoved me behind him like I was in his way instead of the thing that mattered. I told myself all of that. I almost believed it too. Somewhere out past the camp walls, the warriors were riding into battle. Eric was riding into battle, out where blades were faster than thought and a single wrong move could end everything. Daisy's breathing evened out beside me as she drifted toward sleep, but I lay awake long after, staring at the dark, my arm still tingling faintly where his hand had gripped it three months ago, like the memory refused to fade the way it should have. No matter how much I told myself I didn't care, some small, stubborn part of me was already praying he'd come back alive. And a smaller part still, one I hated more than anything, was praying he'd come back to me.