LENA'S POV
Seven days. She'd survived seven days of pretending her life was normal.
Lena stood at the hospital sink washing her hands for what felt like the hundredth time that shift. Her nausea had gotten worse, not better. Every smell made her stomach flip. Coffee. Disinfectant. Other people's lunches. Nothing stayed down anymore. She'd lost five more pounds. Her jeans barely fit.
But she showed up to work anyway.
She showed up to her shifts at North Ridge Pack Hospital. She worked in the emergency room where he'd appeared that first night. She walked past his office building sometimes. She existed in his space while pretending he didn't exist.
And he hadn't reached out.
Not a call. Not a text. Not a message through anyone. Nothing. She'd checked her phone approximately four thousand times. She'd refreshed her messages. She'd stared at his name in the hospital staff directory online. She'd done everything except actually contact him, which would have been insane.
She was already insane for hoping.
Lena dried her hands and headed back to the reception desk. It was late afternoon. The ER wasn't quite as chaotic as it had been that first night but it was steady. Injuries. Illnesses. People needing help. She could do this job with her eyes closed by now.
What she couldn't do was stop thinking about him.
Blake had texted her twice that day. Asking if she was okay. Asking if she needed anything. Being her best friend even though she'd dragged him into the middle of her disaster. She'd told him she was fine. She was lying. She wasn't fine. She was exhausted and terrified and hungry for something she couldn't have.
At the end of her shift, she checked her phone one more time while clocking out.
Nothing.
She drove home to her small apartment in Riverside Town. The place where she'd been living since her parents died. It was quiet. Empty. The kind of place that made her isolation feel permanent. She made tea even though the smell made her nauseous. She sat on her couch in the darkness and let herself think about things she'd been avoiding.
Wyatt had recognized her in that emergency room. She knew he had. She'd seen it in his eyes. She'd felt his wolf respond to her. For one second, maybe two, something real had passed between them. An acknowledgment. A moment of truth before Victoria had shattered it.
But he hadn't come looking for her.
Maybe he'd decided it was better to forget. Maybe his fiancée had convinced him that what he'd felt wasn't real. Maybe his family had told him she was unimportant. Lena knew how these things worked. She'd grown up around pack politics, even if her family had been on the outside. Power mattered more than truth. Alliances mattered more than feeling.
A bastard child certainly mattered less than either of those things.
Lena pressed her hand against her belly. The small curve there was unmistakable now. In another month, two at most, she wouldn't be able to hide this anymore. She'd have to tell people. Have to explain. Have to watch their expressions change when they realized she was carrying an Alpha's child without his knowledge or consent.
She closed her eyes and let herself do what she'd been avoiding all day.
She let herself hope.
What if he came back? What if the recognition he'd felt was real and he was still trying to figure things out? What if he was waiting for the right moment to approach her? What if his fiancée had just been in the way that day and he was planning something?
These were foolish hopes. Dangerous ones. The kind that kept you awake at night believing in things that wouldn't happen. But alone in her apartment with her hand on her belly, Lena let herself believe anyway.
She believed that maybe the mate bond meant something to him. Maybe it meant something stronger than his family's expectations. Maybe love could actually win sometimes, even against people with power and money and everything else stacked in their favor.
She was still believing when she fell asleep on her couch.
Her phone woke her up at two in the morning.
A text from an unknown number. Not a name. Just a message.
Hello Lena. This is someone from North Ridge Pack. We have a situation that requires a healer. Someone outside the pack. Someone who won't ask questions. Your name was recommended. We need you to come to a private residence tonight. There's a young woman in distress and we need her stabilized before morning.
Lena stared at the message for a long time.
This was how it worked in pack politics. Messages in the middle of the night. Requests that weren't actually requests. Situations that demanded immediate response. She should delete it. Should block the number. Should text Blake and tell him what was happening.
Instead, she typed back: Where?
An address in North Ridge territory appeared immediately.
Lena knew this was dangerous. She knew this was probably a trap or a test or something designed to manipulate her. She knew that going would only make everything more complicated.
She grabbed her keys anyway.
She drove to North Ridge territory in the darkness. The address led her to a private house set back from the main road. Expensive. Gated. The kind of place that belonged to someone important. Someone with power. Someone from the Alpha's family, probably.
A woman was waiting on the front porch. She looked worried. Stressed. Like whatever was happening inside that house was serious.
"Thank you for coming," the woman said. "We need you to be quiet. Discrete. What happens here cannot leave this house."
Lena nodded. She understood the rules of pack business now.
The woman led her through the house to a bedroom. Inside, a young girl was lying on the bed. She was covered in sweat. Her body was shaking. Her eyes were unfocused. She was clearly in medical crisis.
Lena fell into healer mode immediately. She assessed the girl's condition. Checked her vitals. Examined the medications on the nightstand. And realized immediately what the problem was.
The medication was making her worse.
Lena started working. She pulled energy from the earth the way her mother had taught her. She pressed her hands against the girl's skin and felt her natural healing gift flow out. Warmth. Comfort. Stabilization. The girl's breathing began to slow. Her shaking lessened.
She was so focused on the healing work that she didn't hear the door open behind her.
"Leave," a voice commanded. The kind of voice that made every muscle in Lena's body go still.
Wyatt.
He was here.
The girl's family and the medical staff evacuated immediately. Nobody questioned an Alpha's direct order. Lena kept her hands on the girl, kept working, couldn't make herself turn around.
"She'll be fine," Lena said quietly. Her voice sounded small. Scared. "The medication was the problem. She needs rest and a diet change."
Wyatt didn't respond. She could feel him there. Could feel his presence like lightning in the room. Could feel his wolf coming forward, recognizing hers, demanding something she couldn't give him.
"Look at me," Wyatt said.
Lena turned slowly.
His eyes were dark. His jaw was clenched. He looked like a man barely holding himself together. He stared at her with the intensity of someone trying to read her soul.
"We met," he said.
"Once," Lena whispered. "A long time ago."
"No." He stepped closer. His hands were shaking. "Not a long time. Recently. That night. I remember your hands. I remember your laugh. I remember..."
He stopped. His face went pale. His eyes dropped to her belly.
Lena watched him put it together. Watched the recognition hit him like a physical blow. Watched his entire world shift in a single moment.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
And Lena realized that the hoping, the waiting, the seven days of pretending had all been leading to this moment. To his discovery. To the revelation of everything she'd been hiding.
To the moment when her carefully constructed secret fell apart.