To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

The stairs leading down to the holding block reeked of wet stone and rusted iron, each step dragging me deeper into a headache I pretended I didn’t deserve, though I knew better. I’d signed up for this hours ago in a library, making promises I planned to unravel the moment I had the power to do it right.

I found her cell at the end of the corridor.

I glimpsed her before my mind caught up, and then the truth crashed in, brutal and whole. She was crumpled against the bars, cheek pressed to the cold stone, blood dried black near her ear and jaw. The wolfsbane rope had chewed her wrists raw, the skin beneath angry and red, still weeping in places that should have stopped bleeding hours ago. Her breaths came thin and fragile. Far too thin.

A cold, blinding hush swept through my chest.

”What happened to her?” My voice came out low, and I felt the sentinel stationed at the end of the hall flinch at the sound of it before I’d even turned to look at him.

He didn’t answer fast enough.

Another sentinel, younger, standing a few feet back, made the mistake of answering for him. ”He hit her,” he said, nodding toward the first man. ”With his rifle. She said something, and he—”

I didn’t let him finish.

My hands found the first sentinel’s collar before my thoughts could catch up, slamming him into the stone wall so hard the sound shattered down the corridor like a gunshot. He let out a noise, half-grunt, half-plea, and I struck him again before it faded. My knuckles split open on the second or third blow, but I barely registered the pain. All I felt was the sharp, relentless fury of watching his face buckle under my fist, knowing it would never be enough to erase what he’d done to her.

”Alpha Lysander—” someone started.

”Release her.” I didn’t look away from the man in my grip. ”Now.”

Nobody moved.

I let the sentinel crumple to the floor, watched him slide down the wall in a heap, then turned on the others with a look that made even the innocent ones recoil.

”I said release her.”

”Alpha Lysander,” the ranking one said carefully, ”the prisoner’s confinement was ordered by—”

”I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors flying through this estate today,” I said, keeping my voice level in a way that felt like holding a blade steady with my hand shaking. ”About who’s about to sit on the throne. About whose word is about to carry more weight in this great Kingdom than anyone else’s.” I let that settle. ”I’d think carefully before deciding those rumors don’t apply to you yet.”

The silence that followed bit down, sharp and unforgiving.

Then the ranking sentinel nodded, once, and moved to the cell door, the keys in his hands shaking slightly as he worked the lock. Another one crouched beside her and started on the ropes, and I watched every second of it, watched the wolfsbane fiber peel away from skin that had gone raw and weeping beneath it, and I had to lock my jaw to keep from making a sound myself.

She didn’t look at me while they worked. She kept her eyes on the floor, on her own hands, anywhere but my face, and I understood that. I didn’t try to force it.

Once the rope was gone, she pushed herself up slowly, using the bars for leverage, and I had to stop myself from reaching for her. She wouldn’t have wanted that. I could feel it even without the bond telling me so. I also could not show why I was so protective of her at the moment. Though it was becoming increasingly clear that I was doing a bad job.

”Come with me,” I said quietly. ”We need to talk.”

She followed without argument, which told me more about how much pain she was in than anything else could have.

We climbed the stairs in silence, her footsteps trailing mine, her breath ragged. Halfway up, I felt a subtle shift through the bond, a careful thought blooming, dangerously close to flight.

”Don’t,” I said, without turning around. ”Please don’t think about running.”

”I wasn’t.”

”That’s a lie.”

The instant I spoke, I felt her close something off inside, a door slamming shut behind the walls she’d built to survive hiding for so long. The bond fell silent, telling me everything and nothing. All I could sense was fear, and beneath it, a raw edge of disgust—though whether it was for me, herself, or the mess she’d woken into, I couldn’t say.

I stopped on the stairs. She had no choice but to stop behind me, close enough now that I could hear every unsteady breath she took.

I turned to face her.

”You knocked me out,” I said.

She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes came up to meet mine, wary, guarded, and something in them dared me to make this harder than it already was.

”Were you planning to run,” I said, ”because I’d figured you out?”

She swallowed. I watched her throat move, watched her decide how much of the truth she could afford to give me.

”I don’t want anything to do with you,” she said finally.

The words landed somewhere sharp in my chest, and I let them sit there without flinching, because I understood, in some distant part of myself, that she believed every syllable of it.

”I can’t reject you either,” she continued, quieter now, like the admission cost her something to make. ”Not with what I am. So I’m asking you.” Her chin came up, some last reserve of dignity holding her spine straight even now, even bruised and bleeding and standing three steps below me in a stairwell that smelled like old iron. ”Reject me. Please. You’re going to be Alpha King. It would be a disgrace for you to have an Omega mate. A rogue one, at that. Unregistered. Disguised as a man for many years to survive.” Her voice cracked slightly on the last part, and she pressed her lips together like she regretted letting it show. ”You have an entire kingdom watching you now and surely political enemies who will not be happy with the late king’s choice. I would only be a liability standing next to you.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

I thought about Fia. About her voice, steady and certain, the way she’d looked at me months ago and told me I would find someone. I hadn’t believed her then. I’d filed it away the way I filed away most things I didn’t have room to examine, tucked into some drawer in my mind labeled later.

Apparently, later had arrived last night, wrapped in a rut-blind haze, in a room thick with the scent of honey and sugar.

I let out a slow breath.

”Someone I care about very much,” I said, ”once told me I would find you.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, confusion cutting through the wariness for just a moment.

I took in her hair, loose and unhidden, platinum strands catching the faintest light in the stairwell—unmistakable, strange, and utterly hers. Nothing else in this Kingdom, this territory, maybe this world, looked like it. Something inside me eased at the sight, unexpected and sure.

”She was right,” I said. ”About more than I gave her credit for.”

”That doesn’t answer what I asked you.”

”No,” I agreed. ”It doesn’t.”

I held her gaze, and I let her see whatever she needed to see in my face, because I was done pretending this was a debate I intended to lose.

”I don’t intend to reject you,” I said. ”Not now. Not tomorrow, once this is all sorted and the eyes of the visiting court have gone home.” I paused, letting the words land the way I meant them to. ”Not ever.”

Something moved across her face, too fast to fully name, gone before I could decide if it was hope or terror or some tangled version of both.

”You don’t even know me,” she said, but her voice had lost some of its conviction.

”I know you didn’t kill my uncle,” I said. ”I know despite wanting to escape, you still dragged yourself across a library floor to try to save a dying man who’d done nothing to earn that kindness from you. Just like how I know you knocked me unconscious with a precision that took real training, and then you ran, because staying meant becoming exactly the kind of complication you’d spent years avoiding.” I took the last step down between us, close enough now that she had to tilt her head back slightly to hold my eyes. ”I think I know enough.”

She didn’t answer that. She just stood there, breathing unevenly, staring up at me like she was waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to what I’d just said and prove it wrong.

I didn’t think it would.