Chapter 27
ALEXANDER
He searched for her after supper. The need to find her, to see with his own eyes that she was well, gnawed at him. The realization, as he moved through the halls, gave him pause.
When had her well-being become a priority that overrode protocol, that sent him checking dark corners? When did the princess, the political bride, become JingYi in his mind—a person whose absence felt like a space the castle couldn’t fill?
He started with her bedchamber, then his. The kitchens. The old library, though its ceiling had collapsed three years ago and was in his list of repairs, once he gathered the funds for it.
He’d asked everyone, even Darion—who responded with a grunt and a glare that said more about marital matters than any words ever could. The battlements crossed his mind, but the spiral stairs were steep and narrow. The thought of her climbing them in the dark sent a jolt of alarm through his chest.
The rain had finally stopped, and the moon emerged from behind the clouds. His legs took him down to the courtyard, the formal gardens, and finally, the kitchen herb plots beyond the west wing.
There, at last, he found her, crouched beside a raised bed overgrown with rosemary and browning thyme.
Her hem brushed the wet flagstones. She looked like part of the garden itself—rooted, weathering wind and season.
Her fingers sifted through the leaves, pale and precise, inspecting each stem like it still deserved its place despite the cold.
“You’re difficult to find,” he called out.
She didn’t startle, only looked up slowly, moonlight casting her face in silver, shadow catching beneath her lashes.
“I wasn’t trying to be found.”
He nearly smiled at that, and he might have, if her voice hadn’t been so quiet. Not just tired in body, but in spirit. The kind of weariness that couldn’t be cured with rest.
Alexander stepped close enough that he could see the slight smudge of soil on her thumb and the tension in her shoulders beneath the velvet cloak.
“It’s nighttime and you’re still working,” he said, noting the small pouch of cuttings tucked beside her knee.
“I needed something to occupy my hands,” she replied. “The kitchen needs more herbs for the braided loaves, also for the garlands. It seems sensible to salvage these before frost gets to them.”
He nodded. The practicality of it, of her, didn’t surprise him. She wasn’t someone who spent time on unproductive moments. Even resting was to serve function.
He shifted his weight, boots crunching over loose rocks. “You left supper early.”
She didn’t look up. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“Did the incident with Annett cause this lack of appetite?”
That made her glance at him. He crouched beside her, mirroring her posture, though not quite touching. The night air nipped his skin, but she emanated heat. There was also something more intrinsic. It hit low, just beneath the sternum. A creeping pull.
Her scent.
He’d caught a whiff of it from time to time.
When he helped her mount Brisa. When the breeze blew just right.
When they passed in the corridor. But now, kneeling this close, it found him with the precision of an arrow.
The Omega in her was rising, unmasked. Warmth and salt and something ripe at the edges, like sun-warmed apricot and deep earth.
Something his blood recognized even if his mind tried to ignore it.
He inhaled, deeply, then forced his lungs to still.
Her suppressants were gone. Her body was returning to its natural rhythm, and that rhythm was leading toward Heat. Soon.
The awareness gathered in his chest like a storm. She smelled like a question his body was screaming to answer. He was her husband. Her Alpha. The tension of that reality—the legal right, the emotional chasm—tautened every muscle.
He ground his jaw. Not now. Not when she looked so weary, haunted by a healer’s failure she hadn’t earned. An Alpha’s first role wasn’t to claim. It was to protect. To give her space, even if every primal part of him strained toward her.
He spoke evenly, “You’re running warm.”
She glanced at him. “The fire,” she said quickly. “I sat too close to it at supper. It’s why I came out here.”
He didn’t correct her, didn’t challenge the lie. But the truth was already between them, growing louder every second.
He reached out and took her hand to help her rise. His fingers curled around hers, not letting go.
“Annett’s condition,” he said. “Tell me more.”
JingYi stepped away, as though she needed space to think. She folded her arms—the brace of someone who’d begun holding herself together out of necessity.
“I found bruises where I placed the needles.”
“Is that a common side effect?”
“It’s not uncommon. Sometimes, when a needle isn’t inserted properly, bruising can occur. But the ones Annett suffered from were not like that.” She shifted her gaze to look at him. “The colour . . . wasn’t unlike the corpse.”
Alexander frowned. “Purple limyerite poisoning? Again? From the needles?”
“I considered the possibility of someone tampering with my needles.”
“Did you check your tools?”
“I cleaned them as soon as I finished. Any traces of tampering would’ve been wiped away.”
Uneasiness crept in. “Before that?”
She shook her head. “I saw nothing amiss.”
“Not even powdery residue? The culprit would’ve had to crush the purple crystal to coat the needles.”
She pressed her lips together, brow furrowed. “Not if they diluted the powder with water and dipped the needles into it.”
He didn’t know what to say. She touched her fingertips to her temple—a weary gesture—then turned back to the garden beds. The strain in her shoulders, the shadow around her eyes as she studied the innocent-looking herbs: unmistakable.
A protective impulse rose in his chest. He couldn’t lift the suspicion from her mind, but he could offer a way through it. He couldn’t stand here, watching her shoulder this alone.
“Why don’t we test them?”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Test the needles?”
He nodded.
“How?”
“Use them on me.”
For the first time, she scowled at him. An endearing frown. He had the rousing urge to smooth the furrow from her brow. Or pinch her nose, see if that’d make her laugh. Take away some of her worries.
She turned fully and leaned in, eyes narrowed. “Are you daft, my lord?”
“Possibly,” he admitted. “But also, practical.”
She stared at him like he’d grown a second head. Laughter tickled his throat. If the situation wasn’t so dire, he would’ve chuckled.
“If you’re going to use them again—and I know you need to—test them on me. Not on Annett, who’s pregnant. Not on Daan, who’s barely recovered. Not on the children or the elderly.”
She crossed her arms. “What use is there in making you ill when we’re on the verge of the Harvest Ritual?”
He tilted his head. “Are you not the least bit curious what your needle therapy might do to a male of irritable temperament?” A beat. “I know I am.”
“And if you get sick?”
“How fortunate I am to have an excellent healer under my roof.”
She said nothing. Her quiet was a victory. He had cut through her fear with a truth she couldn’t refute: he trusted her skill more than he feared the poison.
He nearly smiled.
“Come,” he said, tilting his head toward the castle. “Bring your medicine chest to my room.”
He wasn’t accustomed to inviting anyone into his bedchamber—least of all to bare himself, lie still, and be studded like a pincushion. Yet here he was, unlacing his tunic while she arranged instruments on the low table by the hearth.
He pulled off his shirt. His boots scraped the stone floor as he sat to remove them. He stood, bare from the waist up. The fire had been stoked; warmth pulsed from the hearth. Still, gooseflesh rose on his arms.
“I can lie down now, if you’re ready,” he offered.
She turned to face him, her gaze catching at the line of his chest before lifting to meet his eyes.
Not shy, or hungry. Just assessing, like he was another body to treat.
Another wound to mend or fever to break.
Perhaps he should balk at her indifference, but it intrigued him more than pricked his pride that she should look at him so carefully with those obsidian eyes.
“Lie on your stomach,” she instructed. “I’ll begin with the back.”
He hesitated just long enough to feel the Alpha’s primal dislike of lying face-down, back exposed. Unguarded. Vulnerable in a way no Alpha was meant to be.
Still, he climbed onto the mattress and positioned himself as she asked, resting his head on his forearms. The sheets were cool against his cheek, the scent of clean linen and smoke mingling with her scent: herbs and salt, and her own uniqueness.
He heard the soft clink of polished metal tools being lifted, the rustle of a pouch.
“Try to breathe evenly,” she said.
“I am.”
He wasn’t.
Alexander hadn’t felt this exposed since his youth, since those old battlefield injuries that required stitches under torchlight and no numbing root. But this was different. There was no pain, no bleeding, only her—quiet, composed, and far too close.
The first touch came. Her fingers brushed his skin, light and dry, tracing the ridge of muscle just beneath his right shoulder blade. He didn’t flinch, but something in him coiled.
“You’re holding tension here,” she murmured, “and here.” Her palm slid a little lower, skimming along the curve of his back. Her hand was rough, the touch abrasive, but it sparked something low and not entirely unwelcome in his gut.
There was nothing gallant about the way his nerves lit up, sharp and stupid, under her blunt fingertips. No one had ever made his spine tighten from a healer’s assessment.
It was absurd. Mortifying, even.
He tried to smile. “You’d be tense, too, if you ran a fief like Blackwood-Veyrde.”
“I’m sure,” she said, her voice mild. “But I need the channels clear before the needles go in.”
Channels.
He knew only a little of her healing practices: threads of energy flowing through the body, connecting limbs to organs, organs to breath, breath to blood. Invisible paths that could become blocked by illness, emotion, exhaustion.
This wasn’t a battle, but his body didn’t seem to know the difference. He felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nudity and everything to do with what came next: trusting her with his body, his nerves, his breath. Letting an Omega press needles into the marrow of him.
“You’ll tell me immediately if you feel dizzy, or sick to your stomach,” she said, leaning forward that he felt her warmth on his left shoulder. “Nausea or vertigo are early signs of exposure. If there’s any trace of purple limyerite in the needles, I’ll need to remove them right away.”
He turned his head toward her. “And if I lie about it to make myself appear stronger in your presence?”
She bent, levelling her eyes with his. “Then you’ll prove yourself an arrogant fool, and I’ll leave you on this bed with pins still sticking out.”
His mouth twitched.
She inserted the first needle. There was a tiny prick, nothing more. He waited for a sting, a throb, any discomfort. None came.
Instead, something loosened.
Strange. It didn’t hurt. It felt like an exhale, like a hidden knot had come undone beneath the skin.
She worked in silence, moving across his back with quick precision—his nape, between his shoulder blades, down the line of his spine.
Each placement calculated, deliberate. The needles were so fine he barely registered them going in, yet each one seemed to press at a pulse he hadn’t known was obstructed.
Her fingers never lingered. She didn’t touch more than necessary. And yet, with each brush of her hand, his senses sharpened—drawn not to the needles but to her. The way her breath shifted when she leaned close. The warmth of her thigh against his arm as she moved.
He’d trained himself to endure sword wounds, bone breaks, frostbite, but nothing in his life had prepared him for the strange, vulnerable stillness of being tended to like this.
It made him feel . . . human.
Not a commander. Not a Wulfbane. Not even an Alpha. Just a man, lying half-naked on a bed while a woman who smelled of crushed herbs slipped slivers of crystal into his body and unravelled him little by little.
“I’ll let these rest for a moment,” she said.
He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to break the spell. His body felt anchored. Peaceful.
She stepped away to tend to the instruments, sorting through the vials in her medicine chest. He couldn’t see her face, but he heard the clinking of glass, the whisper of dried herbs shifting in cloth.
“Limyerite crystal,” she said, “it’s not naturally poisonous, is it?”
He turned his head slightly toward her voice, cheek pressed to the mattress. “Not on its own. But something happens to it. Make it toxic and turn purple.”
She didn’t look up, still fiddling with her instruments, though her hands moved slower now.
“It’s . . . difficult to explain,” he said. “If you want to see for yourself, I’ll take you to the cave tomorrow.”
That made her pause entirely. “The one under Bertrand’s command?”
“No. There’s a smaller one, still under Wulfbane control. Far less output, but the seams are cleaner. Safer. It’s dark and damp. It won’t smell as pleasant as a walk in a rose garden, but you’ll get to see the crystal at its source.”
“I’d like that.”
Of course she’d want to see for herself. JingYi had never recoiled from ugliness. She chased truth, however foul the road. She’d examined a corpse for the cause of death without flinching.
“We’ll go,” he said, voice firmer now, “first thing tomorrow.”
“After I check on Annett. I promised Ulrik.”
“Of course.”
Silence enveloped them. The crickets hummed beyond the windows. Something had changed. Not just duty. A delicate tethering connecting them.
The raven and the wolf, an auspicious pairing, they said. He’d always dismissed it as pretty heraldry, empty words for a political match. But lying here, vulnerable under her careful hands, he understood it differently.
Where the wolf held the line, the raven watched from above. She saw what he could not—the subtle poison in a bruise, the suffering in a village. He provided the strength, the shield. Different vantage, different instincts, but stronger when paired.
For the first time, he didn’t see a liability or a duty. He saw . . . a partner.
The thought settled him with a rightness that felt deeper than bone.