Chapter 8 What We Carry Alone #2
I heard him laugh. Just a breath, barely a sound, but it was the first real laugh I'd heard from him in weeks. It settled something in me that had been restless since the clearing, since holding him in my arms and feeling his heart beat against mine and knowing that I'd almost lost him.
I made eggs. It was all he had that didn't require more effort than I was willing to give. Scrambled with cheese, toast on the side, coffee refilled because he clearly needed it. I brought the plate to him on the couch, sat down close enough that our shoulders touched.
“Eat,” I said.
“Bossy.”
“Stubborn.”
He ate. I watched. The house settled around us, old bones creaking, and outside the forest pressed close against the windows. Watching. Always watching.
But for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I was carrying everything alone.
The pack house was quiet when I got back, most wolves out on patrol or resting between shifts. I headed for my office, intending to finish the territorial assessments I'd abandoned, but stopped when I saw light bleeding from under the library door.
Rafe.
I knew it before I pushed the door open. Could smell him, wolf and something sharper underneath. Fear, maybe. Or pain he was trying to hide.
He was curled in one of the reading chairs by the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket that looked like it might have been Evan's, a book open on his lap. But his eyes weren't on the pages. They were fixed on the window, watching the darkness outside like he expected something to come through it.
He startled when I walked in. Actually flinched, whole body going rigid before he recognized me and forced himself to relax.
“Hey.” His voice came out rough. Unsteady. “Thought you'd gone to bed.”
“Couldn't sleep. You?”
“Same.” He tried to smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. “Kept hearing things. Probably just the wind, but...”
He didn't finish. Didn't need to. I knew what he meant. When you'd been hunted, every sound became a threat. Every shadow became teeth.
That's when I noticed the blood.
Dark stain spreading through the bandage on his shoulder, seeping into the blanket he'd wrapped around himself. Fresh. Still wet.
“You're bleeding.”
Rafe glanced down like he'd forgotten about the wound. “Oh. Yeah. Must have pulled the stitches during training.” His laugh was thin, embarrassed. “Alaric doesn't exactly go easy.”
“You should have said something.”
“Didn't want to bother anyone. Gideon's out checking the eastern wards, and Sienna's on patrol, and I figured it would stop on its own.” He shrugged, then winced when the movement pulled at the wound. “It's fine. I've had worse.”
“It's not fine. You're bleeding through your bandage.” I moved to the medical kit we kept in the library, started gathering supplies. “Let me see.”
Rafe hesitated. Something flickered across his face, uncertainty or shame or both. Then he pulled the blanket aside and started unbuttoning his shirt with careful movements that suggested more pain than he was admitting.
The bandage was soaked through. The wound beneath angry and red, stitches pulling at flesh that wasn't ready to hold. Alaric really hadn't gone easy. This was the kind of damage that came from training with someone who had something to prove.
“This needs to be re-done,” I said, settling on the ottoman across from his chair. “Hold still.”
“You don't have to...” Rafe started.
“I know I don't have to. I'm choosing to.” I met his eyes, held them.
“I'm not used to that,” he said quietly.
“Used to what?”
“People helping. Without wanting something in return.”
The words landed heavy in the quiet room. I focused on cleaning the wound, giving him space to say what he needed to say without the pressure of eye contact.
“Ash Hollow wasn't like that?” I asked.
“Ash Hollow was...” He hissed as I pressed antiseptic to the torn skin, but didn't pull away. “Ash Hollow was good. But small. We didn't have the numbers you do, the structure. When something went wrong, you handled it yourself or it didn't get handled.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was what it was.” His voice went distant. “Alpha Warren did his best. We all did. But there was always this sense that we were one bad season away from falling apart. One attack away from...”
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
“From what happened,” I finished for him.
“Yeah.” The word came out broken. “From exactly what happened.”
I worked in silence for a few minutes, re-stitching the wound with careful, practiced movements. Rafe sat still, barely breathing, letting me work. His hands were clenched in the blanket, knuckles white.
“The nightmares,” I said eventually. “That's why you couldn't sleep.”
It wasn't a question, but he answered anyway.
“Every night. Sometimes I'm back there, listening to them die. Sometimes I'm running and I can't stop, can't slow down, just running through forest that never ends.” His laugh was hollow. “Sometimes I wake up and I don't know where I am. Don't know if I'm safe or if I'm still being hunted.”
“That's normal. After what you went through.”
“Is it?” He looked at me then, really looked, and his amber eyes were bright with something that might have been tears. “Because it doesn't feel normal. It feels like I'm losing my mind. Like I'll never feel safe again.”
“You will.” I tied off the last stitch, started wrapping clean bandage around his shoulder.
“It takes time. Longer than you want it to, longer than seems fair. But eventually the nightmares fade. The flinching stops. You start to remember what it feels like to just exist without waiting for the next attack.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Speaking from watching a lot of wolves come through the other side of trauma.” I secured the bandage, checked my work. “And yeah. Some personal experience too.”
Rafe was quiet for a moment. Then: “Thank you. For this. For...” He gestured vaguely. “Everything. Taking me in. Giving me a chance. Not treating me like a threat even when your pack had every reason to.”
“You're not a threat, Rafe. You're a survivor.”
“Sometimes those are the same thing.”
“Sometimes.” I stood, gathered the bloody gauze and the supplies. “But not tonight. Tonight you're just a wolf who needed stitches and couldn't sleep. Nothing more complicated than that.”
He smiled at that. Small, but real. The first genuine smile I'd seen from him since he arrived.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Depends.”
“Does it get easier? Being Alpha? Carrying everyone's problems, making all the decisions, being the one everyone looks to when things go wrong?”
I considered the question. Considered lying, telling him what he probably wanted to hear.
“No,” I said honestly. “It doesn't get easier. You just get better at carrying the weight. Learn which burdens you can set down and which ones you have to hold. Learn to let people help, even when your instincts say you should handle everything yourself.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. But it's also...” I searched for the right word. “Meaningful. Knowing that you matter to people. That your choices protect them, keep them safe. There's a purpose in that. A reason to keep going even when it's hard.”
Rafe nodded slowly, like he was filing the information away. “I think I understand. Alpha Warren used to say something similar. That leadership wasn't about power, it was about responsibility. About being the one who stayed awake so everyone else could sleep.”
“Smart man.”
“He was.” Rafe's voice went soft. “I miss him. Miss all of them. But especially him.”
“That's okay. Missing people you've lost doesn't make you weak. It makes you human.”
“I'm not human.”
“Figure of speech.” I moved toward the door, then paused. “Get some rest. And Rafe? Next time you're bleeding, tell someone. Don't just sit here hoping it stops on its own.”
I left him there, wrapped in Evan's blanket with the fire burning low, and hoped that eventually the nightmares would fade for him the way they'd faded for others.
The way they'd mostly faded for me.
The pack house settled around me as I walked back to my room, old wood creaking and groaning in the wind. Somewhere outside, wolves were running patrol, keeping the borders safe. Somewhere inside, Rafe was trying to remember what it felt like to not be afraid.
That was the job. That was always the job.
Being the one who stayed awake so everyone else could sleep.