Chapter 28
JINGYI
The needles had been in long enough. She moved to his side and let her fingers hover for a breath before removing them one by one, careful not to disturb the surrounding muscle.
His skin was warm beneath her touch. Smooth in some places, scarred in others, old wounds telling stories she didn’t know about.
He didn’t stir. Only his breath moved, steady and even.
When she reached the last one at the base of his spine, her hand stalled.
He had a soldier’s body—broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, back lined with strength earned, not inherited.
Alexander Wulfbane would never preen, but his form was made to lead, protect, endure.
She didn’t think the sight of his male beauty would make a difference. She hadn’t expected to care so much.
Pulling the final needle free, she stepped back, the distance a poor shield against the warmth in her belly.
‘You’re running warm.’ He’d known in the garden. He’d smelled her Heat approaching and given her the grace of a lie to hide behind. In that moment, his restraint had felt kinder than any touch.
Jingyi forced her healer’s instinct forward, slicing through the fog. She leaned over him, scanning his back—not the landscape of his shoulders, but what she dreaded: the bruised shadow of poison. She found none. Only faint, healthy pink dots, already fading.
The needles were clean. He was safe.
Her last defence fell. Her breath left her in a sigh. Now there was only the man, the bed, and the warmth suffusing her blood—a slow, insistent tide.
She swallowed, her throat closing. “You may turn over now,” she croaked.
He obeyed without question, rolling onto his back with the same unhurried ease.
And just like that, she was looking at him again.
His chest rose and fell, the lines of him elegant and powerful.
No reluctance, no shame, only the silent confidence of a man who knew his body was strong enough to be seen, be vulnerable, even in front of an Omega.
Her mouth went dry.
He wasn’t the first Alpha she’d treated with needle therapy, but he was calmer than the last. Captain Huang of His Majesty’s army had snarled at the idea of being laid flat by a disgraced Omega, let alone touched by one.
He’d called her an ugly, broken-caste sow.
The moment her fingers brushed his skin, he’d grabbed her wrist so tight that her bone cracked beneath his grip.
She hadn’t cried out. She’d finished the treatment with the other hand, teeth clenched against the pain, then wrapped the fracture herself afterward.
Alexander didn’t even flinch once.
JingYi turned away under the pretext of cleaning her tools, her fingers moving dutifully over her medicine chest. She hated the flutter in her chest. Hated how it made her feel unsteady—how it reminded her she was not just a healer.
She was also a woman, and an Omega.
And the Alpha lying bare-chested behind her was, without question, magnificent.
She closed the case. Turned back to the bed, and as quickly as she could, laid out the needles along his meridians.
“Ten minutes,” she said, her voice thinner now. “Then, I’ll remove them.”
He didn’t speak, but she saw the minute movement of his fingers against the sheet. The silent answer. The patience.
The ten-minute wait stretched before them. She measured it with her breath—in, hold. Out, hold—counting the seventy-eight deep breaths that would give her the precise time. Her body felt acutely attuned to his, the pre-Heat sensitivity a steady thrum under her skin.
JingYi shook her head to clear herself. She needed to stay, to monitor. Duty.
She lowered herself to sit on the very edge of the bed, careful that not a single thread of her gown touched him. A clinical distance that felt like a lie. The muscles between her shoulders cinched. Focus. She was a healer completing a treatment. That was the only framework that mattered.
She turned to check on him, and the framework dissolved.
He had tilted his head toward her, eyes open. He simply watched her, his expression unreadable but his attention absolute. It wasn’t the evaluating look of a lord or the heated gaze of an Alpha. It was simpler, and somehow more devastating.
He was seeing her. Seeing the careful performance of her composure.
And that truth was a treacherous warmth winding low in her belly—a recognition that this magnificent man was no longer just her patient, or her husband by law.
He was becoming Alexander. And against every defence she’d spent a lifetime building, she was beginning to want him.
When the wait was over, and she finally rose to remove all the needles, her fingers trembled. She pretended not to notice.
“It’s done,” she murmured. “No adverse reaction. The needles are clean.”
He didn’t speak. With fluid grace that spoke of controlled power, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, facing her. He didn’t reach for his shirt. He stood and closed the distance between them.
JingYi’s breath caught, staring at him as he towered before her, half-clad in firelight and shadow.
The heat of him enveloped her, a tangible force.
Her gaze travelled up the plane of his taut abdomen, over the scarred landscape of his chest, to finally meet his eyes.
A storm brewed there—a carefully leashed intensity that made the air hum.
The stillness was gone, replaced by a focus so absolute it felt like a touch.
Slowly, giving her a chance to pull away, he raised his hand. His fingers hovered just shy of her left cheek, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his palm.
Time suspended.
The world shrank to the space between his hand and her face. She felt the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat, smelled his masculine scent mingling with her own rising sweetness. Want screamed in her veins—a silent pull toward his touch.
His eyes searched hers, a silent question in the storm. May I?
Every instinct, every lesson of survival, told her to retreat. But a deeper, older instinct uncoiled: the Omega’s answer to the Alpha’s call. It was a wanton yes that terrified her more than any poison.
She didn’t move forward, but she didn’t pull away.
They hung in that breathless equilibrium, on the precipice of a touch that would shatter every remaining pretence between them.
The desire was a living thing in her blood, the fear a cage of old bones.
JingYi broke.
She turned and fled—a lurching, graceless stumble. Not a lady’s retreat but the flight of a wounded thing. Her right leg screamed in protest, the familiar pain shot from shin to hip as she threw her weight onto it, unthinking. She limped into the corridor, each step a bolt of agony.
The door of her chamber slammed shut, a frail barrier against the storm.
She collapsed against it, sliding to the floor as her leg buckled.
She clutched her knee, gasping, the ghost of his warmth still imprinted on her cheek where his hand had hovered, now competing with the throbbing ache in her limb.
The silence was deafening, broken only by her ragged breathing.
Then, the first wave crested—the Kindling, a prelude to an Omega’s true Heat.
It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a deep, hollow ache, a physical yearning that carved a hollow space beneath her navel.
Her mind kept reaching for the Nest—that beautiful, intricate construction of safety and softness in Alexander’s room.
The image was so vivid she could smell the dried mountain thyme, feel the promise of comfort. Of pleasure.
A choked sound escaped her, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. Her body and soul screamed for a sanctuary that existed just down the hall, built by her Alpha husband. The same one her mind knew, with cold certainty, wasn’t intended for her.
Trembling turned to violent shudders. She pulled herself up and stumbled to the chest where her belongings were kept. She shoved aside silks and linens until her fingers closed on heavy, dense wool. Alexander’s cloak.
Dragging it out was an act of utter surrender.
The shame was immediate, corrosive. It was the healer’s shame, watching her masterful control disintegrate into base need.
It was the Omega’s shame, reduced to this furtive, primal pilfering of scent-comfort.
Worst of all, it was the bride’s shame, clinging to the symbol of a husband who’d accepted her out of duty, seeking solace in his clothing.
A hot, sharp resentment flared—at him, for the storm in his eyes that had asked a question she couldn’t answer; at herself, for wanting to answer it yet cowering from it.
She spread the cloak over her bed, a poor mockery of the Nest she craved, and collapsed into it. As she curled her body into the wool, burrowing her face into the fold at the collar, his scent rose to meet her—spruce, smoke, leather, Alpha.
The effect was instantaneous and devastating. A shuddering sigh was punched from her lungs. The tension in her muscles began to unlock. The frantic, frightened hammering of her heart slowed into a heavy, rhythmic pound. Her traitorous body recognized its Alpha and settled.
And that was the cruelest truth. It felt good.
The solace was real—a deep, intrinsic comfort soothing the sharpest edges of her agony.
It was a mercy that felt like a condemnation.
Pathetic, how pathetic. The cloak soothed the animal in her while reminding the woman, beyond all doubt, just how far she was from any home.