“I am.”
Hewasn’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 onehad 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 toher. 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 heheard 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.”