Mated to Her Alpha Instructor Chapter 133

Eileen

"I don't remember much," she said, and her voice was hoarse, rusty with disuse and weighted with old pain. "Most of it's just... fragments. Impressions. I was so young when I got away, and I think maybe my mind protected me by letting the details blur." Her hands twisted together, knuckles going white. "I remember the cage. The cold. My mother's voice when she sang to me at night, trying to keep me calm." A pause, breath shuddering. "And I remember men coming to take her away, and the sounds that would follow, and knowing that I couldn't help her, that I was too powerless to do anything but hide in the corner and pretend I couldn't hear."

The raw honesty of it hit me like a physical blow, the casual mention of horrors that should never have been visited upon a child delivered in that flat, distant tone people used when the alternative was falling apart completely. I wanted to reach across the table and take her hand, to offer physical comfort, but I held myself still, sensing that touch right now might shatter whatever fragile composure she was maintaining.

"How did you escape?" I asked gently.

"The river." Nina's gaze had gone unfocused, seeing something far away and long ago. "There was flooding one spring—unusual for that region, the farmers said later, an act of the moon goddess perhaps. The dungeon where they kept us was old, built into ruins of something older still, and when the water came it found every crack and weakness. I remember my mother screaming at me to swim, to let the current take me, that this was my only chance." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "So I did. I let go and the water carried me away, and I don't know how long I was in that river, half-drowned and freezing, before some farmer pulled me out of a flooded field miles downstream."

The image her words painted—a five-year-old child tumbling through cold water, separated from everything she'd known, more terrified of what she was escaping than what might lie ahead—made my chest constrict with vicarious horror. "The farmer who saved you," I prompted carefully. "Did they know what you were? Did they help you?"

Something shuttered in Nina's expression, her walls slamming back into place with almost audible finality. "They helped me survive," she said, the words clipped and final in a way that communicated clearly she would not elaborate further. "But when I was old enough to leave, I did. And I discovered that my mother was gone—dead, I assumed, though I never found confirmation—and that there were no other witches I could find, no community to take me in, no safe harbor where someone like me belonged."

The desolation in those words, the absolute aloneness they described, resonated with something deep in my own experience—the years I'd spent believing I had no place in wolf society, that my lack of transformation made me fundamentally unwelcome, that I would always be on the outside looking in at a world that wasn't built for people like me. We'd arrived at our isolation through different paths, but the destination was hauntingly similar.

"You tried to find them?" I asked. "Other witches?"

"Of course I tried." The bitterness in her voice was sharp enough to cut. "I spent years following rumors and old stories, traveling to places where witch covens were supposed to have hidden, searching for any sign that I wasn't the last of my kind." Her laugh held no humor. "But whatever magic I might have inherited from my mother, it's mostly gone now. Dormant or destroyed, I don't know which." She met my eyes directly for the first time since beginning this conversation. "So even if I found other witches—assuming any survived—I wouldn't belong there either. I'm too diluted, too broken, too much a product of what was done to us to ever fit into whatever their world might be."

The words hung between us, heavy with resignation and self-loathing, and I felt my determination crystallize into something harder, sharper than sympathy. "Then we'll make our own world," I said quietly but firmly. "One where what you are doesn't have to be hidden, where the fact that you survived something that should have destroyed you is recognized as the strength it is, not treated as contamination."

Nina stared at me as though I'd suggested we sprout wings and fly, her expression cycling through disbelief and desperate hope before settling on careful, fragile skepticism. "That's a beautiful dream, Eileen. But dreams don't change laws that say my existence is grounds for execution."

"Laws change when enough people decide they're wrong." I held her gaze, willing her to hear the conviction in my voice. "And I'm not the only one who thinks the old ways need to evolve. Regis's father is pushing for reforms in the Council, there are younger Alphas who see the blood purity laws as archaic and cruel, and the fact that you've been living and working here, saving wolf lives with your healing skills, proves that the rigid categories we've inherited don't reflect reality."

"Until they decide I'm too dangerous to tolerate," Nina countered, but her voice lacked the absolute certainty it had held moments before. "Until someone like Silas convinces enough people that I'm a threat that needs to be eliminated."

"Then we make sure Silas and everyone like him are exposed before they can build that narrative." I leaned forward slightly, my hands flat on the work table between us. "Nina, I can't promise I'll be able to protect you from everything. I can't guarantee that the world will magically become safe and fair just because we want it to be. But I can promise that I'll fight for you, that I'll stand between you and anyone who tries to hurt you, that you won't face this alone anymore." I paused, letting the weight of the vow settle. "If you'll let me."

The silence stretched long and taut as Nina studied my face, searching for deception or pity or the thousand ways promises had broken before. I held myself still under her scrutiny, letting her see whatever she needed to see, offering no false reassurances or easy comfort, just the bare truth of my commitment.

Finally, slowly, she nodded. "I don't know what Silas was planning," she said quietly. "I don't remember enough about what my mother could do, what they forced her to create. But if I think of anything, any detail that might help..." She trailed off, the offer implicit.

"Thank you," I said, and meant it with everything I had. "That's all I can ask."

As I left the preparation room and returned to my regular duties, I felt the weight of what I'd learned settling into my understanding of the larger picture. Nina's fragmented memories might not provide concrete intelligence about Silas's plans, but they confirmed what Regis and I had suspected—that the conspiracy involved witch magic, that it had been in motion for years, that the full scope of what we faced remained hidden beneath layers of old crimes and older prejudices.

Through the bond I reached out to Regis, sending wordless reassurance that I was safe, that I was being careful, that I trusted him to handle what needed handling while I did the same here. His response came back warm and fierce, love and protectiveness tangled with the grim focus of a warrior preparing for battle.

Whatever Silas had set in motion, whatever his allies still schemed to accomplish, we had that long to unravel the conspiracy and fortify our defenses.

And this time, I promised myself while watching Nina through the doorway as she returned to her methodical sorting of herbs, this time the survivors would not be left to face the monsters alone.