Mated to Her Alpha Instructor Chapter 14

Regis

I stood in the doorway long after she'd vanished down the corridor, my hand still gripping the frame hard enough that the wood creaked under my fingers. The echo of her footsteps had faded, but her scent lingered, now soured with fear and grief, and it wrapped around my throat like a noose.

*Go after her,* Valdor whined in my mind, pacing restlessly. *She needs us to explain. She thinks we're rejecting her—*

"No." I forced the word out, low and rough. "She's terrified. If I chase her now, she'll only see me as a threat."

He didn't answer, but I could feel his pain radiating through our shared consciousness—the mate bond pulling taut between us and the girl who was running from it, from *us*, as fast as her legs could carry her. Every instinct screamed at me to follow, to corner her somewhere safe and make her listen, to hold her until she understood that I had never, would never, think of her as a mistake.

But I'd seen the look in her eyes just before she fled. Pure panic. The kind of fear that came from believing you were about to lose something you'd never really had in the first place.

I exhaled slowly, released my death grip on the doorframe, and turned back into my office. The mug she'd abandoned sat on the corner of my desk, still half-full of cooling coffee, and the sight of it—so small, so ordinary—made something crack open in my chest.

She'd been sitting right there. My mate. The girl who'd saved my life in the Whispering Woods, who'd knelt in the dirt and pressed her hands to my wounds and poured her own energy into healing me even though she had no wolf of her own to sustain the effort.

And now that I'd found her—now that I knew her name, her face, the way her voice trembled when she was afraid—she wanted to pretend it had never happened.

I moved to the window, braced my hands on the sill, and stared out at the training yard below. Students were filtering back to their dormitories, their laughter drifting up through the late afternoon air, oblivious to the storm raging inside me.

"I handled that badly," I said aloud, more to myself than to Valdor. "I should have been gentler. Should have found better words."

*Or maybe,* Valdor said quietly, *you should have told her the truth. That she's ours. That we'll never let her go.*

"That would have terrified her even more. She doesn't understand what the bond means." I rubbed a hand over my face, exhaustion settling into my bones. "Maybe I should know more about her, about what she was facing alone."

A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts. I straightened, schooling my expression into something resembling calm. "Come in."

Kieran Blackwood stepped through—my Beta, my best friend since our academy days. We'd fought side by side in the border wars, and the bastard could read me like an open book. His amber eyes swept over me, taking in everything I was trying to hide.

"Regis." He closed the door and leaned back against it, arms crossed. "You look like hell. What's eating at you?" A pause, then a slight smirk. "Don't tell me a bunch of non-warrior students gave you trouble. That's not the Regis I know."

I didn't answer right away. Instead, I turned back to the window, watching the last threads of sunlight bleed from the sky.

"Kieran," I said finally, my voice quieter than I intended. "What happens when a wolfless person gets marked by an Alpha? When they can't bite back to complete the bond?"

The silence stretched between us. When Kieran finally spoke, his voice had lost all traces of humor. "That's... a very specific question, Regis. Why are you asking?"

"Just answer the question."

He was silent for a long moment, and I could hear him shifting his weight, considering his words. Finally: "I had a distant aunt. She was poisoned with silver as a child—her wolf was damaged, never able to manifest. At nineteen, she met her fated mate. A young Beta. He marked her during her heat."

I turned to look at him. His expression was grim.

"But because she couldn't complete the bond—couldn't bite him back—the mark started to fade within two weeks. The Beta felt the incompleteness, the instability. It drove him half-mad with frustration and pain. Eventually, he told her..." Kieran's jaw tightened. "He told her that if she couldn't hold his mark, she couldn't hold him either. She left the pack after that. My mother said she probably died alone in some border town, too broken to ever try again."

The words landed like stones in my gut. I turned away, gripping the windowsill hard enough that my knuckles went white.

*We would never,* Valdor snarled in my mind. *Never abandon her. Never.*

"I know what you're thinking," I said quietly. "And you're right. I won't be like that Beta. I won't."

"Then what's this about?" Kieran pushed off the door, came to stand beside me. "Regis, talk to me. What's going on?"

So I told him. About the forest, about the girl who'd saved me, about finding her here—a student, wolfless, terrified. About the mark I'd left on her throat and the way she'd tried to hide it with herbs and scarves. About the conversation that had just ended with her running from my office in tears.

Kieran listened without interrupting, his expression growing more serious with every word. When I finished, he was quiet for a long time.

"She's your true mate," he said finally. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"And she thinks you want to reject her."

"Yes."

He exhaled slowly, shook his head. "Then maybe the mark fading is a blessing, Regis. If it disappears completely, you can start over. Approach her as just another instructor, earn her trust, let her see who you really are without the weight of an accidental bond hanging over both of you."

I wanted to argue, wanted to insist that the bond was sacred and shouldn't be erased. But Valdor, surprisingly, was silent—listening, considering.

"You think I should let it fade," I said slowly. "Pretend it never happened."

"No." Kieran's voice was firm. "I think you should let it fade so she doesn't feel trapped. So when you pursue her—and you *will* pursue her, I know you—she'll believe it's because you want her, not because some primal instinct is forcing your hand." He paused. "But before that, you need to make sure she understands one thing: you never wanted to reject her. Not for a second."

The truth of it settled over me like a weight. He was right. If Eileen believed I saw her as a burden, as a mistake, then nothing I did afterward would matter. The damage would be done.

I pulled out my communicator, stared at the blank screen. Typed a message, deleted it. Tried again.

*Too formal,* Valdor muttered. *She'll think you're just being polite.*

I tried a third time. A fourth. Each version felt wrong—too cold, too desperate, too much or not enough.

Finally, I forced myself to stop overthinking and just wrote what I needed her to know:

> *Eileen, I'm sorry if I frightened you today. When I asked you to come to my office, it was only to understand how you felt about the bond between us, and to discuss how we might move forward together. I would never look down on you for being wolfless. What happened that night in the forest—the responsibility is entirely mine. Please believe that I intend to honor that responsibility, no matter what. You don't need to reply right away. When you're ready, you can find me. —Regis*

I read it over three times, my thumb hovering over the send button. Then, before I could second-guess myself again, I pressed it.

The message vanished into the ether. I set the communicator down on my desk, stared at it as if I could will a response into existence.

*She'll come back to us,* Valdor said, but he sounded uncertain. *Won't she?*

"I don't know," I admitted quietly. "But I have to give her the choice. Even if it kills me."