Mated to Her Alpha Instructor Chapter 147

Nina

The medical station corridor was quiet at midday, most of the staff either tending to patients or taking their meal break. I'd volunteered to restock the supply closet—mindless work that kept my hands busy and my thoughts from spiraling too far into the mess of emotions I'd been sorting through since Northridge.

I was carrying a stack of clean linens when I saw it.

A new notice had been posted on the community board near the main entrance—crisp parchment with bold lettering and an illustration that made my feet stop moving of their own accord.

**WANTED: ELDER CORNELIUS BLACKWELL**

**ESCAPED CUSTODY - CONSIDERED DANGEROUS**

Below the text was a detailed sketch. An older man with sharp features, iron-gray hair, and cold eyes that seemed to follow you even from paper. The artist had captured something in the set of his mouth—a particular kind of cruelty that pretended to be righteousness.

My heart began to pound.

The linens slipped from my suddenly nerveless fingers, tumbling to the floor in a soft cascade of white fabric.

I couldn't look away from the image. My throat tightened. My palms went slick with sweat. The corridor seemed to tilt slightly, and I had to put one hand against the wall to steady myself.

*I know that face.*

No. No, I couldn't know it. I'd never met Elder Cornelius. Ordinary students never dealt with the Elders. And I'd made sure to stay off the radar of anyone with authority, anyone who might notice the healer who never quite fit in.

But my body knew something my mind was frantically trying to deny.

---

The memories came in fragments—sharp and jagged, like broken glass cutting through the careful walls I'd built in my head.

*A stone room. Cold. Always so cold.*

*Iron bars. My small hands gripping them, knuckles white.*

*Voices beyond—men's voices, discussing things I was too young to understand. Words like "bloodline" and "extraction" and "control."*

*And then—*

My breath caught.

*A man in a dark robe, his back to me as he stood over a stone table. Mother was there, strapped down, her face twisted in pain. She was screaming—screaming my name—*

"*Did you think I'd go soft just because you secretly bore a child, you whore?" the man said, and his voice was like winter frost. " You know I can't let you destroy everything I've built."*

*His hand moved, and I saw it clearly in that sliver of memory—a silver ring on his finger, etched with ancient runes that seemed to writhe in the dim torchlight.*

I pressed my hand harder against the wall, forcing myself to breathe.

The details were so vivid and yet so distant, like watching something happen to someone else. I'd been four, maybe five. Too young to fully understand what was happening. Old enough to be terrified.

*Was that him?*

I looked at the sketch again, searching for confirmation. The age was right—Cornelius would have been in his prime back then, one of the Council's rising powers. And that expression, that particular blend of self-righteousness and cruelty...

*The ring.*

That was the detail that wouldn't let go. I'd dreamed about that ring for years after we escaped—waking in the night with phantom images of those twisting runes burned into my vision.

But I couldn't be certain. Memory was a strange, unreliable thing, especially memories formed in terror. My mind might be filling in gaps, assigning a familiar face to a nameless monster from my childhood.

And yet my wolf—Thea, who I'd spent decades suppressing—stirred uneasily in the back of my consciousness. She recognized something too. A scent-memory, perhaps, or some deeper instinct I couldn't consciously access.

*Danger. Old danger.*

"Nina?"

I jerked, nearly losing my balance. Eileen stood a few feet away, her brow creased with concern. She must have come around the corner while I was lost in the past.

"Are you alright?" She stepped closer, one hand instinctively cradling her rounded belly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I forced my gaze away from the poster and bent to gather the fallen linens, buying myself a few seconds to school my expression. "I'm fine. Just..." I gestured vaguely toward the notice without looking at it again. "They finally posted his likeness."

Eileen glanced at the sketch, her face darkening. "Regis said the artist worked from their descriptions. They wanted it distributed as widely as possible since most of us don't move in Elder circles and wouldn't recognize him on sight." Her voice dropped. "He could be anywhere by now."

"He could," I agreed quietly, my hands still trembling slightly as I gathered the last of the fallen fabric.

She studied me for a moment, and I could see her healer's instincts kick in—that careful assessment of someone who wasn't quite telling the whole story. "Nina... do you..." She hesitated. "Does he seem familiar to you somehow?"

My breath caught. Had I been that obvious?

"I don't know," I said, and it was the truth. "Maybe. It's hard to say."

She studied me for a moment. But she didn't push. That was one of the things I appreciated about Eileen. She understood the value of silence, of letting people carry their burdens until they were ready to set them down.

"If you need anything," she said softly, "or if you want to talk..."

"I know." I managed something approximating a smile. "Thank you."

She squeezed my shoulder gently before moving past me down the corridor, probably heading to check on her latest patient. I watched her go, feeling an unexpected surge of... something. Gratitude, maybe. Or the faint warmth of what friendship might feel like if I let myself believe in it.

---

Once I was alone again, I made myself look at the poster one more time.

*Was it you?*

The face stared back at me, offering no answers.

Maybe it didn't matter. Whether Cornelius was one of the men who'd hurt my mother—who'd tried to weaponize her gift, who'd driven her to the desperate act that created me—or just another powerful man who saw people like us as tools to be used... either way, he was dangerous.

And he was out there somewhere now, free and angry and plotting Moon-knew-what.

I thought of Eileen, carrying a child who would be born into a world where men like Cornelius still held power. I thought of the medical station, full of vulnerable people recovering from wounds. I thought of Silas, who'd disappeared so conveniently just before his master escaped custody.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides.

For years, I'd made myself small. Invisible. I'd buried my wolf, denied my heritage, tried to become so unremarkable that no one would look at me twice.

But standing here, staring at that face that might or might not haunt my earliest memories, I felt something shift inside me.

*Enough.*

I couldn't keep hiding. Not if people I cared about—and Moon help me, I *did* care about Eileen, about Mira, even about this rough collection of healers and warriors—were in danger.

Thea stirred again, more strongly this time. Not demanding. Just... present. Waiting.

I closed my eyes briefly, acknowledging her for perhaps the second time in my adult life.

*If I need you,* I thought, *will you come?*

The answer was immediate—a surge of fierce protectiveness that made my breath catch. She'd always been there, I realized. Waiting. Patient. Ready to defend what was ours.

*Yes,* she seemed to say. *Always.*

When I opened my eyes again, the corridor was still empty. The poster still hung on the wall, Cornelius's cold gaze fixed on some distant point.

But something had changed.

I bent to pick up the last of the fallen linens, my movements steady now. Whatever memories lurked in the shadows of my past, whatever connection might exist between that old monster and the child I'd been... I would face it.

Not alone this time. And not defenseless.

For the first time in decades, Nina Grey stood straight-backed in an empty hallway and let her wolf exist alongside her without shame or fear.