Mated to Her Alpha Instructor Chapter 21

Regis

The training grounds were shrouded in morning mist when I arrived, the pale sun barely cresting the horizon and casting long shadows across the packed earth. Kieran was already there, running through warm-up drills with the kind of methodical precision that came from years of military discipline, and he looked up as I approached, raising one hand in greeting before returning to his stretches.

I nodded in response and moved to join him, rolling my shoulders and trying to shake off the restless tension that had been my constant companion for the past two weeks—the hollow ache in my chest where the bond had been, the gnawing sense of something vital and irreplaceable slipping away day by day, the maddening silence from Eileen that told me everything and nothing at once.

"Ready?" Kieran asked, straightening and rolling his neck until it cracked audibly.

"Ready," I said, though I wasn't sure I believed it.

We began with the basics—hand-to-hand combat drills, the kind of close-quarters sparring that required focus and speed and the ability to read your opponent's movements before they happened. Kieran came at me with a low feint to the left, then pivoted and drove his shoulder toward my ribs, and I should have seen it coming, should have blocked or countered or at least stepped aside, but instead I hesitated for half a second too long and his momentum carried him straight into me, sending me stumbling backward and nearly knocking me off my feet.

He pulled back immediately, frowning. "You all right?"

"Fine," I muttered, resetting my stance. "Again."

We went again, and again I missed the opening, my reflexes sluggish and my attention scattered. Kieran landed a solid hit to my shoulder—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make his point—and then followed it up with a sweep that put me flat on my back in the dirt, staring up at the pale sky with my lungs heaving and my pride somewhere in the mud beside me.

Kieran stood over me, arms crossed, his expression somewhere between exasperation and concern. "All right, that's enough. You're done."

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, scowling. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," he said flatly. "You've been distracted recently, and today you're worse than ever. If this were a real fight, you'd be dead three times over." He paused, then added more gently, "Talk to me, Regis. What's going on?"

I sat up fully, brushing dirt from my tunic, and stared at the ground between my knees. "It's been almost two weeks," I said quietly. "Since I sent her that message."

"And she hasn't replied."

"She read it," I said. "But she hasn't said anything."

Kieran was silent for a moment, and then he moved to sit beside me, his shoulder bumping mine in a gesture of solidarity. "And the mark?"

"Gone," I said, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. "Five days ago. Completely faded." I closed my eyes, remembering the way Valdor had howled in my mind when the last trace of silver light had vanished from my senses, the way the emptiness had crashed over me like a wave and left me gasping for air. "Valdor hasn't spoken since."

"Shit," Kieran said quietly. "I'm sorry, Regis."

I shrugged, though the gesture felt hollow. "I gave her a choice. I told her I would respect whatever she decided. And she decided... this. So I have to accept it."

Kieran turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, and there was something almost amused in his expression despite the seriousness of the conversation. "Do you, though? Because honestly, watching you mope around like some tragic hero from a bad romance novel is getting old."

I shot him a glare. "I'm not moping."

"You're absolutely moping," he said, grinning now. "You're doing the whole 'noble suffering in silence' thing, and it's painful to watch." He nudged my shoulder with his. "Look, I get it. You're trying to be respectful. You don't want to push her. But has it occurred to you that maybe—just maybe—she's waiting for you to actually do something?"

"I did do something," I said, frustrated. "I apologized. I offered to talk. I gave her space."

"Right," Kieran said slowly, drawing the word out like he was explaining something to a particularly dense recruit. "You sent her one very polite, very careful message, and then you disappeared. You've been thinking about her like some lovesick fool, but you haven't actually approached her. You haven't followed up. You haven't—"

"I was giving her time to think," I interrupted.

"Or," Kieran said, "she thinks you've given up on her."

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again, the words dying in my throat. "What?"

Kieran sighed and leaned back against the wall, tilting his face up to the pale morning sky. "Think about it from her perspective. She's wolfless, right? So she's probably spent her whole life being told she's not good enough, not worth the effort. Then she accidentally bonds with an Alpha—with you, the great Regis Vane, war hero and academy instructor—and instead of claiming her, you send her a very nice, very formal message basically saying 'it's your choice, no pressure,' and then you vanish into thin air." He turned his head to look at me. "What do you think that looks like to her?"

"I was trying to respect her autonomy," I said, but even as I said it, I could hear how it sounded—how it might sound to someone who'd spent her whole life being dismissed and discarded.

"I know," Kieran said, his tone gentler now. "But respect can look a lot like indifference, especially to someone who's already convinced she doesn't matter. You gave her space, sure. But what she probably heard was 'I'm washing my hands of this.'"

The truth of that statement hit me like a punch to the gut, and I felt something crack open in my chest—a realization that I'd been so focused on not pressuring her, on not being the overbearing Alpha who forced his will on his mate, that I'd completely failed to consider how my silence might be interpreted. "I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't," Kieran said. "But she doesn't know that. All she knows is that the mark faded, you went quiet, and now she's probably sitting somewhere convinced that you're relieved to be rid of her."

I dropped my head into my hands, my fingers digging into my scalp. "So what do I do?"

"You stop overthinking," Kieran said bluntly. "You contact her. Right now. You tell her you want to talk, and you don't give her room to second-guess whether you mean it."

I looked up at him, and he was grinning again, that familiar mix of exasperation and affection that had gotten me through more than one crisis over the years. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," he said. "And for the love of the Moon, Regis, try to sound like you actually care, not like you're drafting a formal treaty."

I pulled the small communicator from my belt, my hands steadier than they'd been in days, and stared at the blank surface for a long moment. Kieran watched me, his expression expectant, and I took a breath and started to type.

This time, I didn't overthink it. I didn't agonize over every word or second-guess my phrasing. I just wrote what I felt, plain and direct and true.

[Eileen,]

[I know I've been giving you space, and I know you may not want to see me. But what happened between us shouldn't be buried in silence. If you're willing, I'd like to talk—today, or whenever works for you. Please give me a chance.]

[— Regis]

I sent it before I could lose my nerve, and the crystal pulsed once to confirm delivery. Then I sat there, staring at it, my heart pounding in my chest and Valdor stirring faintly in the back of my mind like something waking from a long sleep.

Kieran watched me with a knowing smile. "Now we wait."

"Now we wait," I agreed, though every instinct in me was screaming to get up, to find her, to—

The crystal flared to life in my hand, bright and sudden, and I nearly dropped it in surprise. Kieran leaned over, his eyes widening. "That was fast."