Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 44

POV: Adeline

Three days, and the color had returned to his face.

I pushed open the door to his room with my hip, balancing a tray of food in both hands—soup thick with root vegetables, bread still warm from the oven, a cup of the bitter tea Elara had prescribed for healing. The afternoon light slanted through the window, painting gold stripes across the floorboards and the rumpled blankets of his bed.

Aiden looked up from the reports he'd been reading—because of course he was reading reports, because asking an Alpha to rest was like asking the river to stop flowing—and something in his expression softened when he saw me.

"You don't have to keep bringing me food," he said.

"You don't have to keep pretending you don't need it." I set the tray on the trunk at the foot of his bed and pulled the chair closer. "Eat. Elara says the wound is closing well, but you lost blood. You need to rebuild."

"Elara says a lot of things."

"And you should listen to her."

He smiled—just slightly, just at the corners—and reached for the bread. I watched him eat, cataloging the small improvements I'd noticed over the past days. The steadiness of his hands. The ease of his movements. The way he no longer winced when he shifted position.

He would be fine. He was healing.

The knot in my chest that had lived there since the skirmish loosened another fraction. I hadn't realized how tightly I'd been holding myself until I felt it begin to release—the constant vigilance, the way I'd been listening for changes in his breathing even while I slept. Three days of watching him grow stronger, and I was finally starting to believe he wouldn't be taken from me.

"You're staring," he said.

"I'm supervising."

"Is that what we're calling it?"

I felt heat creep up my neck but didn't look away. "Someone has to make sure you actually rest instead of running the pack from your bed."

"I've been delegating."

"You've been giving Luca a headache."

His smile widened. "That's not new."

I shook my head, but I couldn't quite suppress the answering curve of my own lips. This—the easy back and forth, the warmth beneath the words—still felt new. Still felt fragile, like something that might shatter if I held it too tightly.

Aiden set aside the bread and leaned back against the headboard. His eyes found mine, and the playfulness in them shifted into something deeper. Quieter.

"Come here," he said.

I hesitated for only a moment before rising from the chair and moving to sit on the edge of the bed. Close enough to touch. Close enough to see the flecks of lighter brown in his dark eyes, the way the afternoon light caught the healing pink of his newest scar.

He reached up.

His fingers brushed my cheek first—featherlight, barely there. Then his palm curved against my jaw, thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone with a tenderness that made my breath catch. He touched me like I was something precious. Something he couldn't quite believe he was allowed to have.

I had been touched before—by Caleb, gentle and familiar; by healers tending wounds; by pack members in the casual contact of daily life. But no one had ever touched me quite like this. As if the simple act of his palm against my skin was a gift he was grateful to give. As if mapping the contours of my face was a privilege he didn't take for granted.

"How did I get this lucky?" he murmured.

A surprised laugh escaped me. "Lucky? You got stabbed."

"And you're still here."

The words landed soft and certain, carrying a weight that had nothing to do with humor. His thumb continued its slow path along my jaw, and his eyes held mine with an intensity that made the rest of the world fall away.

And you're still here.

Such a simple thing. Such an ordinary miracle. I was still here—not because I had to be, not because I had nowhere else to go, but because I had chosen it. Chosen him. Chosen this pack and this room and this man who looked at me like I had given him something he'd stopped hoping for.

"I'm still here," I agreed. The words came out softer than I intended.

"Why?"

It wasn't a challenge. It was genuine curiosity—the question of a man who had spent too long believing he didn't deserve good things, who still half-expected me to realize my mistake and disappear.

"Because you make me feel like I'm allowed to want things again," I said. "Because when I'm with you, the past doesn't feel so heavy. Because—" I stopped. Swallowed. Let myself say the truest thing. "Because I want to be here. With you. More than I've wanted anything in a long time."

Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise—he had to have known, had to have felt the same pull I did. But hearing it spoken aloud seemed to unlock something, to give him permission to believe what his instincts had already told him.

His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair. He drew me closer—slowly, giving me time to pull away.

I didn't pull away.

His lips met mine.

The kiss was soft. Unhurried. Nothing like the urgent press of mouths after the Ironclaw scare, nothing like the deep hunger that had pinned me against the porch railing. This was something gentler—gratitude and wonder woven together, a quiet celebration of the simple fact that we were both still here, still breathing, still reaching for each other.

His thumb stroked the nape of my neck. I felt his smile against my mouth—a curve of lips that spoke of joy too large to contain.

When we parted, he didn't go far. His forehead rested against mine, his breath warm on my skin, his hand still cradling the back of my head like I was something he never intended to let go.

He was smiling.

Not the controlled half-smile he wore for his pack, the one that said I am steady, I am strong, you can trust me to lead. This was something rarer. Something unguarded. The smile of a man who had found happiness in a place he'd stopped looking for it.

I realized I was smiling too.

The expression felt strange on my face—unfamiliar muscles remembering a shape they'd forgotten. I couldn't recall the last time I had smiled like this, without thought, without effort, without the conscious decision to arrange my features into something acceptable.

Before Ash Hollow, probably. Before the fire and the running and the five closed doors that had taught me to stop hoping.

But here, in this quiet room with afternoon light pooling on the floor and Aiden's warmth close enough to feel, something had cracked open in the fortress I'd built around myself. Something soft had taken root in the ruins.

"Stay," he said. Not a question this time. Not even a request. Just a word, offered like a gift.

"I'm not going anywhere."

His smile deepened. He tugged me closer, settling me against his uninjured side the way we'd slept for the past three nights. I went willingly, letting my head rest on his shoulder, letting my hand find its place over his heart.

His heartbeat was steady beneath my palm. Strong. Alive.

I closed my eyes and let myself feel it—this impossible, improbable thing. This happiness that had grown in the cracks of my grief like wildflowers pushing through stone.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn't bracing for the loss.

I was just... here. Present. Holding onto something good and letting myself believe it might last.

Outside, the pack went about its business—voices rising and falling, footsteps crossing the clearing, the ordinary sounds of a community carrying on. Inside, the afternoon light slowly shifted across the floor, and Aiden's breathing evened into the rhythm of sleep, and I lay beside him with a smile still lingering on my lips.

It had been so long since I'd smiled without thinking.

I had almost forgotten what it felt like.