ALPHA'S ENDLESS REGRET: After The Barren Luna's Leave novel Chapter 14

I stared down at Tiberius Dorian's broken body, feeling nothing but hollow detachment—as if observing a complete stranger rather than the wolf I'd once bound my life to.

During the eight months since escaping Silver Crescent territory, I'd carefully reconstructed my identity in the Wilderness. My healing practice had gained respect even among the territorial rogues who typically distrusted anyone with formal training. I treated impoverished shifters without pack protection, developed experimental therapies for cubs with genetic disorders that traditional pack physicians deemed untreatable, and successfully stabilized warriors with catastrophic battle wounds who'd been given up for dead.

I'd even taken on an apprentice—Riley, a sharp-minded nineteen-year-old female with natural talent for botanical medicine and an uncanny intuition for diagnosing complex shifter physiological conditions.

That fateful morning, we were harvesting rare wolfsbane variants near the base of Widow's Peak when Riley's startled yelp echoed through the ravine.

"Found another copperhead?" I called without looking up, gently mocking her notorious ophidiophobia while carefully extracting a delicate root system.

"Dr. Evadne," she responded with uncharacteristic urgency, "there's a critically injured male down in the gully. Based on impact patterns, he fell from at least sixty feet up. Multiple compound fractures, significant blood loss, but still alive. Should I prep emergency stabilization?"

I glanced over, ready to issue standard triage instructions—and felt the world instantly collapse around me.

Tiberius.

He lay unconscious in an expanding pool of crimson, his powerful frame twisted at biomechanically impossible angles from the fall. Yet clutched in his right hand was a perfectly intact Ghost Orchid—the extraordinarily rare alpine flower that grew only on the most inaccessible ledges of Widow's Peak, known for its unparalleled healing properties and near-mythical status among shifter healers.

The sight hurled me violently backward through time.

Tiberius had asked me during our third year together, "If I ever committed some unforgivable betrayal that made you truly hate me, what would it take to earn back your trust?"

We'd been lounging at Devil's Overlook, legs dangling recklessly over the thousand-foot drop, securely wrapped in the invincibility of young love. I'd pointed toward a nearly inaccessible Ghost Orchid clinging impossibly to the vertical rock face below us.

"You'd have to free-climb down there and retrieve that flower without using equipment. If you valued my forgiveness enough to risk certain death for it and somehow survived... then I'd forgive literally anything."

From a calculated distance, I watched him struggle toward consciousness three separate times, his enhanced Alpha healing factor fighting a losing battle against injuries that would have instantly killed any ordinary shifter.

His eyes flickered open during his final resurgence of awareness, somehow finding mine across the distance between us.

"Giselle..." The barely audible rasp carried on the mountain breeze. "Forgive me..."

His hand fell limp, releasing the Ghost Orchid to the blood-saturated earth beneath him as his eyes remained fixed on mine.

I met his gaze without flinching as his pupils dilated one final time, a single thought crystallizing in my mind with perfect clarity:

Never.