Chapter 4: The Reluctant Healer

The memory of that near-kiss, that devastating touch, haunted me for days. It lingered in the space between us every time our paths crossed in the great hall—a flicker of his gaze that would snap away, the way his knuckles would whiten around his goblet. The air was thick with unsaid things, with a tension that had mutated from simple hostility into something far more volatile. I avoided him. He, it seemed, avoided me harder. The pack could sense it too. Whispers followed me, speculations...