I Left Before He Learned My Worth novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

ARIA

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As soon as the children were clear, as soon as they were safely in their parents’ arms being checked for injuries, Kael carefully, so carefully, turned Ivory over.

The damage was extensive. Deep claw marks across her back. Bite wounds on her arms. But worst of all was her head—a gash along her temple that was bleeding freely, the kind of injury that suggested blunt force trauma. One of the rogues must have struck her with something, must have hit her hard enough to crack bone.

“Ivory,” Kael said again, and his hands were shaking as he brushed blood-matted hair from her face. “Ivory, can you hear me? Stay with me. Help is coming. You’re going to be fine.”

But she wasn’t responding. Her breathing was shallow, irregular. Her skin was pale beneath the blood, cold to the touch.

“She’s bleeding out,” Nina’s voice came from beside me, and I realized she’d arrived at some point during the rescue. Her face was white, her hands already moving to apply pressure to the worst wounds. “The head injury-Kael, she’s bleeding too much. We need to get her to the clinic now.”

“I’ll carry her,” Kael said, already scooping Ivory’s limp form into his arms as gently as possible. “Clear a path. Everyone move.”

The run back to the pack house was a blur. Kael cradling Ivory against his chest, her blood soaking into his clothes. Nina running beside them, maintaining pressure on the head wound. Warriors forming a protective escort. Parents carrying their traumatized but safe children. And me, running at the edge of it all, feeling completely superfluous to the crisis unfolding.

We burst into the clinic to find Eliza already preparing—someone had sent word ahead through the mindlink. She took one look at Ivory and her expression went grim.

“Station One. Now. And someone call for a blood transfusion-she’s lost too much.”

Kael laid Ivory on the examination table, but when Eliza tried to work, when she needed space, he wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t stop touching Ivory’s hand, her arm, maintaining that connection.

“Alpha Kael,” Eliza said firmly. “I need room to work. Please. Step back.”

He finally moved, but only a few feet. Nina took his place at Ivory’s side, her face streaked with

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Chapter 74

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tears she wasn’t bothering to hide.

“She saved them,” Nina whispered. “Those pups. She could have run, could have shifted and fought, could have done anything else. But she covered them with her own body and refused to move. She saved them, and it might have killed her.”

Through our bond, I felt Kael’s emotions—a churning mess of fear and love and grief and guilt all tangled together until they were indistinguishable from each other. This was destroying him, watching his oldest friend fight for life because she’d been brave enough, selfless enough, to put children’s safety above her own.

I stood at the back of the clinic, watching Eliza work with desperate efficiency. Watching Nina hold Ivory’s hand. Watching Kael unable to tear his eyes away from his friend’s pale, bloodied face.

And I thought about Ivory’s accusations from days ago. About how my presence, my baggage, my complications had put the pack in danger.

Those rogues had been in the woods because of the ongoing conflict with Blackwood. Because Sera was seeking revenge. Because of the chain of events that had started with Damon’s obsession and my bonding to Kael.

If I hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t accepted Kael’s offer, if I had somehow handled my past differently-would those rogues have been in the woods today? Would Ivory be lying on that table, bleeding and broken?

I didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But the guilt settled in my chest like a stone anyway.

Heavy and cold and impossible to dislodge.

The week that followed was perhaps the longest of my life. Ivory remained unconscious for seven days, her body fighting to heal from the extensive trauma she’d sustained. Eliza worked around the clock, monitoring her vitals, adjusting treatments, doing everything possible to ensure her patient would wake up.

And when she didn’t wake up, when day after day passed with no change, the pack’s anxiety grew palpable.

Kael barely left the clinic. He’d set up a makeshift workspace in one of the side rooms so he could handle Alpha business while remaining close enough to be notified the moment Ivory’s condition changed. I brought him meals he barely touched, sat with him in silence when he needed company, and tried not to feel inadequate in the face of his overwhelming concern for his friend.

Nina was even worse. She’d pulled a chair up beside Ivory’s bed and simply refused to leave.

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Chapter 74

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She slept there, ate there, conducted pack business from that single spot. The dark circles under her eyes grew more pronounced each day, her face drawn with exhaustion and worry.

“She’ll wake up,” Nina kept saying, like a mantra. Like if she said it enough times, she could make it true through sheer force of will. “She’s too stubborn not to wake up.”

I spent time in the clinic too, though I felt like an intruder. I helped Eliza with other patients, organized supplies, did whatever menial tasks I could find to be useful. But mostly, I just watched and waited along with everyone else.

The children Ivory had saved visited daily. Their parents brought them, let them stand at the foot of her bed and whisper thanks to her unconscious form. Some left drawings, others left flowers, one boy left a carefully carved wooden wolf that he’d made himself.

“She saved us,” he said solemnly, his six-year-old face far too serious. “The scary wolves were coming and she covered us up and wouldn’t let them hurt us. She’s a hero.”

Yes, I thought. She was a hero. And I was the person whose presence in the pack had ultimately put her in danger.

The guilt ate at me constantly, made worse by the fact that I had no way to atone for it. Ivory was unconscious. The conflict with Blackwood remained unresolved. And the pack’s division over who bore responsibility for the situation hadn’t healed-if anything, it had deepened as pack members watched their beloved healer fight for her life.

It was on the seventh day, in the early afternoon, when Ivory’s eyes finally opened.

I wasn’t in the clinic at the time-I’d gone to help with meal preparation, trying to be useful

somewhere. It was Nina’s mental voice, euphoric with relief, that reached me through the pack bond.

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