Kael did not sleep after leaving the river.
Elara's words stayed with him, heavy and precise, cutting deeper than anger ever could. Distance. Not hatred. Not resentment.
Distance was something he could not command away.
By dawn, he had made a decision he should have made years ago.
He found her in the small infirmary just after sunrise, light filtering through the windows as she arranged jars of dried herbs on a shelf. The room smelled of clean linen and crushed leaves calm, ordered, untouched by the turmoil beneath his skin.
"Elara," he said.
She did not look startled. Perhaps she had felt him coming. Perhaps the bond had warned her.
"If you're here for treatment," she said without turning, "you'll have to wait. I'm not finished."
"I'm here to speak," Kael replied. "If you'll allow it."
Her hands stilled.
After a moment, she nodded once. "You may."
That was all the permission he would get.
Kael stepped inside, closing the door behind him not to trap her, but to keep the moment contained. He took a breath, grounding himself, and spoke before doubt could reclaim him.
"I rejected you because I was afraid."
Elara turned then, surprise flickering briefly across her face before it settled into something more guarded.
"The pack was unstable," he continued. "I was young. Every elder warned me that choosing you would weaken my position. That love would make me careless."
"And you believed them," she said quietly.
"Yes." He did not soften the truth. "I believed that being Alpha meant sacrificing what I wanted most."
The bond stirred, heavy with memory.
"But I never stopped choosing you," Kael said. His voice lowered, rougher now. "I chose you every night I stood alone under the moon. Every time the bond reminded me of what I refused to claim. I chose you in regret, if not in action."
"That isn't a choice," Elara said gently. "That's guilt."
The words landed, but Kael did not retreat.
"I know," he said. "And I don't ask for forgiveness. I don't expect you to trust me. I only need you to understand that my rejection was never a lack of love."
Elara studied him in silence, searching for falsehood, for manipulation. She found none only weariness and something dangerously close to hope.
"Love that does nothing is still abandonment," she said.
Kael nodded. "I know."
The bond pulsed, aching, alive in a way it had not been since the night it broke.
"I won't ask you to come back to me," he said softly. "I won't ask you to be my mate. I forfeited that right the moment I let you walk away."
Elara's chest tightened.
"But I will choose you now," Kael continued. "In honesty. In presence. Even if all I am allowed to be… is someone who once failed you."
Silence filled the infirmary, fragile and charged.
Elara looked away, her fingers tightening around the edge of the table. His words did not heal the wound but they touched it, acknowledged it, and that alone stirred something she had long kept buried.
"I need time," she said finally.
Kael inclined his head. "I will give you all of it."
As he turned to leave, the bond settled not whole, not healed, but no longer silent.
And for the first time since her rejection, Elara wondered if distance was the end… or simply the space before another choice.