My Fated Mate Can Have Her-Chapter 164: Recovery

Violet

Rowan had slept for three full days.

And it surprised Mira that I didn’t want to check up on him. I wanted to see him, but at the same time I wasn’t sure I really wanted to even though the bond would slightly draw my attention towards that closed door that led to the inner rooms more times than I cared to admit.

The older lady would check up on him on my behalf with the practiced concern of someone who had raised children and grandchildren. She would return from his room with reports delivered in her odd chatter.

At times, she reminded me of my grandmother.

Except that she never talked this much.

I had fully recovered on the second day and I had slowly gotten to know this quaint family of two.

Mira would talk constantly, filling the house with stories and observations that required little response from me. It was almost a relief. I could listen without having to reveal much about myself, and she seemed content with my quiet presence.

Her granddaughter Bae was different.

Nineteen years old, roughly three years younger than me, but she carried herself with a maturity that made her seem older. She was apparently a very strong wolf, and I could sense it in the way she moved, along with the controlled power that radiated from her even when she was simply carrying water or chopping wood outside with a strange blade.

She had been distrustful at first, often asking pointed questions about where we were going, why we were traveling, what we wanted. She was very protective of her grandmother.

But slowly, within a really short span, she started warming up to me.

The house itself surprised me.

It sat on the outskirts of the pack, isolated for an obvious reason. The structure was large and mostly made of rough, sturdy wood that had weathered decades of seasons. The outside was practical and unpolished, but inside, every surface had been sanded smooth and treated with care.

Mira told me her late husband had built it himself.

For her.

Because he loved her and didn’t care that she was an Omega.

The words had settled strangely in my chest and I found it very touching. I had never heard of a wolf going to such lengths for an Omega.

The sad thing was he had died a few years ago, and so had both of their children. One in an accident I didn’t ask about, and the other while giving birth to Bae. Mira’s voice had grown quiet when she shared that.

Bae was all she had left.

At the end of my second day awake there, I learned about the meat.

Rowan had brought back more than I could have imagined. Entire carcasses from his hunt, enough to feed a family for months. But he hadn’t simply dumped it and collapsed either. There was an insane detail Mira had strangely forgot to mention. Rowan had stayed awake long enough to clean and prepare a large portion of it.

Mira had also shown me the cold storage room, a underground structure I had never seen or even heard of before. The temperature inside was shockingly low, and a lot of what I saw were strangely frozen. There were blocks of ice held in suspension by some strange crystals and while the space held other things, it had more meat than I had ever seen in one place.

The rest of the meat that couldn’t fit, she had boiled it and I helped her preserve the rest with Bae.

And on the fourth morning, I excused myself early.

I wanted to see their pack and understand what kind of place it truly was.

The walk through the territory was enlightening in ways I hadn’t expected.

The pack was orderly, well-maintained, and clearly prosperous. The buildings were sturdy, the wolves I passed looked healthy and confident.

But I hardly saw any Omegas.

In fact, I didn’t meet any.

The observation sat uncomfortably in my stomach as I made my way back to Mira’s house. The absence of Omegas reminded me of the situation in Fresna.

’Kael...’

I thought about him on my way back.

I wondered where he was, what he was doing, and when I would see him again. Even though it felt silly because I was the one who wanted to leave in the first place.

The bond with him felt distant now, stretched thin by miles and time, but it was still there. Still pulling. Still reminding me that somewhere, he existed, and I wasn’t entirely alone.

And the bond wasn’t the only thing I shared with him at this point.

But the presence of another one grabbed my attention as I returned to the house. I pushed the thought away.

The structure looked even more impressive in the morning light, and it was a really large house. I climbed the steps to what they called a porch and pushed open the door.

Mira’s voice reached me immediately. It was a bit suspicious now that I was inside how animated it was.

I followed the sound and stopped in the entry way leading to the living room.

Rowan sat on the floor at the center of the room, hunched over plates of food. Multiple plates were all filled with meat. He was dressed in loose pants and an even looser shirt. His coat was nowhere in sight.

He was eating with single-minded focus, tearing into the meat and swallowing with barely a pause between bites.

I stood there, frozen.

He must have sensed me because his head lifted, and his eyes found mine.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then he swallowed the food in his mouth, and his expression shifted into something that made my chest tighten painfully.

He looked so relieved.

"You’re fine..." he said, his voice rough from disuse but unmistakably glad.

My pulse quickened at the softness in his eyes, at the way he looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered in the room.

"Rowan!" Mira’s voice cut through the moment, sitting directly in front of him and fanning herself. "Focus on eating, dear. You need your strength."

Bae appeared from another entrance, carrying a bowl of steaming, garnished meat. She set it down on the floor along with the others, her expression blank as if the amount of food Rowan was eating was normal.

I looked at the large plates in front of him, at the sheer amount of food he was consuming, and I felt stunned all over again.

But more than that, I felt the weight of his gaze and the quiet intensity of his relief.

I looked away, uncomfortable and hating just how much I noticed it.