Ivar must have scented the turmoil behind my silence, the gunmetal-and-juniper of him sharpening as he caught the unease bleeding off my skin, because he pressed on.

"You're doing the right thing, Dorian. Ciara is part of this Pack. Your father's Moon Oath binds you to shelter her. That is sacred. That is a debt of honor, sworn under the Goddess herself. Neva will understand once the anger has passed and she can think clearly."

I turned back to him, doubt still heavy in my chest, my wolf restless beneath it.

"You really believe that?"

"I'm certain of it." A note of quiet confidence threaded through his voice. "Don't let this consume you. It's nothing. Neva is hurt right now, but she will realize you were fulfilling your duty. Nothing more."

I nodded slowly. I had been so tangled in guilt and frustration that doubt had started to poison everything, distorting my judgment about what this would mean for us. I was doing the right thing. I could not run two trails at once. What I did for Ciara was what any Alpha would have done. What my father would have expected of the one who took his place.

"I just don't want to lose Neva." The words came out barely above a whisper, and I hated how vulnerable they sounded in the stillness of that den.

"You won't." Ivar's voice carried the weight of absolute conviction. "Neva loves you. That's precisely why this is hitting her so hard. But she'll come around. The two of you have been bound together too long for a single incident to sever it."

I let out a long breath, and some of the iron tension in my chest began to loosen. Ivar was right. He was always right about these things.

"Thanks, Ivar. I needed to hear that."

He smiled, and there was a glint in his eyes that caught the lamplight, gold flickering low and gone.

"Anytime. That's what I'm here for."

I pushed myself up from the chair, feeling lighter than I had since the moment Neva's voice had gone cold across the mind-link. The talk with Ivar had helped, but I still had a great deal of damage to repair. The fracture between Neva and me was real, and no amount of reassurance from my Beta could mend it. Only I could do that. But at least now, the guilt was no longer drowning me.

"I'll talk to her later tonight. Give her time to cool down first."

"Smart. Neva has a soft spot for you, Dorian. Always has. Use that to your advantage."

We walked to the study door together, and for the first time in hours, I felt prepared to face whatever came next.

Ivar clapped a hand on my shoulder, his grip firm and familiar.

"You've got this. Just remember you're not alone in this."

"Thanks, Ivar."

He left, and the weight on my shoulders had lifted enough that I could breathe again. But now came the harder part. I had to find a way to make things right with Neva.

I crossed the eastern territory to the den Neva and I shared. It was our private ground, set apart from the pack estate, the one place where we were not the Alpha and his Intended but simply two people who had chosen each other. Or so I had believed.

When I opened the door, the den was dark. The kind of dark that had nothing to do with the hour and everything to do with absence.

"Neva?"

My voice echoed off the stone floors and died against the walls. No answer. And then my wolf went very still, because the air was wrong. I moved through the rooms, checking the kitchen, the sitting room, the bedchamber. Everything was in its place. Everything except the things that mattered. The frost-and-white-birch of her, the cold river-stone and that thread of moonflower that had lived in these walls for years, had thinned to almost nothing.

Instinct seized me, cold and sudden, and I walked to the closet. I pulled the doors open.

Empty. Every hanger bare. Every shelf cleared. Her boots, her coats, the small leather case where she kept her grandmother's moon-rosary. All of it, gone.

Neva had left me.

My legs gave out, and I sank to the floor of the closet, surrounded by nothing but the faint ghost of her scent and the hollow click of empty hangers swaying in the draft. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf threw back its head and made a sound I had never heard it make, a low keening that scraped at the inside of me with no name to give it. The silence pressed in from every side, absolute and merciless, and for the first time since I had become Alpha of the Nightveil Pack, I felt completely and utterly powerless.

I never thought packing could break a person. Every item I folded into the trunk felt like tearing a piece of my life with Dorian free from the bone. The life I had imagined would last until they laid me beneath the pack's burial ground.

I bit back tears when I stared at the empty closet. The hangers swayed gently, catching the faint light from the window like skeletal fingers waving goodbye. I couldn't believe this was happening. We were supposed to be bound for life. A sacred Moon Oath, sworn under the Moon Goddess and witnessed by the Pack. Instead, here I stood in a half-stripped den, shoving silk blouses into luggage like a woman fleeing a war zone. Deep inside me, my wolf paced the same small circle she'd worn into the ground, refusing to lie down. I pressed the heel of my palm against my eyes and wiped the tears away before they could fall. Now was not the moment to be weak. I was worth more than this.

My communicator vibrated against the dresser. Ivar. He seemed unfinished with his lecture from earlier, as though the first round hadn't been enough.

"Neva, please don't make any rash decisions. I'm sure Dorian will fix this. He's just dealing with a lot right now. Give him time to make it up to you."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes hard enough to feel the pull in my temples.

"Fix this? How could he?" My voice came out low and venomous, barely above a whisper. "Where was he, Ivar? He canceled without thinking twice. He didn't even think of me. And I'm supposed to understand him." I hissed the last word like it was poison on my tongue and pulled the communicator away from my ear, ignoring whatever he said next.

I shoved the last blouse into the suitcase, pressing it down with both hands, trying to crush the memory of the Moon-Bound Union that was supposed to happen today. I had dreamt of it for moons. Walking through the great hall of the Nightveil estate with the entire Pack watching. The candlelight. The oath. The ring of witnesses. Dorian's hand closing over mine as the elder spoke the vows that would bind us before the Moon Goddess and the Pack both.

But today, when it was supposed to happen, Dorian's eyes had gone to Ciara. Sweet, fragile Ciara Thornwood, who had feigned another heat-weakness during her training session. Collapsed on the training grounds like a porcelain doll with a cracked spine. I couldn't count how many times she had pulled this act, and I couldn't fathom how blind Dorian remained to the performance. Every time, the same script. The trembling lip, the wide doe eyes, the whispered "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause trouble." And every time, Dorian dropped everything. Dropped me.

"Damn them."

I zipped the suitcase with a vicious pull, grabbed the handle, and walked out. I told no one. Not even Elder Lavinia, who loved me more than anyone left in that estate. She would have stopped me, and I couldn't afford to be stopped. Not tonight.

The carriage I had summoned was already idling at the curb outside the estate's outer gate, its lamps cutting pale lines through the October dark. I rushed down the gravel path, stuffed my luggage into the back, and slid into the seat, telling the driver to go. No hesitation. No looking back.

I looked back.

The estate shrank behind me, its iron gates and grey-stone walls dissolving into the amber blur of passing lamplight. My heart sat like a stone behind my ribs. Every stretch of road we passed carried a memory. The corner den where Dorian had brought me hot tea the morning after our Moon Oath was announced. The clearing where he had walked beside me in silence, his hand warm against the small of my back, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said. I had fought for so long to make this work, to earn my place beside him, to prove that I was more than just a name in an old oath sworn between our fathers. But now I was done. I was taking back control, even if it carved me hollow. Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf went still at last, no longer pacing, only watching the gates disappear with me.

When I arrived at my old den in the lower territory, I stood on the path and stared at the building before going in. A narrow stone row-house with an iron stair that zigzagged up the front like a scar. I had lived here less than a year before moving into the estate, and it had felt like home then. Comforting but painful now, the way a childhood nest feels after a burial. I wished I could become the old Neva. The one full of hope. The one who still believed that Dorian Blackthorn's love was something she could hold in her hands.

I dragged the suitcase up three flights of stairs. Its weight felt lighter than whatever sat crushing my chest. When I reached the bedroom, the small space felt foreign, the air stale and cold, the bed stripped to a bare mattress. The den held no trace of blackthorn smoke or cold iron here, none of his scent at all, and the absence of it was its own quiet ache. But I welcomed the change. Anything was better than that estate tonight.

As I unpacked, I tried to push thoughts of Dorian from my mind, but they crept back like smoke under a closed door. His voice. His hands. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching, as though I were something precious and breakable. The way he looked at Ciara when everyone was watching, as though she were something he owed.

Just as I was smoothing a fitted sheet over the mattress, my crystal communicator hummed again on the den's nightstand. I hesitated before picking it up, certain it would be Ivar circling back for another round, or worse, Ciara calling to deliver some saccharine apology dipped in that honeysuckle-and-cold-ash sweetness she wore like a mask, designed to twist the knife. But when I saw the name pulsing across the crystal, my heart lurched against my ribs.

Dorian.

My breath came thin and shallow as I read the words.

"Neva, please. Can we talk? I need to see you."

I stared at the glowing crystal until the words blurred. Did he really think he could fix this with a handful of words on a stretch of cold quartz? After everything? After today?

My hands were shaking when I traced out my reply.

"I don't think that's a good idea right now."

Before I could set the communicator back down, it rang. Dorian's name filled the crystal, pulsing with each call like a heartbeat I knew too well. I hesitated, my finger hovering over the silence-rune, but something stopped me. Some stubborn, traitorous part of my heart that still wanted to hear his voice. Deep in my chest, my wolf lifted her head and went very still, ears straining toward a sound that wasn't even there yet. I took a deep breath and answered.

"What do you want, Dorian?" I kept my voice as steady as a blade balanced on its edge.

"Neva, it shouldn't have gone this far. Let's talk about this. Please." His voice carried that particular blend of desperation and warmth that had always undone me. The voice of an Alpha who could bring a hundred pack-warriors to their knees with a single look, yet could not command the one she-wolf the Moon Goddess had sworn to him.

"Why? So you can cancel again?" My voice climbed despite my efforts to hold it level. "So you can tell me how much you care while you keep putting Ciara first?"

"No. I wanted to explain." A pause. I could hear him breathing through the link, measured and deliberate, the way he breathed before a difficult border-talk with a rival pack. "I know you're hurt. I understand it. This isn't because of Ciara. I am the Alpha. I am responsible for the safety of every wolf under my mark. She is under my protection. That is an obligation my father swore with his dying breath, a Moon Oath sealed beneath the Goddess. You know this."

I scoffed, shaking my head even though he couldn't see me.

"Dorian, she is always injured. Every single time something important is about to happen for us, she collapses, weak from a heat that comes on cue, or some wound that never seems to scar. Don't you find that a little odd?"

"Come on, Neva." Irritation sharpened his tone, the Alpha bleeding through the lover, and I felt the faint pressure of his aura push down the link before he reined it back. "Anything can happen during a training run. You push yourself, you get hurt. Wounds are part of learning the fight. Any young warrior could understand that."

The words hit like a slap.

"Are you trying to say I'm childish? And Ciara getting injured every single time is not behaving like a child herself?"

"No, that's not what I meant." He caught himself, pulled back. "You have every right to be upset. We have been preparing for the Mating Ceremony for moons. But you know we can never predict what will happen. Ciara's injury wasn't even that serious. She'll heal in a day or two. We can reschedule the union. What is a day or two?"

What is a day or two. As though the night under the moon meant nothing. As though I hadn't spent weeks with Elder Lavinia choosing the bonding-flowers and the ceremony cloth. As though the whole pack hadn't gathered beneath the open sky. As though my heart hadn't been laid bare on a silver tray for every wolf to see, only to be pushed aside for a girl with a bruised ankle and a rehearsed whimper.

"I can't do this right now." My voice trembled despite every effort to hold it still. Inside me, my wolf had stopped pacing. She simply lay down, nose tucked away from his scent that wasn't even in the room, as if she could no longer bear to reach for it.

"Neva, please. I just need you to hear me out. Can we at least meet? Just to talk." He was pleading now, and the sound of it was almost worse than the anger. Dorian Blackthorn did not plead. Not with rival Alphas across a war-line. Not with the council of elders. Not with anyone. Only with me, and only when he knew he had lost ground he could not afford to lose.

"Talk? About what? About how you chose Ciara over me?" I pressed my free hand flat against the bare mattress, steadying myself. "You know what? I'm done hearing excuses."

"It's not an excuse. I just need a moment to explain everything. I thought you would understand my position. Being the Alpha, carrying the weight of the whole pack. This isn't just about us, Neva."

"Right. Because your obligations are clearly more important than what we have. I understand that, Dorian. I do. But that doesn't change how I feel."

He sighed, and even through the link I could hear the frustration in his breath, heavy and controlled, the exhale of an Alpha who was used to having the final word in every room he entered.