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.
"You're right, it doesn't. But I never wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to do what was best for the Pack. You know I care about you. You know that, don't you?"
"Do I?" The question came out quieter than I intended, almost fragile, and I hated myself for it. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf gave a low, wounded sound I couldn't silence. "Because it doesn't feel that way. You keep saying you care, but your actions tell a different story, Dorian. Every single time."
He drew breath to speak again. I could feel it coming, the same lecture, the same sermon about duty and honor and the weight of the Blackthorn name. He couldn't stop himself. It was as though I were a green pack-warrior who needed to be schooled on the hard truths of pack life, a pup who couldn't grasp what it meant to sit as Alpha over the whole of the eastern territory.
I ended the call without asking permission. Without a goodbye. Without giving him the courtesy of a final word.
The communicator chimed again almost instantly. Dorian's name glowed on the screen, insistent, commanding, the way everything about him was commanding. I watched it ring. Once. Twice. Three times. Then I reached over, held my thumb to the crystal until the light died, and watched it go black.
The den was silent. The city hummed faintly beyond the window, indifferent to the woman sitting alone on a bare mattress in a cold room, holding a dead communicator in hands that would not stop shaking.
Laughter rolled through the great hall of the Nightveil estate like woodsmoke off a hundred hearths, thick and warm and impossible to escape. Ivar's Moon Blessing Day had drawn the entire pack together, every warrior, every Omega, every mate and cousin and distant blood-kin who owed their place to the Blackthorn name. Glasses clinked against glasses. Someone had set old crooning records spinning, and the brass notes drifted beneath the noise of conversation like a current beneath a river.
I scanned the room from my place near the head of the long table. Neva stood at the bar across the hall, a glass of untouched red in her hand, half-turned toward one of the pack healers. She was caught in conversation but not entirely present. Her eyes had that faraway quality, the look of a she-wolf whose mind was somewhere else entirely. It didn't matter. I was glad she came.
She had been busy. The work at the Pack Chronicle had consumed her for weeks, and Ivar had mentioned she wasn't in the mood for a gathering. But here she was, dressed in black silk, her dark hair pinned back, looking like she belonged in every room she entered. That was Neva. Always doing the right thing. Always putting others before herself.
Even from here, beneath the smoke and the wine and the press of so many scents, hers reached me. Fresh frost and white birch, cold river-stone, a thread of moonflower. My wolf lifted toward it the way it always did, and something in me wanted to cross the room.
"Dorian!" Ciara's voice cut through my thoughts, bright and deliberate. She appeared at my elbow, those wide, hopeful eyes turned up at me like a pup begging for permission. Her left arm rested in a sling, the bandage visible beneath the sleeve of her cream-colored blouse. Her scent came with her, sweet honeysuckle laid over something faintly spoiled, and for half a breath my wolf went still and wary without knowing why.
"Could you help me with the prawns and the crab? I can't peel them with my arm like this."
I hesitated. My gaze drifted back toward Neva, still standing at the bar, still talking to the healer. I had meant to go to her. I had meant to pull her aside, ask her how she was, tell her something. Anything.
But Ciara was standing right in front of me, injured, waiting. I couldn't leave her hanging. The debt of honor my father had sworn under the Moon Goddess to her dead mother hung over every interaction like a chain I could not set down.
"Sure," I said, and moved to sit beside her at the table.
"Thank you. You're a lifesaver." Ciara's smile was radiant, the kind of smile that made everyone in the room believe she was exactly what she appeared to be: fragile, grateful, harmless.
I picked up a prawn and began working the shell free with my fingers. Then a crab leg. The work was tedious, beneath the dignity of an Alpha in most circumstances, but this was different. This was Ciara. The obligation was clear. Others in the pack could be demanding in their own ways, but this particular duty carried the weight of a dying Moon Oath.
"You're always so kind to me, Dorian. I don't know what I'd do without you." She leaned closer, her shoulder brushing mine.
"It's nothing. Just doing what I should."
The shell cracked between my fingers. I set the clean meat on her plate.
Ivar appeared then, two tumblers of aged scotch in his hands. He set one in front of me and dropped into the chair across the table, loosening his collar with his free hand. His scent moved with him, gunmetal and dry pine resin, scorched copper, a faint thread of juniper. His dark eyes flicked to Ciara, then to me, and a knowing look crossed his face.
"You really know how to make a man feel useful, huh?" He raised his glass in a mock toast. "What a gentleman."
I let out a low rumble of a laugh and slid another peeled prawn onto Ciara's plate.
"Just helping a member of this pack who needs it."
Ivar leaned back, swirling the scotch in his glass, and let his gaze drift across the room to where Neva stood. She was alone now. The healer had moved on. She held the same glass of red she'd carried since she arrived, the wine untouched, the stem turning slowly between her fingers as if she were counting the minutes until she could leave.
"Hey, Dorian." Ivar's voice dropped a register, casual but pointed. "Why don't you peel some of those for Neva? I'm sure she'd appreciate it too."
I frowned. The suggestion landed wrong, like a stone dropped into still water, and my wolf pricked its ears at the edge of it. I hadn't come here to spend the evening shelling plates of seafood for every wolf in the room. Neva was perfectly capable of doing it herself.
"Neva's fine. She's just taking a break," I said, and the words sounded hollow even to my own ears.
Ivar raised an eyebrow. He took a slow sip of his scotch and set the glass down with a deliberate clink.
