“Lady Yvaine,” the pack adjudicator said gently, folding his hands atop the oak table, “you have been bonded to Alpha Gerald for thirty winters. You bore him a son and a daughter, and your bloodline has already continued through a grandson. With such a lineage, do you truly feel no hesitation?”

His silver eyes searched my face, clearly hoping I would withdraw my claim.

Hesitation?

A faint, bitter smile curved my lips.

Not long ago, I was crushed beneath an overturned hunting carriage in the northern ravine. My wolf had nearly slipped beyond recall. While I lay unconscious, the healers sent messengers to the Alpha’s lodge again and again. They called for Gerald. They summoned my children.

None of them came.

When I finally woke beneath the scent of frostroot and burning sage, still too weak to shift, a young healer forgot to lower her scrying mirror. That was how I saw it.

While I lay between life and death, the entire pack had gathered at the Moonstone Hall. Torches blazed. Drums echoed through the valley.

They were holding a grand feast for Tessa of the Silver mane Clan, Gerald’s first mate, celebrating the blessing her stone-carved moon totem had received from the elders.

In the mirror’s reflection, my grandson darted across the hall in his wolf pup form, laughter ringing bright and careless. Gerald stood near the high table, his fur streaked with gray, his arm wrapped around Tessa’s waist. His expression was open, proud, radiant in a way I had not seen in decades.

I watched until the candles burned low.

Only then did I understand that the bond I had guarded for thirty years had already been severed, not by law, but by choice.

“I am resolved,” I said calmly, lifting my chin. “Prepare the bond dissolution and the territory relinquishment accords.”

I had chosen our thirtieth bonding night to end it.

It would be my final offering to Gerald.

At last, he would no longer need to hide his true mate beneath the moon.

……

When I returned from the pack tribunal, the lodge was already lit with fire bowls. Gerald stood on the stone balcony, his back to me, speaking in a low voice through the wind.

“Yes. The sky fire must be brilliant, like a field of fallen stars,” he said with rare warmth. “Only something that magnificent is worthy of Tessa.”

For thirty winters as his mate, Gerald had never once brought me moonflowers. Not once. One year, I mentioned that I liked their pale glow during the Frost Moon. He frowned as if I had asked for something shameful.

“Must you always crave such useless things, Victoria?” he said then. “Moonflowers grow wild beyond the ridge. Pick them yourself if you want them.”

I once believed he simply did not understand tenderness.

Now I knew better.

He was willing to spend the pack’s finest firestones, resources gathered over decades, just to paint the night sky for Tessa of the Silvermane Clan.

I stood unmoving on the lodge floor, the scent of ash and pine heavy in my chest. Gerald ended the call and strode inside. Without looking at me, he shrugged off his mantle and tossed it into my arms.

“You are back late,” he said flatly. “The evening meal is not prepared.”

In that moment, clarity struck me with cruel precision.

I had never been his cherished mate. I had only ever been the one who kept the hearth burning.

I swallowed the ache rising in my throat and hung his mantle on its hook.

“Gerald,” I said quietly, “I am preparing your bonding anniversary gift.”

Only then did his expression ease. His brows lifted slightly, his mood improving at once.

“Then do not bother cooking,” he said. “Have the hunters bring back cured boar. The kind seasoned with mountain salt. You like that, do you not?”

It was Tessa who liked cured boar.

The scent alone turned my stomach.

Half a lifetime together, and he still did not know me.

Before I could respond, his rune-stone flared with light.

He turned away too quickly, stepping back onto the balcony, but I had already seen the sigil glowing upon it.

Tessa.

Ten minutes later, he returned, fastening his cloak in haste.

“I will not be back tonight,” he said. “Pack matters.”

I reached out and caught his wrist, pressing a single parchment and a stylus into his hand.

“Gerald, I am thinking of replacing one of the travel beasts for the lodge.”

He clicked his tongue in irritation and signed without reading.

“Always wasteful,” he muttered. “Fine. Just do not trouble me with trivial matters.”

He thrust the parchment back at me and turned to leave. In his haste, he dragged a woven scarf from the rack and crushed it beneath his boots as he strode out.

That scarf had taken me over a month to weave. My fingers had bled for it. It was meant for our last bonding anniversary.

I lifted it from the floor and dropped it into the fire pit, watching the flames devour it.

Then I removed the bond ring from my finger and walked into his chamber.

I entered the combination to his ironwood chest.

Tessa’s birth moon.

The lock opened instantly.

Inside lay a leather-bound album, preserved with care. Each page bore silent witness to the years he had shared with her.

Gerald claimed to leave the territory three times a year on council business. Now I knew the truth. Every journey had been taken at Tessa’s side, across distant ranges and foreign lands. From the age of thirty-five to fifty-five. Twenty years.

My hands shook as I turned to one image.

They stood locked in an embrace beneath a golden coastal sun. Her form was strong and radiant, untouched by age. His fur was threaded with gray, yet his posture remained powerful, his presence unmistakably Alpha. The way they looked at each other was not mere affection.

It was devotion.

Earlier images had faded with time. In the first, they were young, reckless, standing beneath an ancient star watch tower, fingers entwined as the first falling star burned across the heavens.

Below it, in Gerald’s familiar hand, were the words:

“I once missed a meteor’s descent. I swear never to miss the one who loves the stars.”

From black fur to white, they had never lost each other again.

The happiest moment of my life rose unbidden in my memory. The night Gerald asked me to be his mate.

On the high grasslands beneath a sky ablaze with stars, he placed a ring upon my finger and promised loyalty until death.

Only now did I understand.

It was never meant for me.

Tessa loved the stars.

Those vows had never been mine to keep.

Pain tore through my chest as if something long dead had finally been cut free. I closed the album and let the tears fall, unrestrained, striking the floor like scattered beads.

I had pursued Gerald for three long years before he agreed to bond with me.

My parents had warned me. They said his heart lay elsewhere. I believed that if I loved him deeply enough, he would one day return that love.

But a bond forced into being is never sweet.

After thirty winters, I had tasted its bitterness in full.

I had tended his meals, raised our cubs, cared for our grandson, never resting, never asking.

Once, I had been young and radiant. Now I was worn, heavy with years. Meanwhile, he and the woman he loved seemed untouched by time, still proud, still luminous.

More than ten winters ago, he began forgetting our bonding nights, ignoring my birth moons, leaving me alone in the healer’s den with nothing but a cold message sent by raven.

I told myself that if I counted sixty-six disappointments, I would leave.

This was the sixty-sixth.

I placed the bond ring and the signed dissolution parchment into his ironwood chest.

Then I turned away and lifted the rune-stone.

“Gerald,” I said steadily, “do you still wish to acquire my holdings in the Mortimer territory?”

“So,” Gerald said, his low voice lifting in clear surprise, “did I hear that correctly? You are offering me your share of the Mortimer territory?”

I did not answer.

A brief chuckle rolled from his chest, deep and steady.

“In that case, I accept. But I never take without giving. How about this, Victoria? Bind yourself to me under a long oath.”

I stiffened.

“You always spoke of wandering beyond the mountain lines,” he continued smoothly. “It so happens I have invested in a great traveling conclave, a gathering that moves from pack to pack. I still lack the one who will stand at its center and speak.”

“I am no longer young,” I said instinctively. “My form, my presence…”

“Enough,” Gerald cut in without impatience. “Fifty-five winters is not the end of anything. You were once the most luminous voice to rise from the High Academies. That has not changed.”

He did not ask what I had endured.

As if my path were already decided, his tone left no space for refusal.

“Forget Gerald,” he said. “Look forward. I will come for you when I return.”

Some things never changed. He was still as commanding as he had been in his youth.

After a long pause, I exhaled slowly.

“Very well,” I said. “I accept, Edmund.”

For the first time in decades, my life was beginning on my own terms.

Gerald did not return to the lodge that night.

At dawn, his call came through the rune-stone.

“Bring the morning meal to the council hall,” he ordered. “Prepare enough for two. We have a guest.”

He never trusted food prepared by others. For thirty winters, even when I was fevered or sleepless, I rose before sunrise to cook for him.

When I entered his chamber at the hall, I stopped short.

Tessa stood there.

She wore a pale-gold mantle, her posture elegant and composed. At her feet lay my favorite hide-canvas, torn apart and scattered across the stone floor.

In its place stood a new moonstone carving.

My mind went blank.

“Who did this?” I demanded, heat surging up my spine. “That was my work.”

Tessa’s eyes widened, her hand rising in feigned alarm.

“Oh, I thought it was nothing of value,” she said softly. “It looked crude. I replaced it with one of mine. Forgive me, Victoria.”

That canvas was the only piece Gerald and I had ever crafted together during the journey we once called sacred.

Gerald did not even look up from the scrolls in his hand. He crossed the room and took the food vessel from me.

“It does not matter,” he said dismissively. “That old thing had no worth. This place finally feels refined.”

As he passed me, his shoulder struck mine.

I fell.

Broken frame shards cut into my palm. Blood spilled instantly, sharp pain flashing white through my vision.

I tried to rise.

Then I saw it.

A pale silk garment, discarded carelessly in the corner.

My chest tightened, breath catching painfully.

Gerald noticed none of it.

When Tessa’s eyes shimmered and she said softly, “Gerald, there were ground nuts in the porridge. You know I cannot tolerate them. I could have died,” his expression darkened at once.

Without hesitation, he hurled the vessel into the fire pit.

Then he looked down at me on the floor with open disdain.

“Stop acting weak. Clean up that ugly thing. And never use ground nuts again.”

He took Tessa by the hand and left.

That night, at her celebration feast, I watched him shield her from the crowd, refusing to let her carry even the smallest satchel.

“Your hands shape beauty,” he said fondly. “They should never be burdened.”

I returned home and treated my wound myself.

Then I gathered every gift Gerald had ever given me.

Each feast, each turning of the moon, everything came in pairs.

Only then did I understand.

Nothing had ever been meant solely for me.

By the time the sun dipped low, I hurried to collect my grandson, Henry.

As he emerged with the other pups, laughter rose nearby.

“Is that your grandmother?” someone jeered.

Henry flushed crimson.

“No,” he shouted. “She is just our caretaker.”

Then he lifted a carved-image scroll.

“This is my grandmother. She is a great sculptor.”

It was Tessa.

I felt nothing.

On the ride home, Henry stayed silent.

When we stopped, he whispered, “Grandmother, are you angry?”

I looked at him calmly.

“Henry,” I said, “if you wish for another grandmother, I will help you have one.”