Salveth Bloodmoor had two front-row tickets to the Blood Moon revel tucked neatly into the breast pocket of his tailored coat. I thought he had planned a surprise for me. I was giddy with anticipation, counting down the nights until the revel. But when the night finally came, I found out he had taken those tickets and gone off on Pack business instead.

With the help of a few connections and a ridiculous number of gold moons, I managed to get a ticket last minute. And that's when I saw it.

On the open ground beneath the moonfire and the pounding drums, he was kissing another girl, deeply, passionately, like they were in the middle of their own love story. Their kiss was so emotional, so raw, that the watchers caught it on a crystal orb and threw the image up across the great screen for thousands of wolves to see.

After the revel, I stumbled across the girl's post on the spirit network.

Sharing a kiss with the love of my life under the Blood Moon… Best Moon Blessing Day gift ever.

The comments were full of blessings and crescent-moon glyphs.

A hundred moons of joy to you both, they said, wishing them a bond that would hold for a hundred years.

Meanwhile, I got hit by a car. His car. When I woke up, I was in a bed in a private Healing Hall on the Pack's payroll, the kind of den where no one asks questions and the corridors smell of crushed wolfsbane and silence. Salveth was sitting beside me, thumbing through a crystal communicator, a soft smile playing on his lips. A smile I had never seen him wear when he was with me. His scent filled the room, obsidian and cold ash, dried clove, old leather gone faintly bitter. It was the same as always. He was not.

I asked, "Who is she?"

Without even lifting his eyes, he replied coldly, "I'm your Alpha. Now that you're awake, just focus on healing."

Then he walked away. No hesitation, no guilt. I turned my head away from the door and called my uncle through the sending-stone.

"Harkon, about that arranged mating bond you mentioned… I'll do it. I'll take him as my mate."

——

There was a long pause on the other end, so long that I almost thought the link had broken. Then came a quiet exhale, followed by an unmistakable sigh of relief.

"Selene, finally," the voice said, concern and satisfaction threading through the words. I could picture him in his den, the ember of his pipe glowing as he tapped the ash with his thumbnail. Three precise strokes, never two, never four. The old oak and pipe-smoke of him almost reached me through the stone. "That wolf kept you hidden in the dark for five whole years. Five years. A male like that doesn't even deserve to run under the open moon."

I didn't respond right away.

"When can you come back?" he continued, his tone shifting, becoming more urgent, more hopeful. "I just reached out to them. They're already asking to set the date for the mating ceremony."

Five years.

Five years with Salveth, and I was always the one tucked away, the one who couldn't exist in the open. No introductions, no acknowledgment, no place in his territory that anyone else could see. I was convenient when he wanted me, invisible when he didn't. In the Bloodmoor Pack, I had been kept off every gathering, absent from every feast night and full-moon run, an Omega who existed only behind closed doors in an Alpha's private rooms, my scent suppressed down to nothing so no one would ever catch the trace of me on him.

Now that he had made it so clear that I meant nothing to him, I didn't see a reason to hold on anymore. If I severed ties with the Pack, I doubted he would even try to stop me.

"The sooner the better," I said quietly, my voice steady despite everything. "I can handle it quickly."

I had barely finished speaking when the door of the Healing Hall opened again.

Salveth walked back in.

Apparently, he had forgotten something.

"Severing ties?" he echoed casually, as if the words had simply caught his attention in passing. His eyes moved around the room as he searched for something, completely unconcerned. A silver lighter turned over his knuckles in that idle, precise rhythm he carried everywhere. "Who's leaving the Pack?"

His tone was light, almost amused, like it was nothing important.

He would have to sign off on it anyway, so there was no point hiding it. I gave a small nod, but he didn't even notice. He didn't lift his head long enough to register my response.

After a moment, he found what he was looking for.

His car keys.

Picking them up, he let out a short, half-laugh. "The healer said you hit your head pretty hard. Might even have some memory loss." He paused briefly, glancing at me with a faint smirk. "Honestly, for a second there, I almost believed it."

My fingers tightened slightly under the blanket. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, the part of me that had no name yet shrank back, low and silent, refusing even to growl.

"The car…" he added, almost as an afterthought, like it wasn't worth much attention. "It was mine. The lights along the run were dim, and you were staring at your communicator…"

I froze.

So that was it.

That was the explanation. The reason he had said nothing, offered nothing, and treated me like I was nothing more than an ordinary pack-wolf he barely knew.

Ten minutes ago, when he introduced himself as "just my Alpha," his expression had been flawless. Composed. Distant in exactly the right way. There had been just enough concern in his voice to make it believable.

But not even a trace of guilt.

Right before I lost consciousness, I had seen everything clearly.

The car.

Salveth in the passenger seat.

And the she-wolf he had just kissed. She was the one behind the wheel.

He hadn't given me a chance to question him. Not even a single second. He had simply brushed it off, thrown out an excuse about the pack being too busy, and left as if I had imagined the entire thing.

At the time, I thought he was avoiding me because he didn't know how to face me after striking me with the car.

But the truth was even more pathetic than that.

I didn't matter enough to him.

Not even enough for him to feel guilty.

Still a little dizzy, the scent of antiseptic and stone thick in the air of the Healing Hall, I forced a polite smile onto my face, as if everything was perfectly normal.

"Guess I was still a bit foggy when I woke up," I said lightly. "Didn't recognize you, Alpha."

The word slipped out naturally, but it carried none of the warmth it used to.

He barely reacted. The silver lighter kept moving over his knuckles, steady as a heartbeat.

And I kept going along with it, as if this distance between us had always existed. As if there had never been anything more.

He finally looked at me again, his brows drawing together slightly, confusion flickering in his eyes.

The girl who used to cling to him over the smallest things, who would demand to be nuzzled over something as trivial as a scraped palm, was gone.

In her place was someone quiet.

Still.

Unreachable.

Salveth glanced around the room, making sure no one else was there. Even in a Healing Hall that answered only to his pack, old habits held. Only then did his expression soften a fraction, his voice dropping lower.

"Selene," he said, almost gently, "these places are full of wolves. And whispers travel faster than scent on the wind." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "We can't risk anyone catching us like this."

Like this.

What we were had to stay hidden. Even now. The pack's code of silence didn't just govern secrets about blood and territory. It governed me.

"Just rest," he continued. "Focus on healing. Once you're back at the den, I'll make it up to you."

I looked at him, then gave a small, composed smile.

"Thank you… Alpha."

I used to call him that as a joke, a teasing name when we were alone, our scents tangled in the dark of his study. Back then, it had been playful, intimate, filled with something unspoken between us.

Now, it felt completely different.

Cold.

Distant.

Like a wall had been built between us, brick by brick, until there was nothing left to cross.

He frowned slightly. He noticed it.

Of course he did.

Just as he was about to say something else, the door opened again and the moon-healer walked in for a routine check.

In an instant, Salveth changed.

The softness disappeared as if it had never existed. His posture straightened, his expression cooled, and the distance returned. His Alpha aura settled back over the room like a dropping temperature, untouchable and controlled. The silver lighter went still in his hand for one beat, then slipped into his jacket pocket.

After exchanging a few brief words with the healer, he turned to leave.

At the door, he paused.

Then he looked back at me one last time.

"Get some rest," he said.

There was a slight pause before he added, his tone firm, almost like a warning.

"And don't think your… special arrangement gives you any privileges inside my pack."

His eyes held mine, steady and unreadable. Beneath my skin, my wolf paced once, low and uneasy, catching something in his scent of obsidian and cold ash that didn't sit right.

"Everyone is treated equally. Everything follows the code."

With that, he walked out, the door closing softly behind him, leaving the room colder than before.

The moon-healer glanced at the smile I was forcing onto my face and let out a light, teasing chuckle, like he could see straight through it.

"Your Alpha already left," he said casually. "No need to push yourself to keep smiling like that anymore."

I didn't respond.

"But I'll give him this," he added with a grin, flipping through my chart. "Stubborn mouth, soft heart. He already settled every last moon-credit of your healing fees."

My smile didn't disappear, but it shifted, subtly, almost imperceptibly, into something bitter.

Salveth really did deserve an award for his performance.

To everyone else, he was just a responsible Alpha who ran the outer trading-post, a wolf who took care of his own out of basic decency. A male with principles. No one knew the truth. No one knew that behind the locked door of his private study at the ancestral den, I had been with him for five years. Five entire years of secrecy, of compromise, of waiting.

No one except a handful of his closest wolves. His inner circle. The ones bound by the same silence that bound me.

I had asked him more times than I could count, always carefully, always hoping for a different answer.

"When can we stop hiding?"

Every single time, he brushed it off with the same vague excuse.

"The timing's not right."

I used to believe him.

I used to tell myself that there was a reason, that the pack's politics demanded patience, that one day things would be different.

But today, I finally understood.

When he thought I had lost my memory, the first thing he did was draw a line between us.

I'm your Alpha.

That was the truth.

That was all I had ever been to him.

A wolf who kept the ledgers of his outer trading-post.

A secret.

My wounds weren't deep, so the pack healer kept me under watch for three days before letting me go. Everything was routine. Quiet. Uneventful. The private Healing Hall smelled of crushed herbs and old bloodline money, and the attendants moved with the careful hush of those who knew better than to ask whose name truly sat on the bill.

The cost passed through the Pack's holdings, and whatever remained was returned straight to Salveth's account.

Three days.

Not a single visit.

Not even a sending through the stone.

And then, on the day they released me, my crystal communicator rang.

"You're out already?" Salveth's voice came through, casual, almost mildly annoyed. "You could've at least given me word."

I held the communicator in silence.

"I've a council to sit today," he went on. "Can't come for you."

"…All right."

That was all I said.

I swallowed everything else. The questions that rose to my throat. The ones that used to matter.

I didn't ask where he was.

I didn't ask who he was with.

Instead, I opened the communicator and traced his location.

A den on the edge of Bloodmoor hunting grounds. One of those with discreet attendants and no eyes in the corridors.

I didn't need him to explain anything. I didn't need it confirmed.

Then, faintly, through the receiver, I caught a woman's voice.

"Come dry my hair, won't you?"

The line went dead almost instantly.

He cut it.

I stared at the stone for a moment, unmoving. Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf went very still, the way an animal goes still when it senses a thing it cannot name.

Not long after, two transfer marks surfaced.

1,314 moon-credits.

1,520 moon-credits.

The numbers hit me harder than anything else.

They weren't random.

They meant something. They always had.

1314 meant forever.

1520 meant I love you.

For years, I had wished for this. For him to send me those numbers, for something so simple and bound with meaning. I had imagined catching it on a screen, sharing it on the spirit network, just once, like everyone else. Just once, to show that I had something real.

But every time I raised it, he refused.

He didn't like attention.

He didn't want anyone asking questions.

He didn't want it known. An Alpha's private life was a liability, he said. Something rival packs could use.

And now… now that I had already decided to let him go, he sent them?

I didn't know if it was guilt. Or habit. Or something else entirely.

I opened his profile without thinking.

The moment it loaded, I froze.

His image had changed.

It was a couple portrait.

But not with me.

I didn't hesitate.

I returned both transfers at once.

A few seconds later, the stone buzzed again.

A string of question marks.

I didn't answer.

When I returned to the den-rooms, nothing had changed.

Everything was exactly as it had been the night of the gathering. The same boots by the door. The same coat thrown over the chair. The same faint trace lingering in the air, obsidian and cold ash, dried clove, old leather gone faintly bitter, the ghost of a world where rulings were made in back chambers and sealed with oaths that could never be unspoken.

Which meant one thing.

He hadn't been back.

Not once.

I stood there a moment, letting the silence settle around me. Then I drew a deep breath, pushed down the tight ache rising in my chest, and began to pack.

It didn't take long.

Piece by piece, the space began to empty.

Five years.

Five years of a life I had carefully built around him, taken apart in a few short hours.

Most of what I packed were things I had chosen myself.

Couple things.

Matching mugs. Clothes that paired. Small ornaments that hinted at something shared.

Salveth had never cared for any of it.

He never wore anything that might mark him as taken. Never used anything too plain to read. He said a wolf in his place couldn't afford to look soft. Couldn't give anyone a grip to hold.

I used to tease him about it.

Saying he carried himself like some deep-buried tracker, hiding his scent from the whole world.

Now I understood.

It was never a jest.

He simply never saw me as someone he needed to claim. No mark at the curve of my neck. No glow under the moon. Nothing.

I was halfway through packing when I heard the door open.

He came back.

"Selene, what's this about?" he snapped the moment he saw me. "I've been calling you. I told you to come out and eat. You didn't pick up, didn't reply."

I didn't look up at once.

The scent reached me first.

A woman's perfume.

Not mine.

Not even close. My wolf flattened low inside me, a quiet, wounded thing that did not howl, only turned its face away.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand slightly, holding him from coming any closer.

When I finally raised my eyes, they drifted to his neck.

Faint red marks.

Bite-bruises.

"Sorry," I said calmly, my voice steady. I smoothed a blouse flat against the lining of the case, pressing the crease until it was sharp enough to cut. "I've been busy. Didn't check the stone."

He frowned, his gaze sweeping the room.

Only then did he notice the cases. The bare shelves. The missing pieces.

"Don't tell me you've spent it tearing the rooms apart," he said, irritation creeping into his tone. "You just left the Healing Hall. You should be resting."

His eyes settled on a few unopened boxes I hadn't reached yet.

Inside were the couple things I'd bought not long ago. Still new. Still untouched.

"You don't want any of this?" he asked.