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.

I bent down to pick one up.

Before I could even straighten, he reached out and took it from my hands.

"Fine, I'll throw them out for you," he said, almost impatiently. "But stop wasting moon-credits on useless things. What, do you think they grow on the trees?"

His tone was casual.

Indifferent.

Like none of this mattered.

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, he added, "Go change. I'll take you out to eat."

Like this was just another normal day.

Like nothing was ending.

Instead, I walked out to the balcony.

From there, I watched him.

He carried the boxes down and walked straight to the refuse pit behind the den, past the black obsidian carriage idling at the edge of the grounds where one of his sentinels sat waiting, engine low and growling.

No hesitation.

No second glance.

He tossed them in.

Just like that.

The same way he had thrown away our five years.

Effortlessly.

Like they meant nothing at all.

At the trading-post, a quiet place on neutral ground where the pack sometimes kept private tables, he ordered several dishes without asking.

Most of them were our usual favorites.

The kind we always shared.

The kind tied to memories. Late-night laughter, long runs under a low moon, lazy days where time seemed to slow and the world outside, with all its blood and obligation, couldn't reach us.

For a moment, it almost felt familiar.

Almost.

But then I saw it.

One more dish.

Bitter melon with scrambled eggs.

The one I hated the most.

He knew that.

He had always remembered.

Every little thing.

Until now.

My appetite disappeared completely, like something inside me had quietly snapped. The scent of the food, the low murmur from nearby tables, even the old hunting-song drifting from the den's far corner all felt distant. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf went still, the way she did when she could no longer make sense of him. I didn't feel like forcing myself anymore, didn't feel like pretending everything was normal.

"Excuse me," I called gently to the omega aide standing nearby, keeping my tone polite and controlled. "Could you take this dish off the table? I'll pay for it separately."

The aide hesitated for a second, clearly unsure, but before he could even reach for the plate, Salveth moved first. He dragged the dish back toward himself with a faint scoff, the obsidian-and-cold-ash of his scent sharpening with annoyance.

"Oh, come on," he said. "I miss a few days while you're in the Healing Hall and suddenly you're acting like a drama queen?" He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Maybe if you were actually paying attention to where you were going, you wouldn't have gotten run down in the first place."

The words landed harder than they should have.

Because I knew what it looked like when he cared.

I had seen it before.

There had been a time when fever took me in the dead of winter. He had panicked, lifted me onto his back, and carried me through freezing wind all the way to a moon-healer he trusted, his hands trembling, his voice breaking as he kept asking if I was still with him. I still remembered the way he cried that night, like losing me would destroy him. Back then he wasn't the Alpha yet. Back then his hands still shook for reasons that had nothing to do with blood.

And now?

Now he had been part of the thing that hurt me… and didn't even bother to come.

He knew I hated bitter melon. For five years, he had never once ordered it, never once brought anything remotely bitter to our table. He used to say even the smell made me frown too much.

And yet now, like we had gone back in time to when we had just met, like none of those years had ever existed, he casually ordered it again without a second thought.

I curled my lips into a faint, tired smile, the kind that didn't quite reach my eyes.

"I really hate bitter melon," I said softly. "I can't even stand the smell."

"Then don't eat it," he replied immediately, his tone sharp and impatient. "Simple."

The irritation in his voice wasn't even hidden. The silver lighter appeared in his hand, turning slow across his knuckles, each rotation catching the low light like a small, indifferent blade.

But I kept my expression calm, polite, like I had trained myself to be over the years.

"I think… we should—"

I didn't get to finish.

A woman's voice cut in smoothly from the side.

"Salveth, after all these years, you still remember I love bitter melon!"

I lifted my gaze.

She stood right beside our table, perfectly put together from head to toe. Flawless. Impeccable. Her posture straight, chin slightly lifted as she looked down at me with a faint, unmistakable trace of disdain. Jasmine and cold copper rolled off her in a wave, one finger resting on the pearl at her throat, light as a breath, as if confirming something only she needed to know.

Without waiting for any invitation, she stepped closer.

With an easy familiarity, she nudged Salveth slightly inward along the booth, then slipped into the seat right next to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The two sentinels at the bar didn't turn, but I could feel the room's attention tighten, the way it always did when the Alpha's table changed shape.

"Let me introduce myself," she said sweetly, her voice smooth like syrup. "I'm Salveth's girlfriend. Aurelia Caldris."