Salvar Nightbane had two front-row tickets to the Blood Moon revel tucked neatly into the breast 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 amount of gold moons, I managed to get a token of entry at the last moment. And that's when I saw it.

On the high platform, beneath the silver glow and the pounding of the drums, he was kissing another she-wolf. Deeply, passionately, like they were in the middle of their own love story. Their kiss was so emotional, so raw, that the crystal-orb handlers caught it and threw it up onto the great screen for thousands of wolves to see.

After the revel ended, I stumbled across the she-wolf'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 beneath it were full of blessings and bright little moon-sigils.

May the Goddess give you ninety-nine moons together, they said, wishing them a bond that would hold for a hundred years.

Meanwhile, I got hit by a carriage. His carriage. When I woke, I was lying in a healing bed in a private den on the pack's payroll, the kind of place where no one asks questions and the halls smell of crushed herbs and silence. Salvar sat beside me, thumbing through his crystal communicator, a soft smile playing on his lips. A smile I had never once seen him wear when he was with me.

I asked, "Who is she?"

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

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

"Harrow, about that alliance mating you spoke of… I'll do it. I'll take him as my mate."

——

There was a long pause on the other end, so long I almost thought the line had gone dead. Then came a quiet exhale, followed by an unmistakable breath of relief.

"Selene, finally," the voice said, concern and satisfaction threading through the words together. I could picture him in his study, oak bark and gun-oil iron heavy in that room, his thumbnail flicking ash from the smoldering thing between his fingers. Three precise strokes, never two, never four. "That Alpha kept you hidden in the dark for five whole years. Five years. A male like that doesn't deserve to walk under the moon."

I didn't answer right away.

"When can you come home?" he went on, his tone shifting, growing more urgent, more hopeful. "I only just reached out to them. The Abernathys are already asking to set the date of the Mating Ceremony."

Five years.

Five years with Salvar, 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 world that any other wolf could see. I was convenient when he needed me, invisible when he didn't. In the Nightbane Pack I had been kept off every guest list, absent from every feast night and full-moon run, an unmarked Omega who existed only behind the closed doors of an Alpha's private rooms. No mark at the curve of my neck. No scent of his laid over mine for the pack to know. Nothing.

Now that he had made it so plain I meant nothing to him, I saw no reason to hold on anymore. If I cut myself loose from the pack's front den, I doubted he would even try to stop me.

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

I had barely finished speaking when the door of the healing room opened again.

Salvar walked back in.

Apparently he had forgotten something.

"Cutting yourself loose?" he echoed, casual, as if the words had only caught his ear in passing. His gaze moved around the room as he searched for something, entirely unconcerned. The silver lighter turned over his knuckles in that idle, precise rhythm he carried everywhere. "Who's leaving our operation?"

His tone was light, almost amused, as though it were nothing of consequence.

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

After a moment he found what he'd come back for.

His carriage keys.

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

My fingers tightened beneath the blanket. Something low in my chest stirred, a sound my wolf wanted to make and I swallowed before it could rise.

"The carriage…" he added, almost as an afterthought, as if it weren't worth much attention. "It was mine. The lantern-lights were dim, and you were staring down at your communicator…"

I went still.

So that was it.

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

Ten minutes ago, when he had named himself "just my Alpha," his expression had been flawless. Composed. Distant in exactly the right measure. Just enough concern in his voice to make it believable. The black cedar and cold iron of his scent had not so much as flickered.

But not even a trace of guilt.

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

The obsidian carriage.

Salvar in the passenger seat.

And the she-wolf he had just kissed. She was the one behind the wheel, her scent of white jasmine and something faintly too-sweet still clinging to the air like petals already beginning to turn.

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 down with the carriage.

But the truth was even more pathetic than that.

I didn't matter enough to him.

Not even enough for him to feel guilt.

Still a little dizzy, 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 Omega who used to cling to him over the smallest things, who would demand to be nuzzled over something as trivial as a scratch, was gone.

In her place was someone quiet.

Still.

Unreachable.

Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf had gone silent too. She wasn't whimpering. She had simply curled in on herself and stopped reaching for the scent of black cedar and cold iron that had always meant home.

Salvar 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 ears. And scent carries." 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 silence of the pack didn't just govern secrets of 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 behind a locked door. 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, Salvar changed.

The softness disappeared as if it had never existed. His posture straightened, his expression cooled, and the distance returned. He was once again the Alpha, untouchable and controlled, his aura settling over the room like a sudden drop in temperature. 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.

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

With that, he walked out, the door closing softly behind him, leaving the room colder than before. The trace of black cedar and cold iron faded from the air, and only then did my wolf stir, just enough to ache.

The moon-healer glanced at the smile I was forcing onto my face and let out a light, teasing chuckle, like he could scent 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 covered every last gold moon of your healing."

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

Salvar really did deserve to lead the howl for that performance.

To everyone else, he was just a responsible Alpha overseeing the front den, someone who looked after his people out of basic decency. A wolf with principles. No one knew the truth. No one knew that behind the locked door of his private study at the forest estate, I had been bound to him for five years. Five entire years of secrecy, of compromise, of waiting for a neck-mark that never came.

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 the moon would rise on something 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 she-wolf working the ledgers in his legitimate front den.

A secret.

My injuries weren't serious, so the moon-healer kept me under watch for three days before releasing me. Everything was routine. Quiet. Uneventful. The private healing den smelled of crushed herbs and old bloodline wealth, and the attendants moved with the particular carefulness of wolves who knew better than to ask whose name was truly on the account.

The cost went through the Pack's care arrangement, and whatever was left over was refunded directly back to Salvar's account.

Three days.

Not a single visit.

Not even a message.

And then, on the day I was released, my communicator chimed.

"You're out already?" Salvar's voice came through, casual, almost mildly annoyed. "You could've at least given me a heads-up."

I held the communicator in silence.

"I've got a council gathering today," he continued. "Can't come for you."

"…Okay."

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 my communicator and checked his location.

A lodging house. One of the ones on Pack-controlled ground, the kind with discreet staff and no watchers in the corridors.

I didn't need him to explain anything. I didn't need confirmation.

Then, faintly, through the receiver, I heard a she-wolf's voice.

"Come dry my hair, will you?"

The line went dead almost instantly.

He cut it off.

I stared at my communicator for a moment, unmoving. Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf went very still, the way a creature goes still when it has finally understood a thing it cannot fight.

Not long after, two transfer notices surfaced on the screen.

1,314 gold moons.

1,520 gold moons.

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 full of meaning. I had imagined catching it on a crystal screen, sharing it to the spirit network, just once, like everyone else. Just once, to show that I had something real.

But every time I brought it up, he refused.

He didn't like attention.

He didn't want wolves asking questions.

He didn't want anyone knowing. 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 profile image had changed.

It was a paired portrait. A bonded picture.

But not with me.

I didn't hesitate.

I returned both transfers immediately.

A few seconds later, my communicator buzzed again.

A string of question marks.

I didn't reply.

When I got back to the den, nothing had changed.

Everything was exactly the same as the night of the Blood Moon feast. The same shoes by the door. The same coat tossed over the chair. The same faint scent lingering in the air, black cedar and cold iron with an undertone of ash and bitter clove, the ghost of a world where decisions were made in back rooms and sealed with oaths that could never be taken back.

Which meant one thing.

He hadn't been back.

Not once.

I stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle around me. Then I took a deep breath, pushed down the tight ache rising in my chest, and started packing.

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, dismantled in just a few hours.

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

Bonded things.

Matching mugs. Coordinated clothes. Small carvings that hinted at something shared.

Salvar had never liked any of it.

He never wore anything that could suggest he was claimed. Never used anything too obvious. He said a wolf in his position couldn't afford to look soft. Couldn't give anyone a handle to grip.

I used to joke about it.

Saying he acted like some scout living under a false scent, hiding his name from the world.

Now I realized.

It was never a joke.

He just never saw me as someone he needed to claim. No mark at the junction of my neck and shoulder. No warmth that would have glowed when he came near. Nothing.

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

He came back.

His scent reached me a breath before he spoke, and my wolf lifted her head once, then turned away.

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

I didn't look up immediately.

The scent reached me first.

A she-wolf's scent.

Not mine.

Not even close.

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

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

Faint red marks.

Bite-bruises that were not a mate's claim.

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

He frowned, his gaze sweeping across the room.

Only then did he notice the packed bags. The empty shelves. The missing pieces.

"Don't tell me you've been busy tearing down the den," he said, irritation creeping into his tone. "You just got out of the healing hall. You should be resting."

His eyes landed on a few unopened boxes I hadn't gotten to yet.

Inside were the bonded things I had bought recently. Still new. Still unused.

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