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.

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 money on useless stuff. What, do you think coin falls from the moon?"

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 sedan idling at the edge of the trail where one of his enforcers sat waiting with the engine running.

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 eating-house, 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, old films flickering on the couch, lazy days when time seemed to slow down and the world outside, with all its blood and territory 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. Even my wolf went still beneath my skin, the way it always did when something was wrong and it didn't yet know what. The smell of the food, the low conversation at nearby tables, even the old crooning record drifting through the room all felt distant. I didn't feel like forcing myself anymore, didn't feel like pretending everything was normal.

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

The attendant hesitated for a second, clearly unsure, but before he could even reach for the plate, Salvar moved first. He dragged the dish back toward himself with a faint scoff.

"Oh, come on," he said, his voice edged with annoyance. "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 watching where you were going, you wouldn't have ended up under those wheels 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 a fever took me in the dead of winter. He had panicked, lifted me onto his back, and carried me through the freezing dark to a moon-healer he trusted, his hands trembling, his voice breaking as he kept asking if I was still conscious. 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 or silver.

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 let anything remotely bitter near our table. He used to say even the scent of it made me frown too much, and that his wolf hated to see it.

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 candlelight like a small, indifferent blade.

But I kept my expression calm, polite, the way 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.

"Salvar, 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 face. Impeccable grooming. Her posture straight, chin slightly lifted as she looked down at me with a faint, unmistakable trace of disdain. One finger rested on the pearl at her throat, light as a breath, as if confirming something only she needed to know.

And then her scent reached me. White jasmine over copper, and beneath it something faintly too-sweet, like petals just beginning to turn. My wolf stirred low in my chest, uneasy without knowing why.

Without waiting for any invitation, she stepped closer.

With an easy familiarity, she nudged Salvar slightly inward on the booth, then slipped into the seat right next to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The two enforcers 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 Salvar's she-wolf. Adressa Thornwell."