I walked until my legs stopped being legs.

The borderlands stretched flat and gray under a moon I could not feel anymore. My father's journal was pressed against my ribs. The drive was still in my pocket. My mark was a dead scar under my collar, cold the way metal gets cold—not from temperature but from the absence of anything living.

I had no destination. Rogues don't get destinations. They get distance.

Somewhere behind me, hours ago, the Summit hall had emptied. Landon would be sleeping beside Ariana now, her fake scent filling the room, the wolfsbane in her system keeping the illusion alive. My hymns would still be filed under her name. The pendant would still be around her throat.

I kept walking.

My wolf did not stir. She had folded the moment the rejection vow landed, and the silence where she used to be was so complete it felt like I had imagined her. Maybe I had. Maybe I had imagined all of it—the bond, the mark, the three years I spent believing my sacrifice was building something that belonged to both of us.

My knees buckled. I did not decide to stop. My body simply ran out.

I hit the dirt hard, palms first, then knees. The journal slid from my grip. I stayed there, on all fours, breathing like I had been running. I had not been running. I had been walking very slowly for a very long time.

I pressed my forehead to the ground. The dirt smelled like nothing. I waited for something—grief, rage, the wolf clawing her way back. Nothing came.

Then, without choosing to, I started humming.

It was not a hymn I recognized. The melody was unfinished, raw, the kind of fragment I used to scribble in the journal's margins when I was too tired to shape it into something usable. My voice cracked on the second phrase. I kept going. The sound felt like the only thing I still owned.

My wolf did not respond. The melody continued anyway.

I do not know how long I stayed like that—face in the dirt, humming a song no one would ever hear. Long enough for the moon to shift. Long enough for my throat to go dry.

Long enough for someone to find me.

***

I heard boots first. Multiple pairs. Then they stopped.

A voice, low and precise: "Hold position."

I did not lift my head. If they were going to kill me, I did not have the energy to stop them. If they were going to leave me, that was fine too.

The boots came closer. One pair. Slow, deliberate steps that stopped three feet from where I was kneeling.

A pause. Then the voice again, quieter now, like he was talking to something easily startled.

"You are on Lycan territory. You are under the Crown's protection. No one will touch you."

I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was the ground. Dirt, small stones, a piece of dried grass near my hand. Then boots—black, military-grade, spotless despite the terrain. I followed the line of them up. Dark tactical pants. A long coat that moved slightly in the wind. Broad shoulders. And a face that was watching me with an expression I could not read.

He was crouched now, eye-level with me, close enough that I could see the faint scar along his jaw. His eyes were pale gray, the kind that looked silver in certain light. He was not smiling. He was not frowning. He was just—present. Completely, carefully present.

He did not reach for me. He did not move at all.

"Can you stand?" he asked.

I tried. My legs shook. I made it halfway before my knees gave out again.

He caught me—one hand under my elbow, steadying without gripping. His touch was brief, clinical, gone the moment I had my balance.

"I'm going to take you to our healers," he said. "You will not be questioned. You will not be touched without your consent. Do you understand?"

I nodded. I did not trust my voice yet.

He straightened and turned slightly toward the others—three wolves in identical tactical gear, standing at a distance with their eyes carefully averted. "Prepare a transport. Healers' quarters, not the throne room. Inform Maren Sollis directly. No one else."

One of them nodded and moved immediately.

The man in front of me looked back. His gaze went briefly to my neck—to the mark, cold and dead under my collar. Something shifted in his expression. Not pity. Something sharper.

"My name is Caelan Ashford," he said quietly. "Lycan Prince. You collapsed on Crown land, which means you are under my authority now. That authority will not be used against you."

I stared at him. Lycan Prince. The words should have meant something. They felt distant, like information that belonged to someone else's life.

He waited. When I did not respond, he continued.

"The healers will examine you. After that, you will have three days before anyone asks you anything. If you want to speak, you can. If you want silence, you will have it."

My throat tightened. I managed two words. "Why three?"

"Because that is what you need," he said simply.

Behind him, a vehicle pulled up—sleek, black, quiet. One of the guards opened the back door.

Caelan stepped aside, giving me a clear path. He did not guide me. He did not touch me again. He just waited.

I picked up my father's journal from the dirt. My hands were shaking. I walked to the vehicle on legs that did not feel like mine and climbed inside.

Caelan got in on the opposite side, keeping the space between us deliberate and wide. The door closed. The vehicle moved.

I looked out the window at the borderlands disappearing behind us. My mark was still cold. My wolf was still silent.

But for the first time since the rejection vow, I was not walking alone in the dark.

I pressed the journal against my chest and let my eyes close.

The pain started on the third night.

I woke to my bones moving under my skin. Not breaking—moving, like something inside me was trying to stand up for the first time and my skeleton had to make room. I tried to sit up. My spine arched backward instead, vertebrae popping one after another like a string of firecrackers.

I bit down on a scream. It came out anyway.

Maren Sollis, the Lycan healer, was at my side in seconds. Her hands hovered over me without touching. "The wolfsbane is clearing your system," she said, her voice fast and clinical. "Your wolf is coming back. This is going to be violent."

Violent was an understatement.

My ribs cracked outward. I felt each one snap and reform, wider, stronger, making space for lungs I did not know I needed. My muscles tore—I felt them tear, felt the fibers rip apart and knit back together in new configurations. My jaw dislocated. My teeth lengthened. My hands were not hands anymore.

And then—her.

Not the dull, distant presence I had carried for three years. Not the whimpering thing that collapsed under the rejection vow. This was a voice like thunder rolling through my skull, deep and resonant and utterly unafraid.

*Selene,* she said. *My name is Selene.*

I tried to answer. My throat would not make human sounds anymore.

The shift took me all at once. My body exploded outward—fur, claws, a frame so massive I felt the stone floor crack beneath me. I was on four legs. I was enormous. I was—

I looked down at my paws. They were silver-white, blazing like someone had taken moonlight and made it solid. My fur shimmered with every breath.

*We are not broken,* Selene said quietly. *We never were.*

The door to the healer's quarters blew open. I had not touched it. The force of the shift had done that.

I stepped into the corridor. My shoulders barely fit through the frame. I had to duck my head to clear the top.

And then I saw them.

Caelan's Lycan guard—twelve wolves in full tactical gear, armed and battle-ready—dropped to one knee. All of them. Simultaneously. Their heads bowed. Their eyes down.

I froze.

I looked behind me. There was no one there. Just the empty healer's room and the cracked stone floor.

I looked back at the guards. They had not moved.

My wolf—Selene—was utterly calm. She understood something I did not.

Footsteps. Slow, deliberate. I turned.

Caelan Ashford stood at the end of the corridor. He was the only one still on his feet. His pale gray eyes met mine—silver-gold now, shifted—and he did not look away. He did not flinch. He just watched me look behind myself, watched me fail to find what I was looking for, and waited.

Then he spoke.

"They are kneeling for you."

His voice was quiet. Certain. Like he was stating a fact about the weather.

I shifted back. It hurt less this time. My body folded back into human form, my bones settling into their smaller frame. I was on my knees on the cold stone floor, naked except for the thin blanket someone draped over my shoulders before I even registered they had moved.

I looked up at Caelan. My voice came out hoarse. "Why?"

"Because your wolf is royal blood," he said simply. "Alpha-blood. My guard recognizes it. Their wolves know what you are before their minds do."

I stared at him. Royal blood. The words did not make sense.

*He is not lying,* Selene said inside me. Her voice was steady now, no longer howling. *We are what we were always meant to be.*

I pulled the blanket tighter. My hands were shaking. "I don't understand."

Caelan took three steps forward and stopped, keeping the distance deliberate. "You will," he said. "When you are ready."

Behind him, the guard remained kneeling. Waiting.

I looked at them. Twelve Lycan warriors on their knees for a rogue who had collapsed in the dirt three days ago. For a she-wolf whose own mate had rejected her in front of the entire Summit.

For me.

I pressed my palm flat against the stone floor. It was still warm where my wolf had cracked it.

***

Back at Ironveil, something was breaking.

I did not know this yet. But I would.

Landon Ward stood in the center of the training grounds, watching his warriors spar, and every movement they made was wrong. Slower. Weaker. Off-balance.

They had fought a border skirmish two nights ago—a small conflict, the kind Ironveil used to end in minutes. It had taken them an hour. They had retreated.

Retreated.

No one said the word out loud. But every warrior in the pack knew it.

Landon's Beta, Silas Vance, stood beside him with his arms crossed, watching the same sparring match. His face was carefully neutral.

"They are off their rhythm," Silas said quietly.

Landon's jaw tightened. "They are fine."

"They are not fine." Silas turned slightly, just enough to meet Landon's eyes. "They have not been fine since the Summit."

Landon's hand went to his neck. The mark was gone—severed clean by the rejection vow. But he rubbed the spot anyway, like something was supposed to be there and was not.

"Ariana will compose something new," Landon said.

Silas did not respond immediately. When he did, his voice was very even. "Has she?"

Landon's eyes narrowed. "She is working on it."

"Alpha." Silas's tone was still neutral, but something underneath it was not. "The hymns that made us unbeatable—the ones we credited to her inspiration—they stopped working the moment Leila Carpenter walked out of that hall."

Landon turned on him. His voice dropped into the Alpha tone. "Do not say her name."

Silas's wolf buckled under the command. He bowed his head. But his eyes stayed sharp.

Landon turned back to the sparring ring. His hand was still on his neck, rubbing the empty space where the mark used to be.

Inside him, his wolf stirred weakly. It had been stirring weakly for three days now. Every morning it was a little harder to shift. Every night the phantom scent was a little stronger—Leila's real scent, the one he had ignored for three years, now haunting him at random.

He told himself it would pass.

It did not pass.