They said she was dead.
The rumor followed me for three months whispered in council halls, murmured by servants who lowered their eyes when I passed, carried on the lips of wolves who pretended they didn't know my name still tasted like blood.
She didn't survive the crossing.
Her body was never found.
The Alpha who let her go signed her death warrant.
I crushed the goblet in my hand.
Wine spilled across the obsidian table, red and thick, like the memory I couldn't erase. No one spoke. They never did when my temper prowled this close to the surface.
Dead.
If she were dead, why did my chest still ache like she was just out of reach?
Why did my wolf pace every night, restless, furious, refusing to accept the silence she left behind?
"Enough," I growled.
The council stiffened. Elder Rhex cleared his throat, old and cautious. "The scouts confirmed it, Alpha. The rogue lands beyond the Iron Pass are unforgiving. A lone human"
"She was not human," I snapped.
Not to me.
Not to my wolf.
But I had let them believe otherwise. Let her walk away without my name, my mark, my protection.
My punishment.
I rose, the room shrinking beneath my presence. "Leave."
They didn't argue. Fear moved faster than obedience.
When the doors shut, the silence screamed.
I went to the balcony, the cold night air biting into skin that had felt nothing since the day I watched her disappear into the fog. The moon hung full and accusing above the forest the same moon that had witnessed my betrayal.
Because that was the word they never said out loud.
Betrayal.
I had chosen the pack. The crown. The prophecy.
And in doing so, I had let her fall.
A knock came hesitant. Wrong.
I turned slowly. "I said leave."
"It's me," my Beta said. "You need to hear this."
I didn't like his scent. Too sharp. Too urgent.
He held out a folded message. Black seal. No crest.
"Another death report?" I asked coldly.
"No," he said. "A contradiction."
My fingers tightened around the paper.
She was seen.
Not alive.
Not safe.
Seen.
In the border markets. Scarred. Changed. With rogues at her side and hatred in her eyes when she spoke the Alpha's name.
My name.
The world tilted.
My wolf surged, roaring awake for the first time in months.
She wasn't dead.
Which meant something far worse.
She had survived me.
And now she was coming back.