KADE POV
Kade could not move.
His body had stopped responding to commands the moment those words left her mouth. Show me the infected wolves. Simple words. Professional words. Words that meant nothing except that she had completely dismissed him.
But his wolf was losing its mind.
The bond was screaming inside his chest so loudly that it was hard to think. It was not the gentle pull he had felt three years ago and ignored. This was violent and absolute and demanding. This was his wolf howling that his mate had just walked past him like he did not exist.
Like she did not belong to him.
Like he had not already claimed her.
Kade wanted to move. Every instinct screamed at him to follow her. To grab her. To force her to acknowledge the bond and the connection and the way they were supposed to be joined at a level deeper than anything else. His Alpha power surged through his body, demanding dominance, demanding her submission, demanding she recognize what he was.
But she had just looked at him with eyes made of ice.
And something in him broke.
Cole was still talking, explaining things about the medical wing and the treatment plans and the poison samples. Kade heard none of it. He watched Lyric disappear around the corner with his Beta, her movements confident and controlled and completely unbothered by his presence.
She had not looked back once.
The pack members gathered in the hall were slowly returning to their conversations. The moment of shock was passing. To them, this was just a powerful healer arriving to save their lives. They did not understand that the world had just shifted on its axis. They did not understand that Kade was standing in the same room where he had made the worst decision of his entire existence.
Mara appeared at his side. His sister looked confused and concerned in equal measure.
"Kade, are you okay?" she asked. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
He had. Or something worse.
"Leave me," Kade said quietly.
Mara opened her mouth to argue but something in his voice made her stop. She nodded and walked away without pushing.
Kade was alone with his thoughts and they were absolutely devastating.
He closed his eyes and let himself go back to three years ago. The ceremony. The full moon. The pack gathered in their hundreds waiting for him to announce his chosen Luna. He had known it was coming. He had prepared for it. He had made the smart choice. The strategic choice. The choice that would secure Shadowpine's future.
Victoria Sterling.
But now, standing in this hall with the bond still burning in his chest like a brand, he forced himself to remember something he had worked hard to forget. He forced himself to look back at that ceremony and see what he had actually done.
He had stood on that platform and looked across the crowd.
And there had been a girl in the back row. Omega. Wearing a dress that did not fit right. Standing alone. Watching him with eyes that held something he had not understood at the time.
Hope.
Kade's eyes snapped open.
That girl. That quiet, invisible omega who barely registered as existing in his pack. That girl had been watching him with hope in her eyes because she felt it. The bond. The connection. The way their souls were supposed to fit together.
And he had looked right at her and chosen someone else.
His wolf howled inside him at the realization. Not a pleased sound. A sound of agony and regret and the terrible understanding that he had destroyed something precious.
He tried to remember her name. Had he ever known it? She was so invisible in the pack that even now he was struggling to pull any memory of her from his head. She had been there and not there. Present and forgotten. Important and worthless all at the same time.
Until today.
Today she had walked back into Shadowpine with power radiating off her like heat from a fire. Every wolf in that hall had felt it. Every wolf had recognized that this was not just a healer. This was something more. This was a woman who had transformed herself into something extraordinary.
And she had done it while he was forgetting she even existed.
Kade walked out of the main hall in a daze. He moved through the packhouse without a destination, just needing to move. Needing to think. Needing to process the fact that his fated mate had walked back into his life and looked at him like he meant nothing.
Because he had made her mean nothing three years ago.
He found himself in front of the ceremony clearing. The place where he had stood on that platform and announced Victoria Sterling as his chosen Luna. The same place where that invisible girl had watched her entire world break apart.
Kade sank down onto the stone platform and let the weight of it all crash over him.
The bond was still pulling at him. Still demanding he go to her. Still insisting that she was his and he had failed in his most basic responsibility as her mate. A mate was supposed to recognize their partner. To acknowledge the bond. To claim them and protect them and make sure they were never forgotten.
He had done the opposite.
He had rejected her. Publicly. Brutally. In front of the entire pack. And then he had moved on like she never mattered.
For three years he had lived his life thinking he had made the smart choice. Strategic. Logical. Necessary.
He had been so wrong.
And now she was back. Powerful and untouchable and looking at him like he was a stranger who meant nothing to her. Like the bond between them was just an inconvenient fact instead of the most important thing in the universe.
She had survived three years without him. She had built a life without him. She had become someone extraordinary without him.
And judging by the way she had dismissed him in front of the entire pack, she did not need him. She did not want him. She did not even remember that she had once felt the bond pulling her toward him with such force that it had probably made her believe in fate.
Kade looked up at the moon, the same moon that had witnessed his greatest failure.
He had rejected his fated mate.
And now she had come back as someone he could never claim.
Worse, she had come back as someone who would never forgive him.