Chapter 7

The silence in the Alpha's mansion was deafening.

Jace paced the length of his bedroom, each step echoing off the cold hardwood floor. It used to be filled with soft laughter, the rustle of a blanket, the scent of lavender in the air.

Now, it was just space, hollow, vast, echoing with everything she had left behind. His jaw clenched as he found himself once again standing at the foot of the window seat where Clara would sit with her legs drawn up, reading or watching the forest outside.

He stared at it too long, and it made him angry.

He turned away sharply, shoving the door open and storming down the hall. The house, despite its grandeur, felt like a prison. A constant reminder that the one presence who made it feel alive was no longer within its walls.

In the common room, Luci’s voice drifted up like a cloying perfume.

“I was thinking,” she called out, “we could repaint the living room. Brighten things up. Something more... warm? Maybe gold tones?”

Jace didn't answer. He didn’t even slow his stride as he passed her.

Luci stood from the sofa, smoothing down her tight dress. “Jace?”

“Do what you want,” he muttered, heading toward the front door.

She frowned. “You used to care about how things looked.”

He stopped cold. His hand rested on the doorknob. “I used to care about a lot of things.”

He left without another word.

Outside, the air was crisp and biting, yet it didn’t clear the fog that hung over him. Pack members bowed slightly as he passed, murmuring greetings, but he barely acknowledged them. Not even Gabriel, who had just arrived at the training grounds, was spared his cold indifference.

“You’re early,” Gabriel said, noticing the Alpha’s tense posture. “We weren’t expecting you for another hour.”

“I needed to move,” Jace replied shortly.

Gabriel hesitated. “There’s been word... Clara’s taken a job in North Hollow. Fitness instructor. Human territory.”

Jace stiffened but said nothing. His silence was sharp enough to draw blood.

“I didn’t ask for an update,” Jace snapped.

Gabriel’s jaw tensed. “You did. Last week. You asked me to keep you informed.”

Jace exhaled slowly through his nose, regretting the outburst but too proud to take it back. “I don’t need her itinerary. Just... make sure she’s safe.”

“Of course,” Gabriel said simply. “But if I may…”

“You may not,” Jace cut him off and strode past.

The rest of the day was a blur of half-finished reports, strategy meetings he couldn’t focus on, and patrols he didn’t remember assigning.

Every conversation was clipped, every interaction strained. His pack noticed, though they were too loyal, or too fearful, to comment.

That night, Luci waited for him with two glasses of wine and a dress she had worn only once before, the kind that clung to her body like silk and smoke.

“I thought we could talk,” she said, sliding onto the arm of his chair.

Jace didn’t even glance up from the documents in front of him. “I’m working.”

“You’re always working lately.”

“Maybe because someone needs to.”

She flinched, then masked it with a pout. “I miss us, Jace.”

He finally looked at her, really looked. Her flawless face, her carefully done hair, her manufactured smile. It was everything that should have attracted him. But all he saw was the absence of Clara.

Clara’s crooked smile when she was amused. The way she would quietly slide tea beside him when he was overwhelmed. The little post-it notes she'd leave on his mirror. Her unpolished, honest, maddening self.

Luci noticed his faraway stare. “You’re thinking about her again, aren’t you?”

Jace didn’t deny it.

She stood abruptly, knocking over one of the wine glasses. “She left you, Jace. She turned her back on everything. On the pack. On you.”

“No,” he said quietly. “She walked away from me. Not the pack.”

“You let her go.”

“I pushed her.”

Luci stared at him, the realization slowly dawning across her face. “You regret it.”

He didn’t answer. That was answer enough.

She stepped back, her voice trembling with anger. “And what am I, then? A placeholder? A distraction?”

“I don’t know,” Jace admitted. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

That was the truth. Since Clara walked out of his life, everything had shifted. He no longer felt like the confident, unquestioned Alpha.

His thoughts were consumed by flashes of the past, Clara brushing flour off her cheek in the kitchen, her laughter echoing during late-night runs, her voice cutting through the haze of his doubts with calm certainty.

He had taken it all for granted.

The following day, he stood outside the council hall during a rare break between meetings. Gabriel approached cautiously.

“She’s moved again,” Gabriel reported. “Now working part-time at a human-run coffee shop in Riverbend. She’s also attending open training at a rogue-friendly gym near the border.”

Jace closed his eyes. He could picture her there, focused, determined, sweat gleaming on her brow. Working herself to the brink, all to gain a freedom he had refused to give her.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” Jace asked, more to himself than Gabriel.

Gabriel hesitated. “Would you, if you were her?”

The question hit harder than expected. Jace turned away, pretending to check his phone to hide the emotion crossing his face.

Back at the mansion that night, Luci was nowhere to be seen. Her things had been moved out of the guest room. Her scent, strong and cloying, lingered faintly, but it was clear she had finally taken the hint.

Jace didn’t feel relieved. He felt... tired.

He wandered the house like a ghost, passing the staircase Clara used to slide down in socks, the hallway where they had once danced drunkenly to old music, the bathroom where she once wrapped his bruised knuckles in silence.

He found himself in the guest room that had once been hers, sitting on the edge of the bed. A book lay on the nightstand, one he had never read, but Clara had devoured twice. He opened it idly and found a pressed leaf between its pages. It had once been green but was now brittle and brown. Probably from one of her walks.

His hands trembled.

He hadn’t wept when she left. Not when she told him she was done. Not even when she walked away from him with her head held high and fire in her eyes.

But he wept now.

Just a few silent tears that he didn’t bother to wipe away.

Days passed.

Jace threw himself into work again, avoiding his house and its ghosts. Yet nothing he did filled the gnawing emptiness inside. He began having dreams, memories, really. Clara’s smile at sunrise. Her humming in the shower. Her hand finding his in sleep.

He woke up every time with an ache that no amount of running or shouting or shifting could ease.

One evening, Gabriel brought him an envelope.

“What’s this?” Jace asked.

“Something you should see.”

Jace opened it. Inside was a photo, blurry, likely taken from a distance. It was Clara, dressed in workout clothes, instructing a class of humans. She looked... focused. Strong. Unbothered.

Alive.

Behind the photo was a clipped flyer: Open Trials for the National Werewolf Army, Winter Recruitment. The date circled in red.

Jace stared at the circle, then back at the photo.

“She’s serious,” he murmured.

“She’s always been,” Gabriel replied.

Jace nodded slowly, feeling something shift within him, not anger, not jealousy. Something deeper.

A strange blend of admiration... and fear.

Because he was losing her.

Not just from his life.

But from his world entirely.