Chapter 10

(Cain's POV)

By the time the fire was out, dawn was near.

The Moon Goddess grounds were scorched black. The platform had collapsed, the moon-patterned runner curled into a knot, the offering tables overturned, broken vessels scattered everywhere.

The guests from every pack had been sent home. But the talk hadn't stopped. The rejected Silver Mane cast-off had burned the Alpha's acknowledgment rite in front of everyone.

Cain didn't pursue the arson.

When the cleanup wolves had moved off, he walked alone to the front of the platform and bent down.

In the scorched earth, beside a smear of silver ash, lay a brooch that hadn't melted. Moontear, blackened by the fire.

He picked it up. His knuckles tightened until they went white.

“Alpha.” Marek stood behind him, voice low. “There's something off.”

Cain didn't turn.

“A few days back, a pack of wolves carrying Iron Claw fang-tokens went to the Silver Mane border. Said it was on your order, to teach that cast-off a lesson. They used silver chains. And silver dust.”

“When did I give that order?”

“You never did. There's no record of it in the logs. But the fang-tokens were real.”

Cain thought of the way she'd walked out of the crowd earlier. In a wedding gown. Her left hand wrapped tight.

“Look into it,” his voice sank. “Who moved the fang-tokens. Whose name was forged, which wolves were pulled, what they did. Every piece of it. Leave nothing out.”

“Yes.”

He looked down at the blackened brooch in his palm.

The night of the offering feast, Seraphine had dropped that moontear pendant into the furnace in front of everyone. But since it couldn't be undone, he'd decided it was better to find a fix. So the next day he'd sent someone out to look for the mother-vein of the same moontear stone. He'd thought that once he had the source stone, he'd recast it for her with his own hands and give it back, with interest.

His mind was a mess. The little wolf had to be truly hurting, to set a fire that wild. And yet, when he'd seen that she'd come for him, something in his chest had stirred faintly, something like pleasure.

He'd nearly gone after her on the spot.

But a scout had come racing up with urgent news from the eastern border, unrest at the line. And behind him, the aftermath of the fire, the placating of the packs, the smothering of the rumors. One thing stacked on another.

He'd stopped where he stood.

Settle this first, he told himself. “Once it's done, I'll go find her. Where could she run? Follow her scent, and I'll always find her.”

Before he left, he closed his eyes and, along the faint thread of the bond, tried to call to her.

The other end was empty. Hollow.

Like something had already snapped.

She was just sulking, he told himself.

The road east was long. Marek rode half a length behind, saying nothing. After most of the night, Cain spoke.

“The Luna I acknowledge,” he said, his eyes on the dark road ahead, his voice level, “has only ever been her.”

Marek's hand jerked, nearly hauling his mount to a stop.

He didn't dare answer. He'd followed Cain eight years and never once heard him say a thing like that.

Cain looked into the dark, his thoughts drifting further back.

Three years ago, when the Moon Goddess had bound that Silver Mane she-wolf to him as his fated mate, he hadn't wanted it.

She was too bold, too willful, all thorns, famously hard to handle across the North. And she was Magnus's daughter. A Silver Mane true-born as Iron Claw's Luna. The elders had frowned, every one of them. Two old enemy packs joined by marriage was something other packs would seize on. They'd use her as a soft spot, a bargaining chip, even a blade aimed at Iron Claw.

Magnus hadn't wanted it either. He had other plans, to keep his daughter for a more profitable match in the North.

So he and Magnus struck a bargain.

In front of the whole pack, reject the fated mate. Void it. In exchange, he gave Magnus a border silver mine.

He'd thought that settled it. She'd hate him, he'd let her go, they'd each live in peace.

But he hadn't reckoned on one thing.

The bond he'd cut with his own hands and couldn't cut at all became a bleeding wound on her. He watched that little wolf, once bright enough to light a whole hunting field, go thinner and paler, even her shifts turning hard.

And still she was stubborn. She never showed weakness in front of him, would crush her teeth on the pain and swallow it before she'd say I'm hurting.

He didn't know the exact moment he'd softened.

He only knew that one day he heard she'd failed another shift and damaged her vital essence, and as if some hand were guiding him, he went back to Magnus.

For the price of another silver mine, he took her out of Magnus's hands.

He told everyone that a rejected bond rebounds, that she had to be kept near her fated mate, held under his scent, to recover faster. That much was true. But no one made him pay a silver mine for it, and no one made him bring her under his own eye and watch over her himself for three full years.

His reasoning at the time was simple: heal her body, and call it the debt he owed her paid. After that, no one would owe anyone.

What he hadn't expected was that the more he kept her, the less he could let her go.

She felt the cold. On Northern winter nights, he remembered to keep the fire-basin in her chamber stoked high.

She was stubborn, hurt and never letting anyone look, so he'd wait until she slept and quietly switch in the best medicine the healer had mixed.

Once she dressed an old wound for him, clumsy, pulling it tight enough to make him frown, yet for the first time ever, he let her do it.

On full-moon nights, when the wolf's hunger couldn't be held down, he followed the trace of her scent that only he could catch and found her, again and again. He'd grip her waist and swallow that word, the word that would acknowledge her, down again and again. It came to the edge of his tongue, and he swallowed it back.

He told himself he couldn't acknowledge her. Acknowledge her as the Luna, and she'd become Iron Claw's soft spot, a target for enemy packs. Rejecting her was how he protected her.

He lied to everyone.

He lied to himself too.

He lied all the way to tonight, standing before the collapsed, burned platform, watching the brooch she'd thrown down burn to ash, before it finally caught up with him.

The more he thought, the more tangled it got.

It was like he'd lost something important and couldn't, for the life of him, remember the moment he'd started losing it.

In the dark, once more he reached along the bond, feeling for her direction.

Usually, no matter the distance, a faint thread of scent answered him, the thing only a fated bond carried, the tie that couldn't be cut.

But this time, the other end was so faint it was nearly gone. Like a wisp of smoke about to scatter, drifting further and further, about to break for good somewhere past his reach.

Cain reined in.

He stood a long time in the dark.

Had the wound left her this weak?

“Alpha?” Marek called from behind.

Cain drew his gaze back.

“Faster,” he said. “Once the east is settled, I'm going to find her myself.”