The Soul Thief

KAEL

My office did not survive her.

I flipped my desk first. I didn’t think about it. I just grabbed the edge of the solid oak, the one my father had made for me when I became Alpha at nineteen, and threw it.

It hit the stone wall and split down the middle with a crack that hurt my teeth. Drawers spilled open. Patrol reports, border maps, the Luna Fund ledgers Jace begged me to sign every week scattered across the floor like dead leaves after a storm. Ink bottles shattered, black bleeding into the rug. One of those ledgers was the book Tomas had locked in the chest downstairs. The copy on my floor was useless now. The real pages were the problem. East already knew it.

I saw her face on every paper.

I, Lily of Bloodmoon, reject you, Alpha Prince Kael of Bloodmoon, as my mate.

And my own words. The ones I only ever thought, never said out loud, that she stole from my mouth and used against me in front of two hundred wolves. No omega had ever done that. No omega had ever dared to stand in the middle and speak first.

My wolf howled inside my head. It wasn’t an angry howl, not the one I use before a kill. It was a wounded sound that tore at my skull, that made my molars ache, that made my hands shake.

I grabbed the bookshelf next. Tore it down with bare hands. Leather-bound pack laws my father wrote, framed lineage of Alphas from my grandfather down to me, glass shattered everywhere, shards biting into my bare feet and I didn’t feel it. I swept the mantle clean with one arm. Threw the chair into the fireplace. Sparks jumped up the chimney and fell back onto the rug, smoking.

It did nothing. The hollow place in my chest got bigger. Cold wind through the broken window did nothing to cool it. The missing piece pulled north, faint, hidden under black root, still hers.

The door slammed open. Jace walked in. He did not knock when I was like this. He knew better.

He stepped over the broken chair leg, over scattered glass, and closed the door behind him.

“So,” he said, voice too calm, the calm he used when I was about to do something that would cost us warriors and gold. “I take it the meeting with the elders went well.”

I was breathing hard. Claws out, cutting into my own palms because I had nowhere else to put them. Eyes black. My own claws dug into my chest, over my shirt, because I tried to reach the place where the bond should pulse. Where her scent should sit.

Nothing. Empty. Like someone scooped it out with a hot spoon and left wind.

“She is gone,” I snarled. My throat raw.

“I know,” Jace said, hands in pockets, not coming closer yet. “Myra’s hut is empty. Pack house omega bunk empty. North border logged two cloaked figures crossing at dawn. One leaning on the other. You want me to call patrol back? Weren’t already late anyway.”

“Send everyone,” I said. Voice low now, flat. “I want trackers. I want war party. I want her found before sunset and brought back here. Now. No neutral bullshit. I want her in this room.”

Jace crossed his arms. He did not move. He looked at the broken desk, at the blood on my feet from the glass.

“Think, Kael. Really think for ten seconds.” He spoke slow. “You want me to order a full-scale hunt for a nineteen-year-old wolfless omega? The elders are already downstairs arguing whether an omega cracking an Alpha’s bond is treason or a miracle from the Moon. If I send twenty warriors after her in a snowstorm tonight, you make her look like a real threat. You make her important. You make her the Luna who got away. Is that what you want written in the royal journal? Alpha sent war party for a girl who rejected him.”

“I don’t care what it looks like!” I roared. The last vase in the room exploded against the wall. Clay dust hung in air. “I want her back in this pack house! I—”

“Why?” Jace asked, stepping closer now, not flinching even when my aura flared and made the fire jump. “So you can reject her properly this time? Make it official and clean so Rorik stops whispering to your cousin? Or is it what I’m thinking? You are not falling for her, right? Because from where I stood in that hall, it looked like she beat you to it. Clean. First time in Bloodmoon history, omega rejected Alpha before Alpha could open his mouth.”

I went still. The words hit harder than the desk hitting the wall.

“She didn’t beat me to it and I do not love her,” I said. My voice dropped, hoarse, barely there. “She stole something from me.”

Jace frowned. “Stole what? She has nothing, Kael. She lives in a healer’s hut, owns one patched cloak that Myra stitched twice. What could she steal from an Alpha Prince who has east funds and west iron?”

I turned away from him, pressed my palm hard against my sternum, fingers splayed over where the bond lived. Hand shook. Sweat on my forehead despite cold wind from the broken window cutting across my bare chest.

“Myra told me once that when an omega is rejected, they feel cold,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “Because their wolf leaves. The bond goes cold. But that’s not what I feel.”

I swallowed, throat clicking.

“When Lily said those words, it didn’t just snap. I felt my chest open. Like hot wire cut, pulled. And then I felt it leave. With her. She took it with her when she walked out.”

Jace’s expression changed. He had seen a lot of rejected bonds in fifteen years as my Beta. Seen omegas carried out crying, Alphas standing stiff. He had never seen an Alpha look like this, like someone gutted him and left him standing.

“What are you saying? What left?”

“I’m saying my wolf won’t shut up,” I said. “Since she walked out that door, he howls. Not angry. Panicked. Like a pup who loses his mother in snow and knows he’ll freeze if he doesn’t find her. He pushes to the surface, tries to sniff her out of air that isn’t there. And when I try to push him down, to lock him back, he says the same thing over and over inside my head until I can’t hear anything else.”

I turned around. My eyes were gold now, wolf in full control, teeth showing, claws fully out.

“What does he say?” Jace asked quietly. Hand drifting to his belt, not for weapon, for balance.

“He says she took our soul.”

Jace took a step back without meaning to. An Alpha losing control of his wolf inside his own office was dangerous. Last time that happened, when High Hill killed two of our pups, I broke Elder Rorik’s wrist without remembering it after.

“Kael, you need to get hold of yourself. Now. If that word leaves this room, Rorik writes soul-theft to your cousin before supper. East adds the dress page and calls it a plot. You do not get to be gutted and King in the same letter.”

“How?” I laughed, but it was a broken sound, no humor, just air scraping. “How do I get hold of myself when half of me is walking north in a snowstorm with no coat and bleeding feet?”

Two winters ago she had sat outside this door till dawn with a border list I forgot. North patrol does not eat if that list is late. I stepped over her feet and told her to leave it with Jace. I did not ask her name. Last week Rorik called her a vessel in the locked room. I thought the word. I never said it. She put it in my mouth in front of two hundred wolves. The theft did not start tonight. I had already treated her like furniture. Tonight she took the one thing I could feel missing.

It dawned on me then. Cold, clear, like water poured down my back.

This is what she meant. You’ll find out tomorrow.

Tomorrow was now. My soul was gone.

Lily

My feet bled.

I walked north. Myra walked beside me, her arm around my waist because I kept stumbling. Snow bit through the patched cloak, through boots with holes I stuffed with dried yarrow for warmth. Wind cut my face, made my eyes water and freeze on my lashes.

I should have felt free. I just did what no omega had ever done in Bloodmoon history. I rejected an Alpha first. I cracked his bond in front of the whole pack and council and made his nose bleed.

I felt empty. And full at the same time, too full, like something too big was crammed into my chest where my small wolf used to live alone.

The place in my chest where the bond lived for nineteen years, it always felt cold, always felt weak and quiet because I had no big wolf to warm it. Now it burned. It throbbed like a fresh wound sewn shut wrong, tight and pulling.