CHAPTER 4. MEMORIES OF THE PAST

Lucan.

The moon tonight is a liar.

I look up from my room window, and I wonder time and again why the moon goddess played such a cruel joke on me.

The moon glows like it has no memory of the blood I spilled beneath it, no recollection of the vow sealed in crimson just moments ago. I stand at the window of my chambers, arms folded tight across my chest like I can crush the unease out of my bones.

I haven’t slept. I can't.

Not because I feel guilty, no, I won’t give it that name, but because the bond is raw and new. It hums beneath my skin like a wound that refuses to close. It itches. Pulls. A dull ache I can't drink away.

I lived with the pain of rejecting my own mate years ago and now? It still hurts, I can't say it hurts more because it wouldn't be logical but it hurts more.

It feels like the blood covenant we entered dropped a load with spikes on my chest. My thoughts go back to her.

Alina.

She’s across the hall. I don’t need to see her to know. I feel her now, in a way I couldn’t before. She’s in the back of my mind, bright, unyielding, furious. Her presence crackles like lightning just beyond reach.

I feel bad for caging her in such an unfair way but it's for the best. I tell myself it’s necessary, all of this. She’ll understand someday.

My wolf is pacing, restless and angry at the silence between us. It's not my fault, I try being reasonable and explaining to my wolf but it's dismissive to all my excuses.

It keeps pushing me to go to Alina's room. I shut my wolf down with my Alpha authority and think about how ridiculous it is for me to be fighting with my wolf and struggling for control as an Alpha.

I rub my face with my hands and pour myself a drink from the decanter near the hearth.

It's a strong one, dark and bitter. It burns going down, but doesn’t settle anything inside me.

My mind goes back to all those years ago, she might not remember me but I never forgot her….. My mate.

Several years ago, I met her.

Not as a Vessel, not the way she is now. She was dainty and without a threat, she was pretty — still is, but she's different now. It's obvious she's been through so much in life, her eyes show pain and loss.

It weighs heavily on my heart.

She used to be just a girl.

I found her on the edge of a border town, arguing with an old man over a spilled basket of herbs. She was fire and fury and too damn bright for the world she lived in.

Then our eyes met, and everything stopped.

The bond struck like a hammer, sudden, violent and final. I felt it, the pull, the rightness of my mate and I knew she felt it too.

But I turned and walked away.bIt wasn’t weakness, it was what I thought was good for both of us at the time. I thought I was making the right decision.

The Seer had warned me years before. Pulled me aside after a council meeting and whispered the words I still hear in my sleep.

"She is the Vessel. Your mate, she will be your undoing."

I tried to argue with her about it. My mate can never be my undoing, she's my mate!

Then she showed me visions, forests burning in unnatural flame, wolves screaming, blood flooding through cracks in the Veil. And always, always, that girl at the center. Power bleeding from her like poison.

Claim her, and the world burns. The seer said.

Reject her, and she lives.

I begged for a solution instead. I couldn't stand to reject my mate, the pain would kill us both.

I couldn't stand being away from my mate, I snuck chances to show up at her workplace and random places I knew she'd appear. I knew she could feel me but I always managed to dodge her eyes.

Until I couldn't. She confronted me one day, asking if we knew each other and if we somehow had a connection.

I knew I had no other choice then.

“I reject you as my mate.” I said in a low voice, my heart felt shattered into a million fragments and tears ran down my cheeks.

She gasped but that was it, she held her chest and passed out. I caught her.

I held my mate in my hands, she was so close but I couldn't be with her. It almost broke me.

But I told myself it was mercy.

I walked away and buried the bond, buried her, and became everything the realm needed me to be.

I learnt to live with the pain, and I thought she was happy somewhere else now. I had managed to rewrite our fates.

Now she’s here.

The bond is real, alive and I’ve done the one thing I swore I never would— I bound us together.

I married her.

I leave my room to the war room, I sit in the war room long after the others have gone. The fire burns low, shadows curling up the walls. I don’t feel the warmth.

The weight of my actions waves heavy before my eyes.

To save the Veil, I sacrificed the last shred of choice she had left.

She didn’t speak during the ceremony.

She didn’t look at me.

But I felt her scream when the blood bound us.

Not a sound came through her lips but a tearing in the air between us. A silence so loud it ripped my soul in half.

I told myself I did the right thing.

But I find myself standing outside her door, and everything I’ve buried rises to the surface.

No guards tonight. Just me and the heavy, invisible wall between us.

I don’t knock.

I whisper, barely breathing the words: "You weren’t supposed to come back."

I turn and walk away.