CHAPTER 2 – The Scent of Ghosts

(Delph’s POV)

The storm had started hours before the ceremony, but I didn’t cancel it.

The Bloodstone Pack doesn’t bow to weather or weakness.

I stood beneath the great hall’s open roof, rain sliding down the edges of the stone pillars, watching my wolves kneel as I raised my glass.

Another year of prosperity. Another year under my rule.

And yet, the silence inside me was louder than the thunder outside.

The mark on my chest,the one that should’ve carried my mate’s bond had long since faded. I’d convinced myself the ache had, too. Until it hit me.

That scent.

Soft. Wild. Familiar.

Like the air after a storm and the faint sweetness of jasmine.

It tore through the crowd before I saw her a whisper of something I swore I’d never feel again. My wolf, Draven, went mad instantly.

Mate.

The glass in my hand cracked. I didn’t realize I’d crushed it until blood dripped down my palm.

Every sound blurred the ceremony, the crowd, the chants of loyalty.

All I could hear was the echo of her heartbeat, faint but certain, calling to mine across the territory.

It couldn’t be.

She was gone. She was dead to me.

“Alpha?” my Beta, Corin, whispered beside me. “Something wrong?”

I didn’t answer. My vision darkened around the edges, instincts taking over. My body moved before logic could stop it.

I followed the scent. Through the hall. Down the steps. Out into the rain.

And then I saw her.

Standing at the border gates like she’d never left soaked, trembling, and still the most haunting thing I’d ever seen.

Afnan.

For a moment, everything stopped. The storm. The noise. Even time itself.

The woman I’d rejected, the one who had haunted my nights and every broken breath since, was standing in front of me and she wasn’t alone.

Two small heartbeats pulsed behind her scent.

Two.

I didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t.

But as she stepped into the light, and the bundle in her arms shifted, I saw it, a tiny flash of steel-gray eyes looking up through the rain.

My eyes.

My wolf howled inside me, clawing at my chest, desperate to claim what it already knew.

“No,” I growled under my breath. “It can’t be.”

But the truth was already spreading like fire through the pack link. I could feel my warriors’ shock, their whispers of “the Luna… she’s back” echoing through the bond.

I forced control into my voice as I spoke, even though it scraped like glass. “You dare to return?”

Her chin lifted, rain dripping from her lashes. “I’m not here for your forgiveness, Alpha.”

The word Alpha from her lips felt like a knife. Cold. Final.

When she said, ‘Some ghosts can’t stay buried forever,’ it was like she knew exactly how to shatter me with calm, deliberate cruelty.

She used to tremble before me.

Now she looked at me like I was nothing.

And the part of me that was supposed to feel relief at her defiance instead burned with anger… and something darker.

Desire.

Damn it all.

Her scent wrapped around me again, warm and soft and utterly forbidden. The rain didn’t hide it; it only made it stronger. And then I caught the smaller notes woven through it: milk, innocence, new life.

Children.

My wolf’s rage surged. “What are you hiding?” I demanded.

Her heartbeat spiked, but she didn’t move. “Nothing that concerns you.”

Everything about her concerned me. Every breath, every tremor, every secret.

“You will come with me,” I said, the authority in my voice shaking even the guards. I didn’t mean to sound harsh, it was instinct. Possessive. Territorial.

She didn’t flinch.

“If I come with you, it’ll be on my terms, Delph. Not yours.”

Hearing my name from her lips again almost broke me.

She didn’t know what it was like after she left the silence in my house, the nights I couldn’t sleep without hearing her heartbeat next to mine.

She didn’t know that every deal I made, every kill I ordered, was just to keep myself from going feral with guilt.

And now she was here with them.

She said one more thing before turning away, her voice low enough that only I could hear it.

“The Alpha who rejected his mate for power doesn’t get to demand anything anymore.”

The words hit harder than claws. Because they were true.

As I watched her disappear into the packhouse under guard, lightning struck again and for the first time in years, the mighty Alpha of Bloodstone Pack felt fear.

Not of enemies.

Not of war.

But of a woman he’d once broken… and the secrets she brought back with her.