Chapter 4

Days later, at a pack gathering filled with perfume and expensive liquor, word reached me through Ivy.

I was three territories away, in a hotel room with thin walls. But pack gossip travels fast.

"You won't believe this," Ivy said.

"Tell me."

"Marcus Webb. You know him. Alpha of that tiny coastal territory. Always running his mouth."

I knew Marcus. Loud. Crude. The kind of wolf who thought every woman was fair game.

"He walked up to Elias at the gathering," Ivy continued. "Had a drink in his hand. And he said--I'm quoting--'I heard your Luna ran off. What a shame. I always liked her fire. If you're done with her, I wouldn't mind taking her off your hands.'"

My stomach turned.

"Elias didn't say a word," Ivy said. "He just punched Marcus in the face. Broke his nose. Then he kept hitting him. Glass shattered. Marcus was screaming. It took four enforcers to pull Elias off."

I said nothing.

"He looked insane, Wren. Red eyes. Veins popping. They'd never seen him like that."

The old Wren would have felt something. Hope, maybe. A flutter in her chest.

I felt nothing.

After that night, Ivy told me, Elias Blackwood changed.

He stopped going to pack meetings. Stopped answering his mother's calls. His enforcers learned to stay out of his path.

And he started comparing.

"He's obsessed," Ivy said. "He keeps talking about you. About Chloe. How you're better at everything. How Chloe is... boring."

"Boring?"

"His words. He said you're like a wildfire and Chloe is like still water. And he doesn't know why he ever thought still water was what he wanted."

I didn't respond.

The story got stranger.

Ivy's cousin knew Elias's friend--a wolf named Dorian, Alpha of a neighboring pack. Dorian and Elias were drinking one night. Elias, half drunk, asked him:

"Am I losing my mind? Chloe is the one who needs protection. But I can't stop thinking about Wren."

Dorian looked at him like he'd grown a second head.

"Are you blind?" Dorian said. "Any wolf with eyes would choose Wren. She's gorgeous. She's interesting. She's got fire. Chloe? She just cries. That's all she does."

Then Dorian asked the question that changed everything.

"Elias... have you always been in love with your own mate and just didn't know it?"

Elias went silent.

The glass slipped from his hand.

That was when he started the investigation.

Not the casual kind. The deep kind. The kind that digs up bones.

He hired investigators. Pulled old records. Re-examined every incident from the past three years.

The fire in the pack shrine. The poison in my food. The broken heirloom that Margaret blamed on me. All of it.

Within days, the truth came back.

Chloe had done it all.

Every lie. Every manipulation. Every moment that made me look unstable and her look innocent.

The reports landed on Elias's desk in a thick folder.

And when he finished reading, Ivy said, he didn't scream or break things.

He just sat there.

For hours.

Then he started shaking.

That night, he couldn't sleep.

He lay in the empty manor--the house that used to feel like a fortress and now felt like a tomb. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw me.

Not the me who left.

The me in the hospital. After the skin graft. The me who woke up and looked at my bandaged arm with dead eyes.

He pulled up the security footage.

He watched me wake up. Watched Quinn walk in with the velvet boxes. Watched me look at them.

Then watched me sweep them all onto the floor.

Not screaming. Not crying.

Just... done.

He told Dorian later that it was the silence that broke him. The way I didn't fight anymore. The way I just let go.

"She stopped loving me," Elias said. "And I didn't even notice until it was too late."

The next morning, he started the search.

He hired every investigator in the territory. Then investigators from neighboring territories. Then investigators from other countries.

He spent fortunes. Burned favors. Called in debts.

He marked every possible location on a map in his study--the same study where I used to sit on the floor while he worked, just to be near him.

The map filled with red pins.

One by one, the pins led nowhere.

But he didn't stop.

He couldn't stop.

Because stopping meant accepting that I was gone. That I wasn't coming back. That he had thrown away the only wolf who ever truly loved him.

His mother tried to intervene.

"Let her go," Margaret said. "She was never good enough for this pack."

Elias looked at his mother.

For the first time in his life, he saw her clearly.

"She was too good for this pack," he said. "And so was I."

Margaret's face went white.

Elias turned and walked out.

Weeks passed.

The search continued. A possible sighting in Paris. Then Barcelona. Then somewhere in northern Italy.

Each time, Elias flew out personally. Each time, he arrived hours too late.

The pack started whispering.

"The Alpha is losing his mind over a Beta who left him."

"He should just take a new Luna."

"Chloe is still available."

But Elias didn't want Chloe.

He didn't want anyone.

He wanted me.

And I was gone.

One night, after another dead end, Elias returned to the manor.

He didn't go to his study. Didn't go to his bedroom.

He walked down the corridor toward Chloe's wing. His footsteps were heavy. His wolf was close to the surface.

He reached her door.

And he kicked it open.