Flashbacks

Winter's POV

I lowered my eyes, watching the moonlight ripple faintly across the surface of the nearly finished tea in Sabrina’s cup. The pale liquid caught the silver light, trembling slightly with every heavy breath I took.

I had never narrated this to anyone other than Mother, and now that it was finally out in the open, the space between us felt entirely rearranged.

"I don't think I told you everything," I murmured, my voice barely carrying over the crackle of the hearth.

Sabrina had just taken another bite of the berry dessert. She paused mid-chew, her sharp gaze locking onto mine as she slowly swallowed. She set her spoon down with deliberate care, the soft clink against the ceramic sounding remarkably loud in the quiet room.

"Considering we've spent the last hour discussing what might become the greatest diplomatic headache of the century," she said, her dry tone laced with a sudden, underlying tension, "that's a rather concerning sentence. What didn't you tell me?"

I drew in a slow, centering breath, my fingers instinctively finding the necklace beneath the collar of Derrick's shirt. The cool, solid metal rested against my fingertips, grounding my thoughts from spiralling as it always did when the world threatened to shatter around me.

"It isn't just that Keon... cares about me," I started, the words feeling like lead on my tongue. "He... He's my soulmate."

For several agonizing seconds, absolutely nothing happened. Sabrina simply stared at me, her entire posture freezing. I watched my words and their meaning travel across her expressive face as she took in the new information.

I watched confusion arrive first, drawing her brows together, then sheer disbelief, before her expression finally settled into profound shock.

The silence stretched until it was almost unbearable.

"...What?" she whispered, the single syllable cracking through the air.

I nodded once, a tear slipping free before I could stop it. "The Moon Goddess paired us."

"No," she repeated fiercely, leaning forward with sudden force despite the immediate, obvious protest from her injured shoulder. "Not 'I know.' Explain, Winter. Because that is biologically and politically impossible."

I exhale. So I thought. And so does everyone else, yet here I am, still standing.

"The night before my mating ceremony," I said softly.

"The night of the Blood Moon. I couldn't sleep. The pressure was suffocating me. I kept thinking about the binding ceremony, about leaving my coven, about becoming the future royal of a pack of people I'd never even met. Everything felt so heavy. I felt like I couldn't breathe inside my house, inside the castle I'd grown in the streets of my own city. So? I left to clear my head."

"I gathered that much," she murmured, her sharp eyes tracking my defensive movements.

"I wandered much farther than I realized, completely lost in my own thoughts. Eventually, I reached a dense, misty clearing near the trenches that mark the border between our territories. I heard something shifting in the brush behind me, and I assumed it was a rogue wolf. Before I could even draw a breath to cast a protective ward, something massive tackled me to the dirt. I was absolutely terrified. I genuinely thought I was going to die in that clearing."

Sabrina’s expression lost what little detachment remained. Her posture stiffened completely, the gravity of a border confrontation sinking in.

"But he didn't kill me," I said, opening my eyes again to meet hers. "He bit me. He marked me. The magic of the fated bond flooded my system, and the sheer sensory overload knocked me unconscious. When I woke up the next morning, the sun was rising... and I was lying in the arms of a man I'd never seen before."

Sabrina blinked, thoroughly stunned, trying to reconcile the fierce warrior she knew with the image I was painting. "You woke up... in Keon's arms?"

"Yes. He had shifted back to his human form, holding me to keep me warm. I panicked and ran. Sabrina, I was supposed to be getting married to the future Alpha's brother of the entire pack of the next city in a few hours. I thought if anyone discovered the fated mark before the wedding, the treaty would collapse before it even began. A war would break out. So I hid it."

Sabrina leaned back slowly against her pillows, the heavy pieces of the puzzle finally falling into place with a devastating alignment. "So Keon has known since before the ceremony. And you've known just as long."

"Yes."

Neither of us spoke for a long time. The silence wasn't empty or awkward anymore; it was heavy, suffocating, and entirely full of a terrible, newfound understanding. The strange distance, the stolen glances, the unspoken tension at court—every single detail crystallized in an instant. I realized then how much effort it must have taken for Keon to stand by his brother's side, watching me day after day, while carrying a bond that was pulling at his very soul.

Finally, Sabrina rubbed both hands over her face, letting out the deepest, most exhausted sigh I had ever heard from her.

"Oh, gods, that explains so much. I thought he'd finally lost his mind. The entire beta guard thought the pressure of the treaty had broken him."

My eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I walked past the western training grounds a few days after your arrival at the palace," she said, a sad, reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Keon was out there in the midday heat, absolutely annihilating a heavy oak punching post with his bare hands. He'd already completely splintered one to pieces, and the trainees had to bring in a second reinforced one. He was already halfway through destroying that one, too. His knuckles were bleeding."

I couldn't help the small, aching smile that touched my lips at the image of his quiet fury. "And?"

"And I asked him what the hell was wrong," she shrugged, her voice dripping with heavy skepticism. "He just glared at me and claimed he was 'training.' I've known that man for years, Winter. That wasn't training. That was a man trying to beat his own biology into submission." Her smile faded entirely, her eyes darkening with sympathy. "He wasn't angry at you, Winter. He was grieving. He'd found his fated mate, and then he had to stand by at the altar and watch her marry his own brother to preserve the peace of the kingdoms."

The room felt unbearably, completely still. Hearing it laid out so plainly made the reality of Keon's silent suffering hit me with a brutal new force. He had borne the agony of the bond in absolute isolation, wearing his stoicism like a shield, never letting anyone see the cracks.

"I've been wondering for weeks how Keon managed to remain so composed, so fiercely supportive of your marriage," Sabrina admitted quietly, looking into the distance. "I assumed it was just his legendary discipline. His loyalty to the treaty and to Derrick. But I've been asking the wrong question this whole time. The question isn't, 'How did Keon endure all of this without snapping?'"

"Then what is it?"

Her voice grew incredibly soft, almost reverent. "It's... 'How did either of them?'"

I frowned, my chest aching under the weight of their parallel sacrifices.

"Keon has spent weeks manually suppressing primal, biological instincts that should have driven him to challenge his own brother to a death match for possession of his mate," Sabrina explained, letting the terrifying reality of wolf customs sink in. "And Derrick... he has unknowingly accepted every single strange explanation placed in front of him, ignoring his own sharp wolf instincts, because somewhere along the way, your safety and your happiness became infinitely more important to him than his own alpha pride. They're standing on opposite sides of the exact same impossible situation, Winter."

The truth of her words shattered something inside me. Neither of them was fighting to win a prize. Neither of them was trying to maliciously take something away from the other. If anything... they seemed to be actively giving pieces of their own souls away just to keep me whole, shredding their own happiness to protect a fragile peace that rested entirely on my shoulders.

Sabrina turned her head, staring thoughtfully into the dying embers of the fire.

"...Gods."

"What?" I asked, my voice cracking.

She smiled, though there wasn't a single shred of happiness left in it. "I thought I was walking into a classic, messy love triangle when I took this assignment."

Her amber eyes met mine once more, filled with a deep, crushing empathy that made me feel seen in a way I hadn't since arriving at the palace.

"It isn't a love triangle, Winter."

I frowned, a tear finally spilling over my lashes. "No?"

She shook her head slowly, the weight of the two kingdoms resting heavily in the space between us.

"It's a tragedy."