CHAPTER 3: SILENCE IS AN ANSWER

I tried again.

Adrian, please.

I sent the thought down the bond as I climbed the stairs toward the main packhouse, my hand gripping the railing like it was the only thing keeping me upright. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a desperate prayer that Bianca had been lying, that the mark on her throat was fake, that this was all some terrible misunderstanding.

The bond felt... muted. Not gone. Just distant. Like shouting into fog and hearing nothing echo back.

But it was still there. That had to mean something.

I reached the second floor where the offices were, where the important wolves conducted pack business in rooms I was only allowed to enter when I was cleaning them. The hallway smelled like leather and old wood and power—the kind that pressed down on my shoulders and reminded me exactly where I stood in the hierarchy.

At the very bottom.

Adrian was there.

He stood outside the Alpha's office, his back to me, his posture rigid. Even from behind, he looked every inch the heir. Tall. Commanding. The kind of wolf others instinctively followed.

For three years, I had believed he would use that power to protect me.

Now I wasn't sure anymore.

"Adrian," I said quietly.

He stiffened but didn't turn around.

The bond flickered weakly in my chest, like a candle guttering in the wind. I took a step closer, then another, until I was close enough to touch him if I dared.

"We need to talk," I said.

"Now isn't a good time." His voice was flat. Empty.

Not angry. That would have been better. Anger meant he still felt something. This was worse—this careful, calculated distance that made me feel like a stranger.

"Please," I whispered. "Just look at me."

For a long moment, he didn't move. Then slowly, painfully, he turned.

His eyes were the same golden brown I remembered. The same eyes that had looked at me with wonder on my eighteenth birthday, that had held mine in stolen moments when no one was watching, that had promised me a future.

But now they were cold.

"What do you want, Elena?" he asked.

The question hit like a slap. As if I was bothering him. As if I was some inconvenience he had to deal with instead of his mate.

"Bianca said—" I started.

"She talks too much." He cut me off, his jaw tightening.

Relief surged through me, brief and fragile as glass. "So she is lying?"

Adrian looked away. "I don't have time for this."

"Time for what? Time to tell me the truth?" My voice rose despite my best efforts to stay calm. "Time to explain why you have been avoiding me for weeks? Time to tell me why she has a mark on her throat and you won't even look at me?"

"Lower your voice," he said sharply.

"Answer me."

"Go get ready for the ceremony, Elena."

The words were a dismissal. Clear and final. Like I was a servant he was sending away instead of the person who had waited three years for him.

"That is not an answer," I said.

His eyes hardened, and for the first time since I had known him, I saw something in them that made my wolf whimper.

Contempt.

"It is the only one you are getting," he said coldly.

The bond twisted in my chest, painful and wrong. "Adrian, please. Just tell me what is happening. Tell me that what Bianca said isn't true. Tell me that tonight—"

"Tonight has nothing to do with you."

The words were ice. Final. Absolute.

I stared at him, waiting for him to take them back, to soften, to give me anything that resembled the Adrian I thought I knew.

He didn't.

"I don't understand," I whispered.

"You don't need to understand." He turned toward the Alpha's office, his hand on the door. "You just need to accept it."

"Accept what?"

"That some things are more important than—" He stopped himself, jaw working like he was swallowing something bitter.

"Than what?" I demanded. "More important than what, Adrian?"

He looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw something flicker across his face. Guilt, maybe. Or regret. Something human buried beneath the cold indifference.

But it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

"Than a mistake," he said quietly.

The world stopped.

"What?" My voice came out broken, barely a whisper.

"The bond." He said it like the word tasted rotten. "It was a mistake. A fluke. These things happen sometimes—wrong place, wrong time, wrong moon phase. It doesn't mean anything."

"That is not how bonds work—"

"I am telling you how this bond works." His voice rose, sharp and commanding. Alpha heir speaking to omega. Not mates. Not equals. "It was never meant to be. You were never meant to be mine."

Each word was a nail in my chest.

"You felt it," I said desperately, clinging to the one thing I knew was real. "On my eighteenth birthday. I saw it in your eyes. You felt the bond snap into place just like I did."

"I felt something," he admitted. "But feelings aren't permanent, Elena. They fade. They change. And mine changed."

"When?" I demanded. "When did they change?"

He hesitated. Just for a second. But it was enough to tell me he was lying.

"It doesn't matter when," he said finally. "What matters is that I am making the right choice now. For the pack. For my future. For—"

"For Bianca."

His silence was confirmation enough.

I felt something crack inside me. Something fundamental that I hadn't known could break.

"She has your mark," I said numbly. "On her throat. She showed me."

Adrian's jaw tightened, but he didn't deny it. "That is between her and me."

"And the bond? The one that connects us whether you want it to or not?"

"Bonds can be rejected." He said it so casually, like he was discussing the weather instead of destroying me. "It will hurt for a while. But you will heal. You will move on."

"Move on," I repeated. The words felt foreign in my mouth.

"Yes." He straightened, adjusting his collar like we were discussing nothing more important than dinner plans. "You will find someone else eventually. Someone more suited to your rank. Someone who—"

"Someone omega," I finished bitterly.

"Someone realistic," he corrected. "I am going to be Alpha one day, Elena. I cannot afford a weak mate. The pack wouldn't respect it. My father wouldn't allow it. And honestly..." He paused, considering his words. "Neither would I."

The cruelty of it stole my breath.

"You said you loved me," I whispered.

"I said a lot of things." He reached for the office door again. "Most of them were true at the time. But people change. Situations change. I am not the same person I was three years ago."

"Neither am I."

"Clearly." His eyes raked over me, cold and assessing. "You should go back to your quarters, Elena. Clean yourself up. Try to look presentable for tonight. The whole pack will be watching."

"Watching you claim her."

"Watching me claim my mate," he corrected. "My true mate. Not some accident of timing and moonlight."

He pushed open the door to the Alpha's office.

"Adrian, wait—"

He paused in the doorway, his back to me. For a moment, just a moment, I thought he might turn around. Might tell me this was all wrong, that he was being forced into this, that he still cared.

But he didn't turn around.

"This conversation is over," he said. "Do not make a scene tonight. For both our sakes."

The door closed.

I stood there in the empty hallway, staring at the dark wood, my mind struggling to process what had just happened.

A mistake.

That was what he had called the bond. The thing that had been the center of my world for three years. The thing I had built every hope and dream around.

A mistake.

My legs felt weak. I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself, but the wood felt too solid, too real, when everything else was crumbling.

The bond pulsed in my chest, weak and wounded. I reached for it one more time, desperate.

Please. Talk to me. Explain this. Make it make sense.

Nothing.

Just that same terrible silence.

And then—

Something shifted.

The bond flickered. Not with warmth or comfort or anything resembling affection. But with something deliberate. Something intentional.

Like a door being firmly, purposefully closed.

Pain lanced through my chest, sharp and sudden. I gasped, doubling over, my hand clutching at my ribs like I could physically hold the bond together.

But I couldn't.

Because Adrian was pushing it away. Actively. Deliberately.

Severing what little connection we had left.

"No," I breathed.

The bond flickered again. Weaker this time. Dying.

And I realized with horrible, crystalline clarity that Bianca had been right about one thing.

Adrian had already made his choice.

And it wasn't me.

I stumbled backward, my vision blurring. The hallway tilted. Somewhere distant, I heard voices—pack members discussing tonight's ceremony, excited and buzzing with anticipation.

They had no idea.

No idea that their future Alpha's mate was standing in this corridor, falling apart.

No idea that in a few hours, they would watch him destroy what was left of me.

I turned and ran.

Not toward my quarters. Not toward anywhere safe or familiar. Just away. Away from the office, away from Adrian's cold rejection, away from the truth I couldn't face.

My feet carried me down the back stairs, through the servants' entrance, out into the gardens where the afternoon sun was starting to dip toward evening.

The ceremony would start at moonrise.

I had hours. Maybe less.

Hours to decide whether I could survive watching Adrian claim Bianca in front of the entire pack.

Hours to decide whether survival was even worth it anymore.

I collapsed against a tree at the edge of the garden, my breath coming in ragged gasps. My wolf was howling inside my chest, desperate and confused and hurt in ways I didn't have words for.

Why? she kept asking. Why would he do this?

I didn't have an answer.

The bond pulsed one more time, so faint I almost missed it.

And then it flickered—painfully, deliberately—as if something was being actively, intentionally pushed away.

Like Adrian was building a wall between us.

Brick by brick.

Shutting me out.

Erasing me.

Preparing to destroy me completely.