Chapter 3: My Sacrifice

Elara's POV

I rose without a word. Didn't look at the others. I simply followed the guards out into the corridor and listened to the door shut behind me.

I had to half-run to keep up, my bare feet silent against the cold ground.The corridors were empty, the celebration long dead, the Pack asleep and the silence made everything louder inside my head.

I knew Rowan saw us. He had been watching for exactly this kind of mistake. He had been waiting for me to slip. And last night, I handed him exactly what he needed.

What if he expels me?

I pressed the thought flat and kept walking.

The Alpha's wing was colder than the rest of the building.

The guards stopped outside a heavy oak door and pushed it open without knocking. I stepped inside. The door shut behind me.

The room was barely lit, one lamp burning low. Alpha Rowan sat behind his desk, hands folded. He didn't look up immediately. He let me stand there and wait.

Then he raised his eyes to mine.

"Come forward."

I obeyed. My legs trembled but I kept my steps even.

I stopped directly before his desk. Close enough to see that his expression held nothing.

"Elara," he began. "Do you understand why you are here?"

"Yes, Alpha."

"No." His voice didn't rise. "If you understood, last night would not have happened."

Shame flushed up my neck. I dropped my gaze to the floor.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Sorry," he repeated, as if testing the word's usefulness and finding it wanting. "You think sorry is sufficient when you risk exposing everything we put in place to protect him?"

"I didn't plan it," I said quietly. "I tried to leave. He followed me."

"I know he followed you. Which is exactly why you should have left sooner. The moment he appeared in that corridor, you should have been gone."

"I—"

"You stayed," he said. "That is the problem."

I closed my mouth.

He stood. Came around the desk with unhurried steps and stopped in front of me. I kept my eyes low.

"He does not remember you," Rowan said. "He does not remember the bond. And still, last night, something in him reached for you." A pause. "Do you understand what that tells me?"

I said nothing. I couldn't dare to speak.

"It tells me the suppression is holding less than it should," he said. "It tells me that your presence alone is enough to destabilize everything we built. And it tells me—" his voice dropped, "—that you are a liability I have been too lenient about."

"I never encouraged him," I said, and hated that my voice shook. "I reminded him of my rank. I excused myself—"

"And yet you were still there," Rowan said. "Still close enough for him to touch. Still present enough for the bond to stir." He tilted his head slightly. "Intentions are irrelevant, Elara. Outcomes are not."

I bit the inside of my cheek.

"You know what happens," he continued, "if he remembers before his mind is ready."

And there it was, the thing I had spent a year trying not to think about in full.

It came in pieces anyway. It always did.

A year ago. A storm had ruined the little dream life I had envisioned. I could never forget his scream after falling off the cliff, my hands stretched forward, but I couldn't catch him. Three seconds of falling.

Four days of not knowing if he would wake.

I came back to the present with my nails pressed into my palms.

"I know," I said.

"Then you know," Rowan said, "that what happened last night was not a small thing."

"Yes, Alpha."

He returned to his desk. Folded his hands again, the same position he had been in when I arrived.

"You agreed to the rules," he said. "Absence from his path whenever possible."

"I followed them," I whispered. "For a year, I followed them."

"Until you didn't."

There was nothing to say to that.

"You are an Omega," he continued, with the same flat tone he might use to recite Pack law. "He is the future Alpha. His mate must strengthen this Pack. Must hold alliances. Must be accepted without question by the elders." His eyes met mine. "You are none of those things.”

“You know the repercussions that will happen if you let him get close to you.”

I had known that, of course. I had known it from the beginning, from the moment the healers explained what the bond was doing to him and Rowan laid out the terms and I had agreed because there was no version of loving someone that included watching them die for it.

"I am aware, Alpha." I said. Barely a sound.

"Then conduct yourself accordingly," he said. "Stay away from him. If he approaches you, you leave. If he speaks to you, you answer with your rank and nothing warmer. You give him no thread to pull on."

A tear slid down my cheek. I didn't move to wipe it.

"And if he keeps seeking me out?" I asked. "Against my will?"

"Then you remove yourself from every situation before it begins," Rowan said. "That is your responsibility."

It had always been mine to carry.

"If you disobey me again," he said, and the quiet in his voice was its own kind of violence, "I will remove you from this Pack entirely." He held my gaze. "I will not hesitate."

My stomach hollowed out.

"I understand," I whispered.

"Good." He looked back down at his desk, a dismissal before the words even came. "You may go."

I turned, crossed the room. My hand found the door.

"Elara."

"Whatever you believe you feel for him," he said, and his voice was no different than it had been for the entirety of our conversation,

"it is not relevant. It was never relevant. Adjust accordingly."

I stood in the doorway for one breath. Two.

"Yes, Alpha," I said.

I walked out before he could see that the tear on my cheek had been joined by another.

I whispered to myself as the tears kept flowing down my cheeks. “If only Aiden could remember me, only if he could remember the mate he had claimed that night.”