The sun had long since set by the time Kael returned.
Aria sat alone in the suite they once shared, her back to the fire, eyes fixed on the hearth as orange light flickered across her skin. She hadn’t lit any other candles. Darkness suited her tonight. It was honest. Unforgiving.
Her ceremonial cloak had been folded and placed carefully back in its chest. The silver embroidery still held the faint scent of cedar and frost—Kael’s scent. She hated that she could still find comfort in it.
The hours since the hearing had stretched like a wound that refused to clot. She’d tried walking the grounds, tried distracting herself with the pack records she used to love sorting, even tried meditating in the Moon Hall. None of it helped. The silence in her mind was too loud, the severed threads of her bond too sharp to ignore.
Every time she reached for him through the tether between them, she felt it recoil. Not snap—but pull away, like a hand once held in trust suddenly snatched back.
Now she sat, wrapped in one of Kael’s old flannels, sipping cold tea she’d long forgotten to drink, listening for a door that never opened.
Until it did.
Soft footsteps echoed across the floorboards. She didn’t turn.
The door clicked closed behind him, and she heard the faint rustle of his cloak being removed, the distant clink of armor settling onto the hook beside the dresser. Familiar sounds. Once intimate. Now just noise.
He didn’t speak.
She waited.
He crossed the room slowly and came to stand behind her, near the hearth, where the firelight cast his shadow long and broken across the stone floor.
“You’re late,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t think you’d wait up.”
“I wasn’t waiting.”
Silence.
Aria set the mug down on the side table. Her fingers trembled slightly from the warmth, or maybe the rage. She turned in her chair, finally facing him.
Kael looked tired. More than that—hollowed out. Like someone had reached into his chest and taken whatever remained of the man she’d loved.
“You knew I’d see her today,” she said. “You planned it.”
“I didn’t plan anything.”
“You always plan everything.”
Kael ran a hand through his hair, agitated. “Evelyn has a right to be here.”
“And I don’t?”
His head snapped up. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He exhaled, long and weary, and walked toward the window. Moonlight painted a pale outline around his silhouette as he stared out at the frost-covered gardens below. The silence between them stretched tight.
“She’s not the same,” he said at last. “Whatever happened to her while she was gone… it changed her.”
“So did losing you,” Aria whispered. “But no one gave me the chance to come back.”
He turned around, leaning back against the windowsill. “You never lost me.”
She stood now, her voice shaking. “Then what do you call this?”
He didn’t answer.
Aria crossed the room slowly, deliberately, until she stood directly in front of him. “You marked me. Claimed me. Made me Luna. That wasn’t a spell, Kael. That was a vow.”
“It was a mistake,” he said quietly.
The world stopped.
She stared at him, her heartbeat stuttering in her chest.
“I thought I could move on,” he continued. “I thought the bond was enough. But it wasn’t.”
“You loved me,” she said, as if saying it out loud might make it true again.
“I tried to.”
That landed like a slap.
Tears burned at the edges of her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She took a step back, as if physical distance could protect her from the next blow.
Kael didn’t move.
“You said I was the calm in your storm,” she said. “You said I was the only one who could keep your wolf from turning on you. That night, under the full moon—you told me you didn’t believe in fate until me.”
“I wanted to believe it,” he said. “But maybe I was lying to both of us.”
She couldn’t breathe.
“This was never meant to be love,” he added, so quietly it barely reached her ears.
The words sank into her skin like needles. Sharp. Inevitable.
Her wolf whimpered inside her.
“Then why did it feel like it?” she asked, her voice broken now. “Why did every part of me light up when you touched me? Why did it hurt like dying when you pulled away?”
He looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me now, Kael. Not after everything.”
“I’m not lying.”
She laughed bitterly, a sound that startled even her. “You’re just too much of a coward to admit that what we had was real. And now you get to rewrite history so that you don’t have to feel guilty for throwing me away.”
He finally looked at her. For real.
And there, in his expression, she saw something she hadn’t seen in days.
Pain.
He reached a hand toward her—but stopped short.
“Aria…”
“No,” she said, stepping back. “Don’t say my name like it still belongs to you.”
He dropped his hand.
She didn’t cry. Not yet.
Instead, she turned and walked to the door.
Tomorrow the Council would decide the fate of their bond.
But tonight?
Tonight, it was already broken.
