The old pine creaked against the wind, its bark groaning like a beast too tired to stand. Aria sat curled on the wide wooden windowsill of her modest home at the edge of SilverCrest’s borderlands, her tea long gone cold in her hands. Outside, the moon hung low and full, casting long shadows across the frost-bitten grass. The air held a stillness she hadn’t trusted in years.
And yet, something stirred.
It wasn’t the kind of stir that came with movement or sound. It was quieter, older. The kind of presence you didn’t hear—but felt. Like the breath before a whisper. Like a memory pressing its weight into the spine.
Aria’s heart fluttered once, sharp and instinctive.
She didn’t need to look.
She already knew.
Kael.
It had been months since he’d walked away—leaving his title, his legacy, and her in the ashes of their broken bond. He’d handed power to the council, renounced his claim to the heir, and vanished into the silence. Rumors said he’d gone north to the old wolf ruins where Alpha Kings once trained in solitude. Others said he’d returned to the coast where his mother had died, staring into the same waters that took her.
But Aria had felt him even then.
In the way her breath caught sometimes for no reason.
In the way Calla stared at the trees as if someone had just stepped behind them.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, the ghost had flesh.
He stood at the edge of her garden, half-shadowed by the skeletal branches of a willow. No coat. No cloak. Just boots, dark slacks, and a tunic she’d once mended by hand. His arms hung by his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them anymore.
She rose without thinking, placing her cup on the ledge and stepping into her boots. Every step toward the door made her throat tighten. She wasn’t scared. Not of him. But of what she might feel. What she might remember. What might rise to the surface, uninvited and unsought.
She opened the door. The night breathed in, cold and raw.
Kael didn’t move.
Neither did she.
They stood there—two wolves without a howl between them. Just wind. Just silence.
Finally, he spoke.
“I saw her.”
Aria blinked.
“Calla,” he said. “In the market last week. She dropped an apple. Helped an elder pick up their cane. She looked like you.”
Her voice was a whisper. “She is me. And she’s herself. She’s more than either of us ever were.”
Kael looked down at his hands like they were strangers. “She’s everything I wanted… before I knew what I wanted.”
Aria stepped onto the porch, arms folded. “So why are you here?”
“I thought I was ready to let go,” he said. “But I still… hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Our bond. Or what’s left of it. A thread. Faint. Echoing in places I thought had gone dead.”
Aria didn’t answer. She couldn’t trust her voice. Her chest felt too tight, like grief and anger and love were clawing their way up her ribs all at once.
“I don’t want to come back,” Kael said. “Not like that. I’m not here to ask for a second chance. I know I don’t deserve one.”
“Then what?” she asked sharply. “Penance? Closure? Redemption?”
His gaze lifted to hers, and the war behind his hazel eyes looked like it had been raging since the day he left. “I just wanted to see you. The real you. Not the Luna. Not the mother. Just… Aria.”
A cold gust whipped between them.
“And what do you see?” she asked.
Kael took a step forward. Then another. He stopped a few feet from her, enough distance to keep her safe, enough to keep her within reach.
“I see someone I never truly understood,” he said. “Someone I tried to fit into a world that didn’t deserve her. I see strength in the bones of your silence. I see power in your quiet. I see grief that doesn’t ask for sympathy. I see love… still burning under the wreckage.”
Her heart fractured just enough to sting.
“Kael,” she said carefully, “I loved you. Deeply. Even after the bond was severed. But love without respect is rot. You made me beg. You made me break.”
“I know.”
“You stood there, with Evelyn’s hand in yours, and let the council rip me apart.”
“I know.”
“And I still see you in her eyes. I still hear you in her laugh. And I hate that part of me wants to remember that gently.”
Kael’s voice broke. “I never stopped loving you.”
She stepped forward, eyes fierce and wet. “Then why did you make me an exile?”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
Because even now, standing under moonlight, surrounded by the ghosts of their past and the frost of their future, there were no words big enough to hold the pain they’d carved into each other.
Aria inhaled slowly, eyes closed, shoulders lifting and falling like a tide.
When she opened them again, she was steel.
“You don’t haunt me,” she said. “You haunt yourself.”
Kael nodded once, a tremble in his throat.
He turned to leave, his boots crunching against the frosted earth.
But before he disappeared into the trees, he paused.
“You’ll tell her about me?”
Aria hesitated.
“She’ll ask one day,” he added softly.
“I’ll tell her,” Aria said. “That her father was a great Alpha. And a terrible partner. That he loved deeply and hurt recklessly. That he left… and didn’t ask to be followed.”
Kael nodded again. “Thank you.”
Then he vanished into the night.
Aria stood there long after he was gone, her arms crossed, her breath steady. She didn’t cry.
Not this time.
Because she’d already mourned the man she loved.
What stood before her tonight was only his ghost.
And now, that ghost could finally rest.