I didn't sleep.
The bond wouldn't let me.
It pulsed under my skin like a bruise that hadn't finished blooming—too alive to ignore, too painful to touch. Every time I drifted, my wolf surged, restless and aching, drawn toward something she couldn't reach.
Toward him.
By morning, Silvercrest felt hostile in a way it hadn't the night before. Like the forest knew what was coming and had already chosen a side.
Selene came for me at dawn.
"The council has called a session," she said. "They're worried."
"About me," I replied.
She didn't deny it.
The council chamber was colder than I remembered. Stone walls. Raised seats. Old power rotting quietly. The Elders watched me enter like they were waiting for proof of something dangerous.
Luca stood at the center.
Not beside me.
Never beside me.
Garin spoke. "Cerys Merin. Returned exile."
Exile. Not daughter. Not kin.
"I came to bury my father," I said evenly. "Nothing more."
"The pack senses unrest," another Elder said. "A disturbance in the bond lines."
My chest tightened.
"There is no bond," Luca said immediately.
The words sliced through the chamber.
My wolf howled.
I stayed still.
"No bond?" Garin repeated, studying us both.
Luca didn't look at me. "I don't claim her."
Claim.
The word burned.
"Then the matter is settled," Garin said. "Cerys Merin remains unbound. Unclaimed."
Unwanted.
The council dismissed me with a wave of indifference. I turned and walked out with my spine straight and my face calm.
Only Selene followed.
"Cerys—" she started.
"I'm fine," I lied.
I made it to the edge of the clearing before my legs gave out.
The bond struck like a physical blow—sharp, brutal, unforgiving. Pain tore through my chest, down my spine, into my bones. I collapsed against a tree, fingers digging into bark as my wolf screamed inside me.
Rejected.
The word echoed in my blood.
I pressed my forehead to the rough trunk, breath shuddering. Tears burned, hot and humiliating. I hadn't cried when they branded me. I hadn't cried when they banished me.
But this—
This hurt differently.
This was something inside me being denied its other half.
"I didn't even want you," I whispered, voice breaking. "So why does it feel like you tore something out?"
My wolf curled in on herself, wounded and furious, her pain bleeding into mine until I couldn't tell where she ended and I began.
I slid down the tree and sank into the dirt.
I cried then. Quietly. Desperately. The kind of crying no one sees and no one saves you from.
Rejected mates didn't scream.
They survived.
And as the forest watched in silence, one truth settled into my bones:
Luca Vale might have rejected me—
But the bond hadn't let go.