Logan Blackwood POV
The smell of expensive scotch didn't drown out the scent of decay.
I stared into the amber liquid in my glass, my hand trembling—just a fraction, just enough to make the ice clink against the crystal. Clink. Clink. Clink. It sounded like a funeral bell.
Ever since the night of the Awakening, my wolf had been... quiet. Not the peaceful silence of a content predator, but the frantic, huddled silence of a creature hiding from a thunderstorm. He was whimpering in the back of my mind, his tail tucked, refusing to look at the mental images of that silver light.
"Logan? You're doing it again."
Sienna's voice was a jagged glass shard against my nerves. I looked up. She was sitting on the edge of my mahogany desk, wearing a silk robe that cost more than a commoner earned in a year. She looked perfect. She looked like the Luna I had always wanted.
So why did her scent—sweet, floral, and artificial—make me want to retch?
"I'm thinking, Sienna," I snapped, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears.
"You're obsessing," she countered, her violet eyes narrowing. "It's been two weeks. The dud is gone. The elders have already cleared the way for our ceremony. Why are you still mourning a ghost?"
"I'm not mourning her!" I roared, slamming the glass onto the desk. The scotch splashed over the rim, staining the white parchment of a trade report.
I wasn't mourning. I was haunted. Every time I closed my eyes, I didn't see Sienna. I saw Aria. Not the mousy, quiet girl who followed me like a shadow, but the... thing she had become at the cliff's edge. The silver eyes. The roar that had pinned me to the floor like a helpless pup.
The heavy oak doors of my study burst open.
Elder Thorne stumbled in. He didn't knock. He didn't ask for permission. His face was the color of curdled milk, and his fine silk robes were torn at the hem, caked in mountain mud.
I stood up, my Alpha instincts flickering to life, but even they felt dim. "Thorne? What happened? Where are the guardians?"
"Dead... or worse," Thorne wheezed, collapsing into a leather armchair. He was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering.
"They didn't even have to draw a blade. The pressure... Logan, the pressure was unbearable."
Sienna scoffed, crossing her legs. "The Wastes are full of Rogues, Thorne. You probably ran into a pack of savages. Did you find the girl?"
Thorne looked at her, and for the first time, I saw true, unadulterated terror in a man who had served three generations of Alphas. "We found her. But she isn't a girl anymore."
He turned to me, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Logan, you told us she was a dud. You told the Council she had no wolf.
You lied to us."
"I didn't lie!" I snarled, stepping around the desk to loom over him. "She was eighteen! She never shifted! My own father verified it!"
"Then explain how she brought four elite guardians to their knees with a single glance," Thorne whispered. "Explain how the very air in the Obsidian Crest turned to liquid silver. Logan... she isn't an Omega. She isn't even an Alpha."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a terrified whimper. "She's a Primal. The White Wolf has returned."
The glass in my hand shattered.
I didn't even feel the shards slicing into my palm. I didn't feel the blood dripping onto the carpet. The world went silent, the only sound being the frantic thump-thump-thump of my heart against my ribs.
Primal.
The legends. The stories our wet-nurses told us to keep us from wandering into the deep woods. The First Blood. The wolves who were closer to gods than animals.
"That's impossible," Sienna hissed, her face turning pale. "The Primals died out ten thousand years ago. She's a fluke. A mutation. We have the numbers, Logan. We'll just send the full battalion. We'll bring her back in chains and..."
"You didn't see her," Thorne interrupted, a hysterical edge to his voice. "She told me to tell you... she's coming for the throne. She said to keep it warm for her, because she's going to burn it to ash."
I slumped back into my chair, the weight of my own choices finally beginning to crush me.
I had rejected her.
I had stood on that dais and told the world she was worthless. I had watched her crawl on the floor in agony as I severed the fated bond. I had done it for power. I had done it because I wanted a "strong" Luna to cement my legacy.
And all the while, I had been holding a sun in my hands and calling it a stone.
"And there's more," Thorne added, swallowed a dry lump in his throat. "She isn't alone. She's with him."
I didn't need to ask who. There was only one man in the Wastes who could command a fortress like Obsidian Crest.
"Gabriel," I breathed. The Black Alpha. The man my father called the Greatest Mistake of the Council.
"He treats her like a Queen, Logan," Thorne said, his voice laced with a bitter irony. "He looks at her and sees a Goddess. While we... we treated her like trash."
"Get out," I whispered.
"Logan, we need to call the Council..."
"GET OUT!" I screamed, my Alpha roar finally breaking through, though it felt thin and brittle.
Thorne scrambled out of the room. Sienna stayed for a moment, her eyes darting between me and the door, before she realized the mood had shifted. She left without a word, her silk robe swishing with a sound that now reminded me of a snake in the grass.
I was alone.
I walked over to the tall, silver-framed mirror in the corner of the room. I looked at myself. The future Alpha. The golden boy.
But as I looked into my own amber eyes, I saw the truth. I was small. I was a flickering candle compared to the wildfire I had unleashed.
I remembered the way Aria used to look at me. With such devotion. Such pure, unyielding love. I had been her world, and I had shattered it for a violet-eyed bitch and a bit of political standing.
The bond... the rejection... it wasn't just her who was supposed to suffer.
I felt it then. A deep, hollow ache in the center of my chest. It was the "Mate-Grief." It usually only hit those who lost their partners to death, but for me, it was hitting now.
Because Aria wasn't dead. She was more than alive. And she was no longer mine.
I reached out and touched the glass, right where her face used to be in the photos we'd burned.
What have I done?
A sudden, sharp pain flared in my chest. I gasped, clutching my heart as the room began to spin. It was a phantom sensation the feeling of a massive, white paw pressing down on my soul.
Across the miles, across the mountains, she was thinking of me. But it wasn't love. It was the cold, clinical focus of a predator looking at a piece of meat.
I sank to the floor, the shards of the glass digging into my knees, and for the first time in my life, I cried. Not for Aria. But for myself.
Because I knew, with a certainty that chilled my blood, that when she finally came for the throne, I wouldn't be fighting a girl. I would be fighting a Goddess. And Goddesses didn't know the meaning of mercy.
I looked at the blood on my hands my own blood, mixed with the cheap scotch and the dust of my shattered legacy.
"Aria," I whispered into the empty room. "Forgive me."
But the only answer was the wind howling against the window, sounding suspiciously like a roar.