Night settled over the pack lands with an unfamiliar weight.
The clearing was empty now, trampled grass already losing the shape of what had happened there. Fires burned low. Voices carried softly from the dens, laughter in places it did not belong. Life moving forward with a cruelty that felt personal.
He stood alone at the edge of the trees, hands clenched behind his back, staring at nothing.
He told himself this was necessary. That leadership required choices others could not understand. That weakness, once exposed, would be exploited until it destroyed everything he had built.
He told himself many things.
None of them quieted the pressure in his chest.
It had been there since she crossed the boundary. Not pain. Not exactly. More like an absence that kept shifting, refusing to settle. A wrongness he could not correct no matter how still he stood.
She should have cried.
The thought came unbidden, sharp enough to make his jaw tighten. She should have begged, should have shouted, should have fallen apart the way everyone expected. It would have been easier then. Cleaner. He could have told himself she was fragile, unfit, better off away from him.
Instead, she had lifted her chin and walked away.
That image would not leave him.
Her voice had been calm. Too calm. As if she had already begun the work of cutting him out of her life while he stood there pretending not to care.
He had felt the bond react the moment she turned her back. A flare of heat low in his body, a sudden awareness that made his breath hitch. He had locked it down instantly, forcing it into silence through sheer will.
An Alpha did not react. An Alpha decided.
Still, when he closed his eyes, he could feel it again. The echo of her presence. The way his instincts strained toward her absence like a wound refusing to close.
Footsteps crunched behind him.
"You did the right thing," one of the elders said carefully.
He did not turn.
"She was a liability," the man continued. "Too exposed. Too soft."
His fingers curled tighter.
Soft.
If they had seen her eyes when she walked away, they would not have used that word. There had been something hard there. Something cold and deliberate.
Something that unsettled him far more than tears ever could.
"She will survive," the elder added. "They always do."
He finally looked back, his gaze sharp enough to silence the rest of the sentence. The elder inclined his head and retreated, leaving the space around him hollow once more.
The night deepened. The pack settled. And still he stood there, unable to move, unable to shake the sense that something had slipped beyond his control.
For the first time since he had taken the title of Alpha, doubt crept in.
Not about his authority.
About the cost.
He had rejected her publicly to protect the pack from what he feared. From enemies who would see the bond as leverage. From weakness he believed would bleed into leadership.
But standing there now, with the land quiet and her absence pressing against him, he wondered if he had misjudged where the real danger lay.
The bond stirred again. Subtle. Insistent. A low pull beneath his ribs that had nothing to do with strategy or power.
He inhaled slowly, forcing the feeling down.
It did not obey.
Somewhere beyond the boundary, she was alone. Exposed. Angry, if he had read her correctly. And the bond knew it. It reached for her even as he denied it, a traitor beneath his skin.
That was the revelation that cut deepest.
He could command the pack. He could silence dissent. He could make hard decisions without hesitation.
But he could not erase her.
A movement at the edge of the trees caught his attention. For a heartbeat, his body reacted before his mind, heat flaring low, breath stalling as instinct surged forward.
Nothing was there.
Just darkness. Just the forest. Just the echo of something he had already lost.
He turned away at last, shoulders tense, expression carved into something unreadable.
Behind him, the clearing held the memory of rejection.
Ahead of him lay the threat he had tried to outrun.
Because no matter how far she went, no matter how firmly he denied it, the bond remained.
Waiting.
And one day, it would demand its due.