CALLUM POV
The doors close.
And just like that, Wren Ashwood is gone.
I tell myself I feel nothing. I am good at telling myself things. I have been practicing for three weeks, ever since my father sat me down and explained, very calmly, very rationally, all the reasons why a wolfless girl with no bloodline and no shift was the wrong choice for a future Alpha. I listened. I nodded. I told myself he was right. I got very good at believing it by morning.
I am less good at it now.
My father's hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and proud. "Well done," he says quietly, just for me. "You handled that with dignity."
Did I. Did I really.
I handled it by not looking at her face. That was my strategy. If I didn't look at her face when I took Sable's hand, I wouldn't have to carry what I saw there. Clean. Simple. Cowardly, a voice in the back of my head says, but I have gotten very good at not listening to that voice either.
Sable appears at my side and slides her fingers through mine. She is smiling, beautiful, the pack's eyes on her with warmth and approval. This is what my father wanted. A strong match. A powerful bloodline. A Luna the pack would respect from day one. Sable is all of those things.
I squeeze her hand and smile back at her.
My wolf doesn't make a sound. He is somewhere deep and furious and completely, absolutely silent in a way that is worse than howling.
The celebration goes on for two hours.
Two hours of toasts and laughter and pack members clapping me on the back. Two hours of Sable glowing beside me, already falling into the role of future Luna like she was made for it. Two hours of food and fire and music and a steadily growing feeling in my chest that I cannot name and refuse to look at directly.
I drink more than I should.
It doesn't help.
Around the second hour, one of the older pack members, Gregor, white-haired and half-deaf and completely without social awareness, leans across the table and says to no one in particular, "The Lycan King hasn't taken a mate in twelve years. Not since his last one died. Wonder what made him break that tonight."
The table goes a little quiet.
Gregor keeps going, delighted with his own knowledge. "They say a Lycan King only breaks for one thing. A true mate bond. Can't resist it, can't fight it. If he claimed that girl tonight, she's his fated mate. Twelve years and he never felt it for anyone. Walked into one pack ceremony and there she was."
Someone changes the subject. The table moves on.
I stare at my cup.
Fated mate. The words sit in my stomach like stones.
I knew about the mate bond. Of course I did, every wolf knows. I knew there was something between Wren and me, something warm and familiar and real. I chose to believe it was friendship. I chose to believe what my father told me, that fated mate bonds were rare and unpredictable and an Alpha couldn't build a pack on hoping for one. Choose strength. Choose strategy. Choose with your head.
I chose with my head.
And Wren's fated mate turned out to be the Lycan King.
I think about her face across the clearing before I took Sable's hand. The way she was standing there in her green dress, so still, so careful, trying not to look like she was hoping. I know that look. I know every look she has. I have spent ten years learning them.
She walked out of those doors and she didn't look back.
I don't know why that is the part that is killing me. She should have looked back. People look back. Even when they're angry, even when they're hurt, they look back for one second because leaving is hard and human and she has always been both of those things.
She didn't. Not even a hesitation.
She made her choice the same way I made mine. Clean. Final. Eyes forward.
I am on my feet before I decide to stand.
"I need some air," I tell Sable. She nods, distracted by something one of the elder women is saying, and I slip away from the table and out through the side of the clearing.
The night air is cold. I walk to the edge of pack territory, to the treeline, and I stand there and I breathe and I try to get my wolf to calm down. He won't. He is pacing in small furious circles, back and forth, back and forth, and every few seconds he pushes an emotion up through the bond that I don't want to feel.
Loss. That's what it is. I can say it out here in the dark where no one is watching.
It feels like loss.
"Callum."
My father's voice behind me. I turn. He looks different out here away from the celebration. Less proud Alpha, more something careful and calculating that I recognize from the times I've watched him make hard decisions.
"Come walk with me," he says.
We walk the tree line in silence for a minute. My father has always used silence like a tool, letting it build until the other person fills it. I wait him out.
"The girl," he finally says. "Wren."
My jaw tightens. "What about her."
"We made an error." His voice is flat. Factual. Like he is talking about a supply shipment and not a person. "We had incomplete information."
I stop walking. "What does that mean."
My father turns to face me. In twenty years I have seen him afraid maybe twice. The look on his face right now is not quite fear. It is the thing that lives next to fear. Careful, cold, and very focused.
"Her parents," he says. "We knew they were rogues. Low-level wolves, no standing. That's what we were told."
"Were told," I repeat slowly. "By who."
"That's the question." He looks at me steadily. "Because three hours ago, while you were making your announcement, I received a message from a pack lawyer. A very senior pack lawyer who has apparently been looking for Wren Ashwood for some time."
I stare at him. "Why."
"Because she is not who we were told she was." My father's voice drops lower. "Her bloodline, Callum. Her real bloodline. It's old. It's rare. It's the kind of rare that changes political landscapes."
The ground feels unsteady under my feet. "Tell me."
"She's a True Omega." He says it quietly, like the words are fragile. "The first one born in three generations. We had her living in our pack as a nobody. And we just let the Lycan King walk out the door with her."
The silence between us is enormous.
"We need to get her back," my father says.
I look at my father's face. At the cold calculation sitting there. At the absence of any concern for Wren herself, for what she wants, for what tonight cost her. Only the bloodline. Only the value.
And something in me, something I should have listened to three weeks ago, goes very, very quiet.
"She chose to go," I say.
"She was emotional. She didn't know"
"She chose," I say again. Harder this time. "She looked at everything in that clearing and she made a choice."
My father looks at me like I am being simple.
"Callum," he says patiently. "This is not about feelings."
I look back at the pack lights through the trees. At the celebration still going. At the life I chose tonight with both hands.
"I know," I say quietly.
But for the first time, I am not sure my father and I mean the same thing.