Chapter3
1020 Words
Kade Blackthorn
The trees swallowed me in silence.
I didn’t speak on the way back to Blackfang territory. I didn’t shift. I walked.
My Beta, Thorne, trailed behind me at a respectful distance, his footfalls as quiet as his questions were loud. I could feel them pressing at my back—unspoken, coiled like a spring.
When we crossed the southern ridge and the main gates loomed ahead, he finally spoke.
“You smell like death.”
I didn’t stop walking. “Do I?”
“You do. And not the usual kind.” Thorne kept pace beside me now, his lean frame built more for speed than intimidation. His voice lowered. “Did it happen?”
I didn’t answer.
“You found her,” he said, this time not as a question.
I didn’t have to nod.
The entire pack had felt the rupture.
A rejected mate bond didn’t go unnoticed among wolves. Not when it broke during a blood moon.
The moment I severed it, the forest pulsed. The magic we’d spent generations trying to suppress responded. The ground trembled. Even the Omega pups howled in their sleep.
I walked through the courtyard, past training grounds and stone halls, ignoring the eyes that turned toward me—some confused, some afraid. The Elders would ask questions, but they would wait. I was Alpha. I answered on my terms.
Inside the war room, I peeled off my bloodstained shirt and tossed it aside. I poured myself a drink from the bar and stared out the window overlooking the forest.
She was still out there.
Aria.
The name hit harder than it should have. Like a stone lodged in my throat.
“You rejected her,” Thorne said behind me. “The girl. The true mate.”
“I did,” I said flatly.
“You didn’t mark her. Didn’t even claim her before breaking it.”
“She wasn’t fit.”
“You’re lying.”
I turned.
His eyes were steady. He wasn’t challenging me—yet. But I saw it. The doubt.
“She’s wild,” I said. “Untamed. She shifted without training, without a tether. She could’ve killed one of us. She doesn’t belong here.”
“She was your mate.”
“I don’t care.”
It was a lie, and we both knew it.
Thorne exhaled through his nose and leaned against the wall. “So what’s the plan? Pretend she never existed?”
“She doesn’t exist.” My voice sharpened. “Not to me. Not to this pack.”
Thorne didn’t respond, but he didn’t leave either.
Silence crept in. I hated how heavy it felt.
I downed the rest of the whiskey. It burned less than the mark in my chest—the phantom pain of something I’d torn out myself.
And yet… it hadn’t died.
My wolf paced beneath my skin. Restless. Snarling.
He hadn’t accepted what I’d done.
Neither had I.
I closed my eyes.
In the dark, I saw her.
Naked under the moonlight. Silver hair tangled across her bare shoulders. Eyes wide and shining, not with fear—but pain. Real pain. The kind no wolf should feel and survive.
I told myself she was weak. That rejecting her was necessary.
But that wasn’t what I saw in her eyes.
I saw betrayal.
And something else.
Power.
Her wolf had radiated it—even in its chaos. Her first shift had been pure, violent instinct. No training. No lineage. No legacy.
And still, she ran like she belonged to the moon.
I slammed the glass down.
Cracks webbed through the bottom.
“Alpha?” Thorne said carefully.
“Leave.”
Thorne hesitated, then nodded and stepped out.
When the door shut behind him, I let the mask fall.
I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles whitened.
My wolf howled inside me.
Not from rage. From grief.
I pressed my hand to my chest where the bond had once pulsed—faint and fresh. Now it was a crater. A vacuum.
I didn’t even give her a chance.
The truth? I’d scented her in the forest hours before she shifted. A flicker of her aura brushing against mine. I knew what it meant.
A true mate bond. Fated. Unchosen. Irrefutable.
And I ran from it.
Not because she wasn’t worthy.
But because I wasn’t.
A true mate could shatter everything I’d built. The walls. The control. The discipline I lived by. And her presence alone had done exactly that—in minutes.
The second I saw her shift—untamed, luminous in the moonlight—my wolf submitted.
And I panicked.
So I used cruelty to build a wall. I rejected her before she could see how much she’d already undone me.
But she had seen.
And I’d destroyed her for it.
I grabbed the bottle and left the room, storming down the corridors past my warriors, through the northern gate, and into the forest again.
I needed air. Space. Distance.
But the moon wouldn’t give it to me.
It was high and full—still watching. Still judging.
I ran.
My body shifted mid-stride, bones cracking, fur blooming, paws hitting the dirt like thunder.
Black.
That was the color of my wolf. Midnight-black. Taller than most. Stronger. Meant for war.
I tore through the woods, retracing the path where I’d first scented her. The clearing where I’d looked her in the eyes and lied.
I came to a stop where her scent ended. The wind had tried to erase it, but it lingered.
Lavender. Pine. Smoke.
I dug my claws into the earth.
She was mine. The moon had chosen. I’d denied it.
I threw back my head and howled.
It was not a triumphant sound. Not a call of power.
It was mourning.
For what I’d lost.
For what I’d thrown away.
When I shifted back, sweat slicked my skin. My breath steamed in the night air.
I fell to my knees in the dirt.
And for the first time since I took the Blackfang title…
I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.
- Writer
