Chapter 6
1285 Words
The next morning the stronghold smelled like smoke and old wine and something sour Aria couldn’t name.
She woke late, head thick, eyes burning. For a few disorienting seconds she thought it had all been a nightmare—the hall, the wrong name, the corridor.
Then the bond in her chest gave a weak, miserable tug toward the far end of the fortress.
Real.
She rolled onto her side and curled around the ache, one arm wrapped around her ribs as if she could hold herself together by force. Her wolf lay low and silent, ears flat, refusing to move.
Get up, she told herself eventually. If you don’t, they’ll come to you.
The idea of anyone—her parents, pitying friends, curious wolves—standing at her bedside made her stomach twist. She forced herself upright. Every muscle complained. Her body remembered last night’s pleasure as vividly as her mind remembered the moment it had been poisoned.
Mine, the bond whispered stubbornly.
He said another name, she answered it, and swung her feet to the floor.
The kitchen was half‑empty when she came down. Her mother sat at the table with a cup of coffee cradled in both hands, dark circles under her eyes. Her father stood at the counter, staring out the small window over the sink as if the frost‑rimmed yard might offer answers.
They both turned when Aria entered.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Her mother broke first. “Sit,” she said softly. “Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll be useless if you faint in the middle of the corridor again,” Richard said, tone gruff to hide the worry.
“I didn’t faint,” Aria muttered, but she sat. Her hands shook when she reached for the mug her mother pushed toward her. She wrapped her fingers around it anyway, letting the heat soak into her palms.
“We heard there was… a scene,” her mother began cautiously. “After the announcement.”
“Nothing dramatic,” Aria said. Her voice sounded flat even to her own ears. “No one died. Just my pride.”
Her mother flinched like she’d been slapped.
Richard’s jaw clenched. “You don’t have to joke about it.”
The alternative was sobbing on the table until she drowned.
“What would you like me to do?” Aria asked, lifting her gaze to his. “Stay in my room and listen to them celebrate him and his perfect Luna?”
“Perfect is not the word I’d use,” he said dryly. “And no one with a working nose believes the bond doesn’t exist.”
“Then they believe he rejected it,” she shot back.
Silence settled heavy between them.
Her mother’s fingers tightened on her cup. “He came by last night,” she said quietly. “After you… left the hall. Wanted to know if you were here.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were with people who actually deserved you,” Richard said before his wife could answer. “And that if he stepped over our threshold again without a damned good reason, I’d throw him back out.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in Aria’s chest and died there.
“He’s still our future Alpha,” her mother murmured, not quite as a defense, more as a reminder of reality.
“He’s the one who will have to live with what he did as Alpha,” Richard replied. “I care more about the girl he did it to.”
Aria swallowed past the lump in her throat. “You can’t fight him for me.”
“I can bloody well make him uncomfortable,” he said. “But no. I can’t fix this.”
No one could.
They sat with that for a while, the only sounds the tick of the clock and the faint crackle of the stove.
Finally her mother exhaled. “There is one thing we can do,” she said.
Aria lifted a brow. “What, exactly?”
“Make sure you’re not trapped here while they parade their union in front of you,” she said, eyes tired but steady. “Your bond is hurting. Being in the same walls as him and his chosen Luna will only tear it worse.”
Aria stared at her. “Where would I go? Walk into the woods until some rogue tears my throat out?”
“There are other packs,” Richard said. “Allies. Places where your presence wouldn’t set every tongue wagging.”
“Send the Beta’s daughter away and pretend nothing happened?” Bitterness tasted like ash on her tongue. “That won’t stop the tongues. It just gets me out of the way.”
“It gets you out of the blast radius,” her father corrected. “And gives you space to breathe where every stone doesn’t smell like him.”
A space without his scent. The idea hurt and soothed in the same breath.
“Nightfall,” her mother said suddenly.
Aria looked at her. “What?”
“Rowan Nightfall owes your father favors,” she said. “It’s quiet there. Smaller pack, far from the Council’s reach. They take in wolves who don’t fit comfortably in their own homes.” Her mouth twisted. “You would hardly be the first.”
Aria imagined it—dark forests, unknown faces, air that didn’t carry his signature in every draft. Waking up and not feeling the bond yanking toward the opposite end of the hall because he’d turned over in his sleep.
“Running away won’t change what he did,” she said quietly.
“No,” Richard agreed. “But staying will make it harder for you to remember that his choice doesn’t define your entire life.”
Her wolf stirred at that. Not with joy—she wasn’t there yet—but with a dull, weary interest.
“Think about it,” her mother said, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “You don’t have to decide today. But the longer you stay, the more this place will try to teach you that you’re ‘the girl he didn’t pick’ and nothing else.”
Aria closed her eyes.
In the far reaches of the stronghold, the bond tugged again, faint but relentless. Somewhere, Aiden moved through his perfect day‑after, wrapped in congratulations and plans.
“I need air,” she said abruptly, pushing back from the table. “Real air. Not stone and smoke.”
“Don’t go near the main hall,” her father warned. “They’re planning the formal celebration.”
“That’s exactly why I won’t,” she muttered, already heading for the back door.
Cold hit her like a blessing when she stepped outside. Frost glittered on the grass, turning the training yard into a pale, brittle field. The forest beyond the walls loomed dark and dense, the tree line a jagged promise of elsewhere.
Nightfall.
She whispered the word under her breath, tasting it. It felt like teeth and pine and quiet.
Maybe leaving wouldn’t be running. Maybe it would be the first real choice she’d made for herself, not for anyone else’s idea of a perfect picture.
Behind her, the keep buzzed with preparations for a future that had no place for her. Ahead, the woods waited, indifferent.
For the first time since the moment Aiden said another woman’s name, Aria let herself imagine a life where his voice didn’t decide her worth.
The thought didn’t stop the hurt.
But it did, very slightly, make it easier to stand.
- Writer
