The Alpha's Forsaken mate

Episode 5

CHAPTER 5

Three Years Later

Kade's POV

"You're not listening to me, Kade."

Morgana's voice carried that particular edge it had taken on more and more often over the past year.

"I'm listening," I said, not looking up from the reports spread across my desk.

"Then tell me what I just said."

I paused, my pen hovering over the page, and the silence that followed answered her question more honestly than anything I could have said.

"That's what I thought," she said, crossing her arms. "You've been somewhere else for months, Kade. I don't know where, but it's not here."

"I have a pack to run," I said. "There's a lot on my mind."

"There's always a lot on your mind," she said. "It didn't used to mean you forgot I was in the room."

I set the pen down and finally looked at her properly. Morgana stood across from my desk with the same composed posture she always carried, the kind that had made her exactly the kind of mate my pack approved of the moment I announced the choice three years ago. Strong. Politically connected. The daughter of an Alpha from a southern territory that had given Nightshade valuable trade routes the moment the bond was formalized.

She had never once made me look weak in front of anyone. My wolf had never once felt anything close to peace around her either, and three years had not changed that, no matter how many times I told myself it eventually would.

"I'm sorry," I said, because it was easier than explaining the truth, easier than admitting that the ache sitting in my chest most days had nothing to do with pack business and everything to do with something I had spent three years calling guilt because guilt was a feeling I knew how to carry.

The truth was harder to name. The truth lived somewhere underneath the guilt, quiet and persistent, a bond I had told an entire room it would not let take hold, a bond that apparently did not care what I had announced in front of two packs.

It had not gone away. It had simply gone quiet, settling into something that ached in the background of every day since, a wound that never fully closed no matter how much time passed over it.

Morgana studied my face for a long moment, and something in her expression softened slightly, though the frustration underneath it stayed exactly where it had been.

"I don't know what's wrong with you lately," she said. "But whatever it is, you need to fix it before tonight. We have the welcoming ceremony for the new pack leadership. I won't have you standing there half present in front of every Alpha in the region."

"I know," I said. "I'll be ready."

She left without another word, the door closing behind her with more force than necessary, and I sat alone at my desk for a long moment afterward, staring at nothing, the way I had been doing more often than I wanted to admit.

The reports had come in weeks ago about a new pack rising in the southern territories, fast and unexpected, built from rogues and displaced wolves under leadership nobody in the established packs had heard of before. The reports described them as disciplined, well trained, and growing fast enough that every Alpha in the region had taken notice.

Tonight we were welcoming their leader formally, the kind of diplomatic gesture every pack performed when a new power emerged.

I dressed for the occasion, nothing too serious just one of my official robes, Morgana sat beside me in the main hall as our senior wolves gathered for the formal welcome. She looked composed and elegant as always, exactly the picture of a Luna that photographs well and speaks well and never embarrasses the pack she represents.

I stood beside her and waited for the doors to open.

When they did, the room seemed to shift slightly, a ripple of attention moving through every wolf present before I even fully understood why.

A woman walked through the doors.

Her hair fell long and dark down her back, and she moved with a kind of presence that filled the space around her before she'd taken more than a few steps inside, curved and strong in a way that radiated power instead of softness, her skin smooth and unmarked except for the faint line of an old scar along her jaw that somehow only added to rather than detracted from the overall effect.

She looked like something out of an old story, the kind told around fires about wolves who were more than wolves, she looked like a literal goddess and behind her walked a line of warriors who moved with the same controlled precision, falling into formation around her without needing to be told.

Something in my chest recognized her before my mind caught up.

The bond, quiet for three years, roared back to life so suddenly and so completely that I had to lock my knees to keep from visibly reacting, every nerve in my body suddenly screaming with an intensity I had spent three years convincing myself I had successfully buried.

I stood there with my mouth slightly open, staring across the hall at a face I had not seen in three years and barely recognized now, the scar the only thing tying this woman to the memory I had carried, every other detail completely transformed.

"Kade."

Morgana's voice, low and sharp beside me, accompanied by a subtle nudge against my arm, finally pulled me back into motion.

I cleared my throat and stepped forward, my legs carrying me toward her on instinct alone while my mind was still catching up with what was standing in front of me.

"Welcome, Miss Thea, to the—"

"It's Supreme Commander Thea."

Her voice cut clean through my sentence before I could finish it, calm and certain, carrying none of the uncertainty I remembered from three years ago. She held my gaze for exactly one beat, long enough for me to see absolutely nothing in her expression that resembled the girl who had once stood across a hall from me holding an empty tray.

Then she walked past me, her warriors falling into step around her, leaving me standing in the middle of the hall with her words still hanging in the air.

I stood there with my mouth still slightly open, watching her cross the room without a single backward glance, the bond in my chest burning brighter than it had in three years, and understood, with a clarity that nearly knocked the breath out of me, exactly how much I had thrown away the night I rejected her.