Three days without sleep.
Kael sat in the training yard at four in the morning and let the cold work on him — frost-bitten air, frozen earth under bare feet, the kind of cold that stripped thought down to its studs. He had tried the bed. He had tried the chair. He had tried walking the perimeter of the territory at midnight with two confused warriors who hadn't questioned their Alpha's behavior out loud but had communicated volumes with their silence.
Nothing stopped it.
The mate bond was supposed to fade. Every elder text, every precedent he had researched, every careful consultation he had conducted in the months of preparation for this — all of it had said the same thing: rejection was painful, the bond would fracture and dull, and within a few weeks the biological imperative would r
