CHAPTER FOUR
1142 Words
Kael’s POV
The storm breaks the following night.
Rain slams into the rooftops of Silver Moon in hard silver sheets, thunder rattling the stone like a warning meant for the bones of the fortress itself. Lightning flashes through the high windows, brief and violent, illuminating corridors that feel too empty, too still.
The storm is outside.
The damage is already inside.
I stand alone in the council chamber.
Scrolls lie scattered across the long table, from border reports to patrol logs and half-read correspondence, but my eyes keep returning to the same thing. The same lie. The letter.
I’ve read it so many times the words have begun to blur, but the details won’t let me go. The loops in the handwriting are too wide. The pressure of the ink is wrong, it looks too heavy, too deliberate and the signature…gods.
“How did I miss this?” I mutter.
The mark looks right at first glance. Close enough to fool a council already hungry for judgment. But now that I know what I’m looking at, now that I have seen it, I can’t un-see it.
“Impersonated,” I whisper.
The word tastes like rot.
I was still deep in my anguish when a knock broke the silence.
“Alpha.”
Leron steps inside with rain dripping from his cloak, his posture stiff as if he’s already bracing for my anger.
“You sent for me.”
“I did.” I gesture toward the table. “Look.”
He hesitates before approaching, lifting the letter with care. His brow furrows almost immediately.
“This seal…”
“…is hers,” I finish, “or meant to be.”
He tilts the parchment toward the light. “The wax is fresh, too fresh, and the parchment hasn’t aged at all.”
“Look at the signature.” I urged him.
He compares it to the official records stacked beside him. I watch as realisation crawls across his face, immediately replaced with confusion, disbelief, then something sharper.
“This isn’t Luna’s hand.”
“No,” I say quietly. “It isn’t.”
Leron exhales slowly. “This means someone forged it.”
“Yes.”
“Someone inside the pack,” he adds.
I turn away before the weight of that sentence crushes me.
“I exiled my mate,” I say. The words come out flat, stunned, “On a lie, sent her out alone because of a letter I didn’t bother to verify.”
Silence stretches.
“Alpha,” Leron says carefully, “do you want the council recalled?”
I close my eyes.
Yes.
No.
If I speak now, the pack will fracture, and if I wait, Amara remains alone.
“Not yet,” I say. “I need to gather more information before word gets out.”
His jaw tightens. “Serene’s already been stirring unrest. If this truth breaks uncontrolled…”
“Where is she?” I snap.
“In her chambers.”
I don’t wait for another word.
The corridor outside the council chamber is dim, shadows thrown wild by lightning. My wolf prowls beneath my skin, teeth bared, fury cold and precise.
We should have trusted her.
“We lost our mate,” I growl under my breath.
I reach Serene’s door and knock once.
Nothing.
I knocked again, harder.
Still nothing.
“Serene,” I command, letting the Alpha bleed into my voice. “Open the door.”
Silence.
I shove it open.
The room is empty.
Her scent lingers; sweet floral perfume layered over something bitter now, something that makes my skin crawl. Drawers hang open. Papers are missing. I cross the room in three strides and kneel beside the waste bin. There was an ink-stained parchment and a broken corner of a wax seal.
My chest tightens.
“She’s gone,” Leron says behind me.
I lift the fragment. The metal impression matches perfectly.
“She forged it,” I say.
“Why?” he asks. “How would she have known to flee right now and why frame the Luna?”
I rise slowly.
“I should have known better, should have figured it out faster, it was because she wanted her place,” I answer. “It has to be and she thought breaking the bond would free me.”
Leron goes pale. “But the mate bond…”
“…can’t be broken by lies,” I finish. “Only death.”
My wolf snarls.
“Find her,” I order. “Search borders, trade routes and find anyone who helped her.”
“Yes Alpha.”
When he leaves, I remain by the window, rain streaking down the glass like tears the stone refuses to shed.
Somewhere beyond these walls, Amara is walking alone because of me.
I press my palm to the cold pane. “Amara…”
The bond answers, faint, fragile, unmistakable.
She’s alive.
Relief nearly drops me to my knees.
The pack house murmurs when I step into the hallways again. Wolves glance at me, then look away. They feel the imbalance, the fracture where a Luna should be.
I enter the war room without ceremony.
“This letter,” I say, placing it on the table, “is a forgery.”
Shock ripples through the officers.
Darius swears. “Then we condemned her unjustly.”
“Yes,” I say. “And that failure belongs to all of us.”
Silence falls heavily.
“What is your command?” Leron asks.
“Prepare a search party,” I reply, “for Serene.”
“And the Luna?” Darius asks quietly.
My chest tightens.
“Leave Amara to me.”
Murmurs break out, confusion and fear mixing freely.
They don’t understand what it means when an Alpha hunts his mate, not in anger, but in guilt.
I don’t linger.
The armoury welcomes me with cold steel and familiarity. I reach for my dagger which is the twin to the one Amara carried.
My wolf presses close.
We should be with her.
“I know.”
We failed her.
“I know.”
I fasten the blade and turn toward the door just as Darius enters again.
“Alpha, southern trackers report disturbances, rogues and traces of witch magic.”
The word hits hard.
“Witchlands,” I murmur.
The same direction her map would point her.
“I’m going after her,” I say.
“Alone?” he asks.
“Yes.”
The courtyard is slick with rain as I mount my horse. The storm is easing, but the air remains heavy and expectant.
I look back once at the walls of Silver Moon.
Then I whisper what sounded like a plea.
“Amara… wait for me.”
The horse surges forward and I begin my ride south.
Toward the Witchlands.
Toward her.
- Writer
