GABRIEL
The gates closed behind her with a sound that split something in me cleanly in half.
Metal met metal. Final. Unforgiving.
I stood in the courtyard long after Emma’s car disappeared down the winding road, snow settling into my hair, my jacket open to the cold as if I deserved it. The pack watched from a distance—silent, rigid, afraid to move. No one spoke. No one dared.
They could feel it.
The moment she crossed the boundary, something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t pain first. Pain would have been merciful. What came instead was absence—a sudden, yawning hollow where her presence had always been. Like a limb torn away so violently the nerves hadn’t caught up yet.
The bond screamed.
I doubled over with a growl that tore from my chest without permission, claws bursting from my
