Luna He Rejected: Alpha's Forbidden Heir

Chapter 5

Damian POV

Three years of silence does not heal a mate bond. It only teaches you how to live with the bleeding.

Damian told himself he had made peace with what happened that night. The truth was simpler and uglier than he liked to admit. He had rejected the only woman his wolf had ever wanted, and no amount of duty or time had quieted the part of him that still searched every crowd for her face. He had told himself it was necessary. He had said that word to himself so many times it had nearly stopped meaning anything at all.

Some nights he almost believed the choice had been his alone, made out of duty, and that the man who said those words in front of the whole pack had simply done what an Alpha had to do. Other nights he couldn't even look at himself in the mirror without wondering who he had really been protecting that night. The answer never sat easy with him.

"You're doing it again," Marissa said, dropping into the chair across from his desk without waiting to be asked.

"Doing what," Damian said, not looking up from the reports in front of him.

"Staring at nothing like you're somewhere else," she said. "You've been doing it for three years, Damian. Everyone sees it. You just won't say it."

He set the reports down and rubbed his eyes. "I have a territory to run."

"You have a mate you rejected," Marissa said, blunt as always. "Those are two different problems and you keep treating them like one."

He didn't answer. There wasn't a good answer to give her. Sometimes he caught himself standing at the edge of the territory at night, looking south, as if some part of him believed she might walk back through the trees if he waited long enough. He told himself that was guilt. He was no longer sure it was only that.

Victor knocked once before walking in, his face carrying the kind of urgency that made Damian's instincts sharpen at once. "We have a problem," he said.

"What kind of problem," Damian asked.

"Rogue settlements are disappearing along the southern border," Victor said. "Four in the last two months. Whole packs gone, swallowed up by some force calling themselves Caleb Drayton's coalition. The pattern is moving north, toward us."

Damian stood up, his mind already working through the danger. "Do we know their numbers? Their strength?"

"Not exactly," Victor said. "But there's a settlement closer to the front of this than we are. Crimson Hollow. If they fall, whatever's coming reaches us next with nothing slowing it down first."

Something about the name pulled at the back of Damian's mind, though he couldn't say why. "Who runs Crimson Hollow?"

Victor hesitated, just slightly, in a way Damian almost missed. "An Alpha named Selene Cross."

The name meant nothing to him, and yet something in his chest tightened anyway, the way it always did when anything circled too close to a wound he refused to look at straight on.

"We should think about reaching out," Marissa said. "If they're standing between us and whatever this Caleb Drayton is building, an alliance helps everyone."

Victor's jaw went tight. "I don't think that's necessary. Crimson Hollow is rogue land. Their problems are their own."

"Their problems become our problems the moment that pattern reaches our border," Damian said, already walking toward the door. "Send word. I want to meet this Alpha Cross myself before we decide anything."

"Damian," Victor said, his voice sharper than Damian expected, almost urgent in a way that didn't fit the moment. "I really don't think that's wise."

Damian turned and studied him. Victor had advised him on every major decision since he became Alpha. He had never once tried to stop Damian from gathering information. A small, cold thread of doubt began to wind through Damian's chest, one he couldn't explain and didn't like at all.

"Why not?" he asked.

For a second, something flickered behind Victor's eyes, gone too fast to name. Then his face went smooth again, back to the calm mask he always wore.

"Caution," he said simply. "Nothing more."

Damian didn't believe him. He filed the strange feeling away to look at later and walked out, already planning the message he would send south.

Three days later, his scouts came back with an answer he never expected.

Alpha Selene Cross had already left Crimson Hollow. She was on her way to Blackthorn herself, traveling with a small group, due to arrive within the week.

Damian stood at his window that night, looking out over the land he had spent three years protecting at the cost of everything else, and felt something shift in his chest he hadn't felt since the night he tore a bond apart with his own voice.

He didn't know why the name Selene Cross made his wolf rise to attention, like it recognized something his mind hadn't caught up to yet.

He only knew that somewhere behind him, in the quiet of his own study, Victor had gone very still the moment the scouts said her name. And that Victor had reached for his phone the second he thought Damian wasn't looking, his voice dropping low enough that Damian only caught three words before he stepped out of range.

"She's coming early."

He should have asked who Victor was talking to. Instead, he let it go, telling himself it was nothing. It was a mistake he would spend the rest of his life paying for.