“Lady Yvaine,” the pack adjudicator said gently, folding his hands atop the oak table, “you have been bonded to Alpha Gerald for thirty winters. You bore him a son and a daughter, and your bloodline has already continued through a grandson. With such a lineage, do you truly feel no hesitation?”
His silver eyes searched my face, clearly hoping I would withdraw my claim.
Hesitation?
A faint, bitter smile curved my lips.
Not long ago, I was crushed beneath an overturned hunting carriage in the northern ravine. My wolf had nearly slipped beyond recall. While I lay unconscious, the healers sent messengers to the Alpha’s lodge again and again. They called for Gerald. They summoned my children.
None of them came.
When I finally woke beneath the scent of frostroot and burning sage, still too weak to shift, a young healer forgot to lower her scrying mirror. That was how I saw it.
While I lay between life and death, the entire pack had gathered at the Moonstone Hall. Torches blazed. Drums echoed through the valley.
They were holding a grand feast for Tessa of the Silver mane Clan, Gerald’s first mate, celebrating the blessing her stone-carved moon totem had received from the elders.
In the mirror’s reflection, my grandson darted across the hall in his wolf pup form, laughter ringing bright and careless. Gerald stood near the high table, his fur streaked with gray, his arm wrapped around Tessa’s waist. His expression was open, proud, radiant in a way I had not seen in decades.
I watched until the candles burned low.
Only then did I understand that the bond I had guarded for thirty years had already been severed, not by law, but by choice.
“I am resolved,” I said calmly, lifting my chin. “Prepare the bond dissolution and the territory relinquishment accords.”
I had chosen our thirtieth bonding night to end it.
It would be my final offering to Gerald.
At last, he would no longer need to hide his true mate beneath the moon.
……
When I returned from the pack tribunal, the lodge was already lit with fire bowls. Gerald stood on the stone balcony, his back to me, speaking in a low voice through the wind.
“Yes. The sky fire must be brilliant, like a field of fallen stars,” he said with rare warmth. “Only something that magnificent is worthy of Tessa.”
For thirty winters as his mate, Gerald had never once brought me moonflowers. Not once. One year, I mentioned that I liked their pale glow during the Frost Moon. He frowned as if I had asked for something shameful.
“Must you always crave such useless things, Victoria?” he said then. “Moonflowers grow wild beyond the ridge. Pick them yourself if you want them.”
I once believed he simply did not understand tenderness.
Now I knew better.
He was willing to spend the pack’s finest firestones, resources gathered over decades, just to paint the night sky for Tessa of the Silvermane Clan.
I stood unmoving on the lodge floor, the scent of ash and pine heavy in my chest. Gerald ended the call and strode inside. Without looking at me, he shrugged off his mantle and tossed it into my arms.
“You are back late,” he said flatly. “The evening meal is not prepared.”
In that moment, clarity struck me with cruel precision.
I had never been his cherished mate. I had only ever been the one who kept the hearth burning.
I swallowed the ache rising in my throat and hung his mantle on its hook.
“Gerald,” I said quietly, “I am preparing your bonding anniversary gift.”
Only then did his expression ease. His brows lifted slightly, his mood improving at once.
“Then do not bother cooking,” he said. “Have the hunters bring back cured boar. The kind seasoned with mountain salt. You like that, do you not?”
It was Tessa who liked cured boar.
The scent alone turned my stomach.
Half a lifetime together, and he still did not know me.
Before I could respond, his rune-stone flared with light.
He turned away too quickly, stepping back onto the balcony, but I had already seen the sigil glowing upon it.
Tessa.
Ten minutes later, he returned, fastening his cloak in haste.
“I will not be back tonight,” he said. “Pack matters.”
I reached out and caught his wrist, pressing a single parchment and a stylus into his hand.
“Gerald, I am thinking of replacing one of the travel beasts for the lodge.”
He clicked his tongue in irritation and signed without reading.
“Always wasteful,” he muttered. “Fine. Just do not trouble me with trivial matters.”
He thrust the parchment back at me and turned to leave. In his haste, he dragged a woven scarf from the rack and crushed it beneath his boots as he strode out.
That scarf had taken me over a month to weave. My fingers had bled for it. It was meant for our last bonding anniversary.
I lifted it from the floor and dropped it into the fire pit, watching the flames devour it.
