Then I removed the bond ring from my finger and walked into his chamber.
I entered the combination to his ironwood chest.
Tessa’s birth moon.
The lock opened instantly.
Inside lay a leather-bound album, preserved with care. Each page bore silent witness to the years he had shared with her.
Gerald claimed to leave the territory three times a year on council business. Now I knew the truth. Every journey had been taken at Tessa’s side, across distant ranges and foreign lands. From the age of thirty-five to fifty-five. Twenty years.
My hands shook as I turned to one image.
They stood locked in an embrace beneath a golden coastal sun. Her form was strong and radiant, untouched by age. His fur was threaded with gray, yet his posture remained powerful, his presence unmistakably Alpha. The way they looked at each other was not mere affection.
It was devotion.
Earlier images had faded with time. In the first, they were young, reckless, standing beneath an ancient star watch tower, fingers entwined as the first falling star burned across the heavens.
Below it, in Gerald’s familiar hand, were the words:
“I once missed a meteor’s descent. I swear never to miss the one who loves the stars.”
From black fur to white, they had never lost each other again.
The happiest moment of my life rose unbidden in my memory. The night Gerald asked me to be his mate.
On the high grasslands beneath a sky ablaze with stars, he placed a ring upon my finger and promised loyalty until death.
Only now did I understand.
It was never meant for me.
Tessa loved the stars.
Those vows had never been mine to keep.
Pain tore through my chest as if something long dead had finally been cut free. I closed the album and let the tears fall, unrestrained, striking the floor like scattered beads.
I had pursued Gerald for three long years before he agreed to bond with me.
My parents had warned me. They said his heart lay elsewhere. I believed that if I loved him deeply enough, he would one day return that love.
But a bond forced into being is never sweet.
After thirty winters, I had tasted its bitterness in full.
I had tended his meals, raised our cubs, cared for our grandson, never resting, never asking.
Once, I had been young and radiant. Now I was worn, heavy with years. Meanwhile, he and the woman he loved seemed untouched by time, still proud, still luminous.
More than ten winters ago, he began forgetting our bonding nights, ignoring my birth moons, leaving me alone in the healer’s den with nothing but a cold message sent by raven.
I told myself that if I counted sixty-six disappointments, I would leave.
This was the sixty-sixth.
I placed the bond ring and the signed dissolution parchment into his ironwood chest.
Then I turned away and lifted the rune-stone.
“Gerald,” I said steadily, “do you still wish to acquire my holdings in the Mortimer territory?”
