Right before I lost consciousness, I had seen everything clearly.
The obsidian carriage.
Salvar in the passenger seat.
And the she-wolf he had just kissed. She was the one behind the wheel, her scent of white jasmine and something faintly too-sweet still clinging to the air like petals already beginning to turn.
He hadn't given me a chance to question him. Not even a single second. He had simply brushed it off, thrown out an excuse about the pack being too busy, and left as if I had imagined the entire thing.
At the time, I thought he was avoiding me because he didn't know how to face me after striking me down with the carriage.
But the truth was even more pathetic than that.
I didn't matter enough to him.
Not even enough for him to feel guilt.
Still a little dizzy, I forced a polite smile onto my face, as if everything was perfectly normal.
"Guess I was still a bit foggy when I woke up," I said lightly. "Didn't recognize you, Alpha."
The word slipped out naturally, but it carried none of the warmth it used to.
He barely reacted. The silver lighter kept moving over his knuckles, steady as a heartbeat.
And I kept going along with it, as if this distance between us had always existed. As if there had never been anything more.
He finally looked at me again, his brows drawing together slightly, confusion flickering in his eyes.
The Omega who used to cling to him over the smallest things, who would demand to be nuzzled over something as trivial as a scratch, was gone.
In her place was someone quiet.
Still.
Unreachable.
Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf had gone silent too. She wasn't whimpering. She had simply curled in on herself and stopped reaching for the scent of black cedar and cold iron that had always meant home.
Salvar glanced around the room, making sure no one else was there. Even in a Healing Hall that answered only to his pack, old habits held. Only then did his expression soften a fraction, his voice dropping lower.
"Selene," he said, almost gently, "these places are full of ears. And scent carries." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "We can't risk anyone catching us like this."
Like this.
What we were had to stay hidden. Even now. The silence of the pack didn't just govern secrets of blood and territory. It governed me.
"Just rest," he continued. "Focus on healing. Once you're back at the den, I'll make it up to you."
I looked at him, then gave a small, composed smile.
"Thank you… Alpha."
I used to call him that as a joke, a teasing name when we were alone behind a locked door. Back then it had been playful, intimate, filled with something unspoken between us.
Now, it felt completely different.
Cold.
Distant.
Like a wall had been built between us, brick by brick, until there was nothing left to cross.
He frowned slightly. He noticed it.
Of course he did.
Just as he was about to say something else, the door opened again and the moon-healer walked in for a routine check.
In an instant, Salvar changed.
The softness disappeared as if it had never existed. His posture straightened, his expression cooled, and the distance returned. He was once again the Alpha, untouchable and controlled, his aura settling over the room like a sudden drop in temperature. The silver lighter went still in his hand for one beat, then slipped into his jacket pocket.
After exchanging a few brief words with the healer, he turned to leave.
At the door, he paused.
Then he looked back at me one last time.
"Get some rest," he said.
There was a slight pause before he added, his tone firm, almost like a warning.
"And don't think your… special arrangement gives you any privileges inside my pack."
His eyes held mine, steady and unreadable.
"Everyone is treated equally. Everything follows the code of the pack."
With that, he walked out, the door closing softly behind him, leaving the room colder than before. The trace of black cedar and cold iron faded from the air, and only then did my wolf stir, just enough to ache.
The moon-healer glanced at the smile I was forcing onto my face and let out a light, teasing chuckle, like he could scent straight through it.
"Your Alpha already left," he said casually. "No need to push yourself to keep smiling like that anymore."
I didn't respond.
"But I'll give him this," he added with a grin, flipping through my chart. "Stubborn mouth, soft heart. He already covered every last gold moon of your healing."
My smile didn't disappear, but it shifted, subtly, almost imperceptibly, into something bitter.
Salvar really did deserve to lead the howl for that performance.
To everyone else, he was just a responsible Alpha overseeing the front den, someone who looked after his people out of basic decency. A wolf with principles. No one knew the truth. No one knew that behind the locked door of his private study at the forest estate, I had been bound to him for five years. Five entire years of secrecy, of compromise, of waiting for a neck-mark that never came.
No one except a handful of his closest wolves. His inner circle. The ones bound by the same silence that bound me.
I had asked him more times than I could count, always carefully, always hoping for a different answer.
"When can we stop hiding?"
Every single time, he brushed it off with the same vague excuse.
"The timing's not right."
I used to believe him.
I used to tell myself that there was a reason, that the pack's politics demanded patience, that one day the moon would rise on something different.
But today, I finally understood.
When he thought I had lost my memory, the first thing he did was draw a line between us.
I'm your Alpha.
That was the truth.
That was all I had ever been to him.
