I watched Brantley drag Savannah out of the ceremony hall like a man drowning. His hand was locked around her wrist, his movements sharp and wrong. The kind of wrong that comes when an Alpha's wolf is screaming and his human mind can't keep up.
They disappeared into a side room. I couldn't see them anymore, but I didn't need to. I could feel the energy shift—the way the air changed when something fundamental cracked.
From where I stood in the healing wing, invisible and untethered, I felt the pull. Not the cursed bond—that was gone, burned away with my last breath. This was different. Lighter. Like a thread I could choose to follow instead of a chain dragging me forward.
I followed it.
I drifted through walls the way living wolves moved through open doors. Up three floors. Down a corridor lined with ceremony guests who whispered and stared at the closed door where their Alpha had vanished with his new Luna. I slipped through the wood like smoke.
Savannah stood in the center of the room, her Luna gown perfect, her face carefully arranged. Brantley faced her with his back to the door, shoulders rigid, hands opening and closing at his sides.
"Where is it?" His voice was low. Controlled. The kind of control that costs everything to maintain.
Savannah blinked. Tilted her head. "Where is what?"
"The scar." He stepped closer. "The rogue's blade. Six years ago. You threw yourself between me and the attack. You took the blade to your shoulder. Where. Is. The. Scar."
Her face shifted—just a flicker, so fast a human might have missed it. Confusion. Hurt. A touch of concern.
"Brantley," she said softly. "It faded. Scars fade. You know that."
"Not that kind of scar." His wolf was in his voice now, rough and snarling. "Not a blade wound that deep. Not in six years."
Savannah's hand went to her throat. The gesture looked fragile. Worried. "It was the other shoulder," she tried. "You're remembering it wrong."
"I'm not."
"The ceremony was stressful. You're—"
"Don't." The word came out like a growl. "Don't tell me I'm imagining things."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her eyes darted to the door, calculating.
Brantley's whole body went still. The kind of still that comes right before violence. But he didn't strike. He just stared at her, breathing hard, and I saw the exact moment his wolf stopped listening to his human logic.
The jasmine scent—my scent—flooded the room.
I felt it surge like a wave. Wild and rain-soaked and unmistakably mine. It poured off him in response to something his wolf finally recognized. Something it had been howling for all night.
Brantley's head snapped toward the door.
"Stay here," he said. Not a request. A command.
He left.
Savannah stood alone in her Luna gown, her perfect face finally cracking, and I didn't stay to watch. I followed him.
He moved through the pack house like a man possessed. His wolf had taken over—not fully shifted, but close. His eyes flashed gold. His steps were too fast, too erratic. He followed the scent the way a starving animal follows blood.
It led him to the omega wing.
To my quarters.
He stopped outside the door. His hand hovered over the handle. For a second—just one second—I thought he might turn back. Might decide this was madness. Might walk away.
He didn't.
The door slammed open.
The jasmine scent hit him like a wall. I watched his knees buckle. Watched him catch himself against the doorframe, his whole body shaking.
*Mate,* his wolf howled. I couldn't hear it with ears—I didn't have ears anymore—but I felt it. The word echoed through the bond space where the curse used to live. *Mate. Mate. MATE.*
Brantley staggered into the room. He looked around like he was seeing it for the first time. The narrow cot. The single shelf. The cramped space I'd lived in for five years while he gave Savannah the Luna suite.
He tore the room apart.
The cot flipped. The shelf emptied. Books and clothes scattered. He ripped up the floorboards with his bare hands, splinters driving into his palms, and he didn't stop. Didn't slow. Just kept destroying until his fingers found the loose board under where the cot had been.
He pulled it up.
My journal sat in the hollow space beneath.
Small. Worn. The cover stained from the one time I'd cried on it and couldn't stop.
Brantley lifted it like it might explode. His hands were shaking so hard the pages rustled. He opened it.
And he read.
I watched him read the first page. The second. The tenth. I watched his face go white. Watched his jaw clench so hard I thought his teeth might crack. Watched him sink to his knees in the wreckage of my room, surrounded by the jasmine scent that finally made sense, and read every word I'd written when the cursed bond wouldn't let me speak.
The ambush. My first shift. The blade to my shoulder. Waking up in a healing wing to find Savannah telling everyone she'd saved him.
Five years of compulsion. The bond burning every time I tried to resist. The extractions. My father's death. My mother's crown.
Buster.
The final entry, written three days ago in handwriting that barely held together: *The jasmine is fading. I think my wolf is dying before I do. If anyone finds this—I was here. I existed. I felt everything.*
Brantley made a sound.
Not a word. Not a howl. Something between the two. Something that came from a place deeper than his wolf. Deeper than his Alpha authority. A sound like the world ending.
He pressed the journal to his chest and doubled over, and I stood in the corner of the room where I'd lived and died, and I felt nothing.
No satisfaction. No vindication. No grief.
Just the quiet, ringing awareness that he finally knew.
And it was five years too late.
