“Then you’re a fool.”
The cruelty in his words stops me in my tracks. Bryan has never spoken to me like this. Not once, not even when we were kids, and he barely knew I existed beyond being that girl who always had her nose in a book about medicinal plants. He’s always been gentle with me.
But this person standing in front of me isn’t anything like the boy who brought me wildflowers after patrol and once walked five miles in the rain to bring me soup when I was sick.
“You don’t mean that,” I claim again, but my voice has lost its conviction.
“I mean every word.” He takes a final step backward, and now the distance between us feels like miles instead of feet. “Goodbye, Skylar. Don’t come looking for me.”
And then he turns and walks into the trees.
I should go after him. I should grab him and shake him and demand a real explanation, not this cold detachment that doesn’t match anything I know about who he is. My wolf is howling inside my chest, begging me to chase our mate before he disappears forever.
But I don’t move.
Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s shock. Maybe it’s the horrible suspicion that nothing I say will make a difference, that he made this decision before he ever asked me to meet him tonight, and I never had a chance of changing his mind.
Bryan’s silhouette fades into the shadows. The sound of his footsteps grows fainter, swallowed by the forest until all I can hear is my own breathing and the distant call of an owl.
I stand there until my legs start to shake. Then I sit down in the grass and pull my knees to my chest, pressing my forehead against them.
The mate bond throbs like an open wound, reaching out toward someone who just told me to forget he exists.
I should cry. That’s what people do when their hearts get ripped out and handed back to them in pieces, isn’t it? But the tears won’t come. There’s just this vacant feeling in my chest, like someone carved out everything important and left the rest of me behind to figure out how to keep breathing.
Find someone else,he said.Someone who can actually give you a future.
Screw that. Screw him. If Bryan Dinac wants to throw away everything we’ve been building for two years, that’s his choice. But he doesn’t get to tell me how to live my life. He doesn’t get to walk away and still have a say in what I do next.
I climb to my feet and brush the grass and dirt off my jeans with hands that won’t stop trembling. The walk back to town feels endless, with every step seeming heavier than the last. My wolf whines and scratches at the inside of my ribs, desperate to turn around, to find him, to fix this somehow.
But I ignore her. And I’ll keep ignoring her for as long as it takes.
Bryan wants me to move on? Fine. I’ll move on so hard he’ll feel it from wherever he’s running to. I’ll build a life so good he’ll choke on his regret if he ever bothers to look back.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway. That’s the story I repeat with every step, trying to make myself believe it.
But the bond keeps pulsing in my chest, keeps calling out to someone who isn’t there anymore. Someone who chose to leave.
Something tells me this isn’t the kind of wound that heals clean.
Chapter 1 - Bryan
The border marker looks exactly the same as it did ten years ago.
I stand at the edge of Silvercreek territory, staring at the old carved stone half-buried in the underbrush. Someone’s cleared the weeds away from it recently, and the pack symbol on its face is still visible despite a decade of weather. My wolf paces beneath my skin, recognizing the scents that drift across the invisible line.
Pine. Cedar. The faint musk of wolves who’ve patrolled this stretch of forest a thousand times.Home, my wolf insists.We’re home.
I’m not sure I agree.
Ten years is a long time. Long enough to become someone else altogether. Long enough to do things that can’t be undone, see things that can’t be unseen. The boy who left Silvercreek in the middle of the night doesn’t exist anymore. I killed him off piece by piece during my years with the Black Ops, buried him under mission reports and body counts until there was nothing left but the wolf and the work.
Now the work is done, and I’m not sure what’s left of me underneath all that wreckage.
I take a breath and step across the border.
The forest closes around me like an old blanket, familiar and suffocating at the same time. Every tree, every rock, every twist in the overgrown path triggers memories I’ve spent a decade trying to suppress. The swimming hole where I held my breath underwater while my father counted from the bank. The clearing where he taught me to track deer. The ridge whereI kissed Skylar for the first time when we were sixteen and terrified and thrilled. Her lips tasted like the strawberries we stole from Mrs. Lingman’s garden.
