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If it were true, then Blaidd could be free. Free to embrace the woman he wanted—the imitator of Isolde.

And Fae?

Fae would finally be released from a bond that had been withering away under the weight of grief and silence. And perhaps free from a ghost that refused to stay dead. A bond without love or the laughter of children. She deserved better, and she would get there, even if it cost her life.

Her wolf lifted its head inside her, uneasy about what lay ahead but resolute.

So was she.

Chapter 3

Fae reached her home as the winter light dimmed, the storm clouds pressing low and heavy.

Her brown hair hung in a long braid, wound around her head like a crown—an unmistakable marker of a wife. Among their kind, it was tradition as old as memory itself. The married and the bound wore their hair coiled and contained, only to be taken down by their beloved. The unbound she-wolves wore theirs in a single plait down the back when they came of age at eighteen years. And the young maidens—those who had yet to claim their wolves—were permitted to wear their hair loose in public, unclaimed and unmarked.

Fae's crown felt heavier than usual.

She pushed open the great carved wooden doors and stepped over the threshold.

The house creaked around her.

At its heart stood the massive fireplace, like a beating heart, its stone chimney rising high through the structure, anchoring everything else. The house had been built around it, as if the fire were the true master here. Rooms radiated outward—living spaces, a study, a sunroom with tall windows that drank in the light. Stairs climbed along either side toward the upper levels, leading to five loft-like bedrooms, all balanced symmetrically above.

The master bedroom sat dark and untouched.

Blaidd would not allow anyone but him to clean it. Would not allow anything inside to be moved. The box bed carved with fertility symbols remained in its original place. The furnishings were untouched by the years. It was like even the scent was not allowed to escape.

It remained a shrine.

When Blaidd was home on those rare, fragmented occasions between quests, they occupied one of the repurposed guest rooms. It had never been discussed, it was simply the way things were, and Fae quickly understood when she crossed the threshold as a fresh-faced bride that some decisions were not open to discussion. She had been only eighteen to Blaidd's thirty, and she already sensed on the day they met that her mating was not going to be straightforward. She had not questioned this exile from all that should have been theirs. Now, when it no longer mattered, she wished she had rebelled, wished she had burned it all to the ground. But more than anything, she wished she had never laid eyes on Blaidd.

The children each had their own rooms, adolescents with doors half-closed and lives carefully guarded. The remaining room belonged to Rowena.

She had asked to stay and Blaidd had not said no. He rarely did with her.

Fae crossed the stone floor slowly, her bare feet soundless against the cool surface. The fire had been banked low, its embers glowing faintly, as though even the house knew that things were about to change.

With a bitter edge of irony, Fae thought, If Rowena asked to enter our bed, he would likely allow that, too.

Not because he wanted her, but because he wouldn’t know how to refuse the woman who wore the face he adored.

Fae's eyes passed over the familiar furnishings until they stopped at the large portrait.

It dominated the far wall- formal and impossible to ignore.

Blaidd stood at its centre, arm curved possessively around Isolde's shoulders. He looked young, hopeful. A man untouched by war or loss, laughter caught mid-breath on his face, careless and unguarded in a way Fae had never known him to be.

Isolde leaned into him, glowing in her golden mating gown. Lilies had been braided into her hair, their pale petals bright against the gold. She looked beautiful. She was the perfect light to Blaidd's dark.

Fae had tortured herself many times with what happened between them on that first night.

On the night of the mating, she imagined a young, nervous Blaidd upbraiding his bride's hair. She imagined his heart pounding as his rough hands loosened the shining hair, freed the flowers, stripped away maidenhood, thread by thread. From the next day onward, Isolde would have been permitted to wear her hair like a crown-wound about her head, as a declaration to the world that the bond had been consummated.

The crown marked her as queen to her male. Everything Fae had been denied, Isolde had received with no effort.

The portrait had remained; Blaidd had not offered to take it down.

When Fae herself had been mated, she had not dared ask for it to be moved. Blaidd had still been deep in his grief then—barely weeks from the loss of his first love, his soul's half violently torn away. She had seen the rawness in him, the way sorrow swam beneath his skin, ready to break through the surface at the smallest provocation.