Chapter 7

"You, Seraphine, and that healer without honor—every one of you is a murderer!"

The more I said it, the more it broke out of me.

Until I felt the blood soak through the sheets below me.

"Healer! Someone—"

Before I lost consciousness, I heard Damon crying my name...

For the three months after that, Damon didn't appear.

Slowly, I crawled out of the shadow of losing my daughter.

During those three months, the story of a healer without honor suffocating a pup in the womb went wild across the pack feed.

Seraphine came to beg at the door of my room once.

"Elara, tell Damon to let my mother go. Let me go!"

"I was wrong back then. I was wrong. Let me kneel. Forgive me."

She knelt outside my door for an entire day.

"Damon is a monster. When he's loving you, he's everything. But when he wants to kill you, he's that cruel..."

"I was wrong. I shouldn't have gone after him!"

Seraphine really was sorry.

She'd finally seen what Damon was.

But I knew. Her regret wasn't real.

She was only really afraid now that the punishment had landed on her.

Quietly, I recorded everything she said.

When my body was strong again, I'd get justice for my pup.

But I didn't have to wait.

A week later, word came through that the healer had been sent to the prison caves.

After she'd lost one of her legs.

I knew. That was Damon's doing.

He'd made her feel what the pup had felt, suffocating.

And what I'd felt, in labor.

Then Seraphine's bullying record from primary school, her running protection rackets in high school, all the way to that video of her on her knees at the infirmary—it all went up on the pack feed.

Within days, every justice-minded wolf on the feed was hunting her.

They even found her at her den.

They shattered her windows, howled and hurled threats at her for hours.

Seraphine hid for a month before they found her again to scream at her.

This time, she broke.

Territorial authorities placed her in a rogue asylum.

What she didn't know was that asylum—Silent Cavern Asylum—belonged to Damon too.

Before they took her in, Seraphine confessed to anyone who would listen.

"I'm a wretched female. I was jealous of Elara. That's why I made sure her pup couldn't come out safely..."

"I have a poisoned heart. I killed the pup in Elara's belly."

"My mother and I both deserve to die..."

After word spread that Seraphine had been committed, I saw Damon outside my room.

He looked like a completely different male.

Stubble across his face, dark under his eyes.

"Elara. I got justice for you and the pup."

"All this time, I've been trying to figure out how to earn your forgiveness. The only thing I could think of was revenge for you and her."

"Come home with me, Elara..."

"I re-built the den the way you like it. You're going to love it."

He poured all of it out at once, afraid I'd cut him off.

I looked at him, at the tension in his face, and nothing moved in my chest.

"Damon, you know we're done."

"Seeing you is pain. Stay out of my world. Forever."

Damon sagged down to the floor.

A hollow weight settled on him. He knew he was losing me for good.

I looked at the male I had once loved with all of me.

"Damon, you were the true killer of our pup. You punished everyone else. The only one you didn't punish was yourself..."

Damon walked out, broken.

Before he was gone, he was still muttering it under his breath. "It was me. I was the real killer. I lost the female I loved most."

The next day, the whole territory was talking.

Hale Pack holdings had been given away—every last coin of pack wealth. Alpha Damon Hale had dissolved the pack's commercial arm.

He'd spend the rest of his life atoning.

I knew. With who he was, he'd never forgive himself in this lifetime.

But this time I wasn't softening.

Every wolf has to pay for what they've done.

I looked up, out the window.

Seven years ago, a younger Damon Hale had lifted cold eyes to me and said,

"Don't forgive me."