Chapter 5

Cain held the doorframe. His body lost strength.

"How bad are her injuries?"

"The Healer said the physical wounds aren't serious. But her body is hollowed out — she came close to dying. And when she woke up, she didn't shed one tear."

"But the look on her — I've followed the Whitmore family for thirty years and I've never seen her like that."

Owen's voice started to shake.

Cain's hand slid off the doorframe.

He walked into the yard. He pushed open the door to Elara's room.

It was swept clean. Nothing left.

Only on the small table beside the bed was one thing.

The Bond Decree. Yellow and official.

Half burned.

The remaining edges, charred. In the surviving section a few words were still legible.

...until our last breath... unbroken...

Cain stared at those words. His shoulders started shaking hard.

He remembered many things.

The year he had nothing and joined the pack's war force, Elara had stood in the cold at the crossroads to see him off and pressed a pair of new boots into his hands.

Triple-layered soles. She'd worn her fingers down making them, every finger wrapped in cloth strips.

The worst winter when the troops ran short on food, the Whitmore Pack gave even the servants' rations to fund the supply line.

Elara pawned her gold bracelet. The one she saved for years and never wore.

He ate Whitmore food, wore the coat Elara sewed, won his battles.

Then he slept with her sister and told her to be satisfied.

He stood up fast and slapped himself across the face.

Hard, then harder. He didn't stop until his mouth was bleeding.

He stumbled out of the Whitmore house and got back on his horse and rode. No direction.

He looked for a day, then two, then three.

The riverfront bars, the city gates, the docks.

No one had seen Elara.

She was gone.

Cain stopped eating.

Food made him sick.

He sat in his command tent working through reports and kept stopping to stare at nothing.

His second-in-command had to call his name three times before he'd respond.

He went to a lot of places.

The festival market where they first met. That year, the lanterns were everywhere and she was pressed by the crowd and stepped on his foot. She looked up to apologize, laughing, eyes curved.

The fabric shop she used to go to. She always bought the cheap scraps. She'd go home and stitch them into pouches, filling them with herbs, tucking them into his pack.

The crossroads where they made their promise. The stone pillar there — he had cut the words himself with his blade.

Cain and Elara. This will not change.

The writing was worn, barely readable now.

Finally he went to the old camp grounds from the night before he left for the front.

The tents were all gone. Just dirt and a few wooden stakes.

Snow on the ground.

He stood in the place where the outer tent had been.

Elara had sat here, in the lamplight, sewing his shirt.

Quiet. Glancing once toward the inner tent, thinking he was already asleep.

He closed his eyes. He couldn't keep going.

He clenched his fist. His nails pressed into his palm.

Blood seeped through his fingers, one drop at a time, into the snow.

That night he knelt at Helen's grave.

From dusk until deep into the night. From there until daybreak.

Snow built up on his shoulders. He didn't brush it off.

When the sky went light he looked at the stone and said one thing.

"Ma'am. Elara. I'm the reason this happened."

"I don't deserve either of you."

His legs had no feeling when he stood. He half-fell down the hill and made it to the road.

Halfway back a merchant's cart blocked his path.

The cart was loaded with bolts of silk.

Cain stopped.

"Old man. Where did you come from?"

"The southern lands. Came up through the river crossing at Irongate."

Elara had told him once, if she never bonded, she'd go to the south and open a textile shop.

Because her mother was from the south. Helen had grown up telling her about the rivers and the rain and the smell of sweet flowers.

That was the softest dream Elara had ever shared.

Cain stood there. Then he turned and ran.

He was going to the Southern Territory to find her.

He got to the pack camp gates — and a line of riders blocked the way.

The one in front wore a council messenger's coat, holding a sealed order.

"Cain Calloway. Orders from the Alpha Council."

"The northern borderlands are under attack. Calloway Pack Alpha is commanded to lead the defense immediately. The Bond Decree issued previously is hereby dissolved. The matter is closed."

Cain knelt in the snow and listened to every word.

One line from the Alpha King. That was all it took to cut every last thread between him and Elara.

But he wasn't giving up. He'd finish this war. Then he'd find her.