Chapter 9

He had talked about severing the Bond again and again, and never meant it.

The day he stepped in front of the arrow for her — there was no calculation in it. It was just instinct.

The rain kept falling. He talked for a long time. I listened to all of it.

When he finished, I said, "You've said what you came to say. You can go."

He blinked. Something shifted in his eyes.

The ground held a thin layer of rainwater, reflecting his outline in broken pieces.

In another time, in another rain, he had given me a branch of blossoms and my heart had lost its rhythm.

A drop hit the surface and broke the reflection apart.

That old feeling had scattered and was gone.

I raised the umbrella and turned away.

"Dorian. What's done is done. Let it go."

I wasn't a forgiving person. No one raised in a strong Pack like mine was purely kind.

I had hated him, genuinely hated him, for years. Enough to have wished him dead.

And then he saved my life.

When he died in front of me, I thought — fine. That's enough. Let us be strangers in whatever comes next.

As for Serena — I had never intended to let her walk away from this.

I knew Dorian too well. He was a suspicious person. He needed everything to come together at the right moment. Serena had pushed too hard, too fast, used Pack politics to force herself on him. That would make him distrust her from the start.

Dorian didn't fall for someone who threw themselves at him. He would never love her here.

So she would either be quietly removed by him eventually, or she would destroy herself in her own bitterness.

That was the only way it was ever going to end for her.

And I had watched clearly, through both lives, as she walked herself there.

Cain and I set a date.

Late spring. Early summer.

It should have been simple good news. But when Dorian found out, he went to the Alpha King.

No one knows exactly what he said.

What the Pack remembers is that the Alpha King, who was normally even-tempered, knocked every document off his desk.

"Did all those years of discipline go to waste? Do you hear yourself? That's your brother's mate!"

He was furious enough to throw a paperweight at Dorian's forehead.

The cut bled badly.

Dorian was confined to his wing of the Manor.

Even Eleanor's intervention did nothing.

The other Alpha Heirs in the territory saw the opening. They started working the Pack Elders, pulling in allies.

Dorian eventually went cold and still.

In my past life, he had been a poor mate. But he had been a strong Alpha King. After he took power, he eliminated waste, reduced burdens on the lower-ranked packs, drove back the border threats, built up the Pack academies. He had made enemies of the old elite families, which was why the attempts on his life never stopped. And when he was finally released from his confinement, he moved fast and shut down every Pack Heir who had moved against him.

He dealt with his Pack business. I dealt with my wedding.

The day Cain and I had our Bonding Ceremony, summer flowers were burning red against the walls. The light came through the tall windows and caught in my eyes.

And then someone interrupted it.

Dorian's attendant came in carrying a velvet tray. On it sat a small gold ring etched with the words: Until the stars burn out.

The attendant delivered his message. "My Alpha says the usual words of good fortune — others have already said them better. He only asks that you and Cain stay safe and well."

Cain looked at the ring for a moment, then gave a quiet, dry laugh.

"Please give my thanks to my brother."

"It's our Bonding Night. I won't keep you."

He sent the attendant out, set the ring somewhere to the side without looking at it again, and then the curtains fell.

No restraint. No distance.

Just him, finally letting himself have what he'd wanted.

And that night became everything I had imagined it would be.

Four years later, Dorian became Alpha King.

My brother went back to the northern border as he always did.

This time I gave him a longer list of instructions and had Cain add extra medical supplies to his pack.

Dorian had never taken a Luna. The position stayed empty.

People said he was often found sitting alone in the old wing that had once been mine, staying through the night.

There was talk that he kept it empty because he still wanted me.

I heard that and smiled, and then Cain and I packed our bags and headed south.

In my past life, I had been trapped inside Wyndham Manor for years and never saw anything beyond those walls.

Now I only wanted to make the places I'd read about into places I had actually stood.

We went to the northern borderlands where the wind cut across the open flatlands. We went to the southern forests where the mist hung between the trees in the morning. We stood at the edge of the sea and watched the tide. We slept under the stars in the foothills.

And we had a child.

A boy. He looked like me. He had Cain's temperament.