He coldly declared that he needed a powerful Luna to fight by his side, not an Omega he had to constantly hide and protect.
I couldn't understand how ten years of deep connection could be erased by a month of political games.
The boy who once broke his own bones to save me from rogues now looked at me with nothing but arrogant disgust.
So, I swallowed my tears and quietly signed the departure contract for the distant Royal Academy.
I packed my bags, left all his childhood gifts on his cold stone steps, and boarded a carriage out of the territory.
He wanted a stronger Luna, so I gave up my place. From now on, I would live for myself.
Chapter 1
Elara POV
The stone of the old keep held a damp, permanent chill that clung to the tapestries and settled deep in one's bones.
My own cloak, a thing of thin-spun wool, offered little defense.
At eighteen years, the Change had yet to claim me. Without the wolf, my bones remained those of a girl, denying me the brutal velocity and sinew required for rank in this jagged life of ours. That made me an Omega-the absolute bottom of the pack hierarchy.
The proximity of an Alpha was a trial in itself; not a weight, as the poets claimed, but a sudden, draining dryness. The air would seem to be stripped of its moisture, growing thin and sharp against my tongue. My lungs felt as though they'd been filled with ice water, each inhalation a seizing spasm in my windpipe that forced a hot sting to my eyes.
And yet, I had known a sanctuary. Kaelen, heir to the Alpha's seat, had been its architect. We had come of age in the shadowed compass of this forest, and the scent that clung to him-of pine sap and a fire banked high against the frost-had been the very air of my security.
That was before the arrival of Seraphina.
She was a warrior of high blood from a neighboring clan, a political pawn sent to bind our territories. Tall and sinewed, her wolf was a thing of legend. The scent she carried, of crushed spice and the metallic tang of a fresh kill, was a kind of madness to the other males.
Behind the broad trunk of an oak, I watched the training grounds. The hunting drill had just ended in the Black Forest. A fresh towel for Kaelen was clutched in my hands, but the sound of voices from beyond a screen of hawthorn stayed my feet.
"She is a pathetic creature," Seraphina's voice cut through the damp air, sharp as splintered bone. "Incapable of a simple tracking cantrip. Should rogues breach the border, she will be the first to fall."
A stillness took hold of my limbs; the air thickened in my throat.
"Her lineage is too thin for the border wars," came Kaelen's reply. A strained nonchalance coated the words, a dissonance my ears registered but could not yet comprehend. The timber of it, once a comfort, was now a shard of ice against my spine.
"You can't teach an unshifted Omega how to hunt, Seraphina," Kaelen continued. "It's a waste of time. She needs to accept her place."
A hollow ache opened beneath my ribs, a sudden, cold cavity where there had been warmth.
My retreat was clumsy; a shift of my weight brought my boot down on a dry twig. The snap was a pistol shot in the forest's hush.
They emerged from behind the foliage, their forms dark against the light. They found me there. A familiar heat flared behind my eyes, and the dampness that followed was an old, hated reflex.
"Look at her," Seraphina laughed, crossing her arms. "A supposed wolf who cries over everything. How is she supposed to survive winter?"
My gaze flew to Kaelen, a silent plea for the shield he had always raised.
Instead, the muscle in his cheek bunched violently. I could almost hear the faint, grating sound of his back teeth, like a dry pine branch being forcibly snapped. A dangerous, molten gold bled into his irises, the beast within him straining against some invisible leash of pride.
He unleashed his presence then, not as a weight, but as a void. The very air grew thin, sucked from my lungs as if by a great vacuum, and a sharp, metallic taste flooded my mouth. My knees gave way, not from pressure, but from a sudden, boneless weakness.
"Cease your weeping, Elara," Kaelen growled, his voice a low vibration of forced, ragged annoyance. "It is exhausting."
This was not protection. This was a culling, a brutal lesson he had convinced himself I required. My gaze fell to the damp earth, a tremor starting in my hands.
That night, the winding stairs to the Elders' tower seemed to groan under the weight of my decision. A single sheet of parchment was presented to them, bearing my application to the Royal Academy in a distant land. My final request was that Kaelen be kept in ignorance of it. The Elder studied me for a long moment, then nodded slowly-as if he had been expecting this day would come.
The next morning broke under a sky the color of pale ash. As I emerged from my small timber cabin, a figure detached itself from a stone pillar near the waiting carriages. It was Kaelen. In his hand, he held a small leather pouch, dark with the juice of its contents: moon-berries, the rare, sweet fruit he used to gather for me from the forest's deepest groves.
"Elara," he called out, stepping into my path.
My eyes remained fixed upon the gaps between the cobblestones as I made to pass him by.
"Elara," his voice followed, his longer stride closing the distance with ease. The sound was thick with an assurance I found odious-the belief that a simple offering of fruit could mend such a fracture.
"Are you still brooding over yesterday?" he asked, thrusting the pouch toward me. "Seraphina was merely tearing away a polite falsehood. You must learn to bear the sting of it if you are to survive here."
The pouch remained, suspended in the air between us.
"An unshifted wolf is a liability," he pressed on, his voice hardening into that familiar Alpha arrogance, a poor mask for his own frustration. "Seraphina possesses a true killer's instinct. You would do well to study it, instead of indulging in tears."
At last, my head lifted. The scent of him, that old comfort of pine and fire, was suddenly acrid, a plume of smoke that caught in my throat and threatened to choke me.
"Then perhaps," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, "I should stop being a liability."
Kaelen's brow furrowed, not understanding. But I did not elaborate. I simply stepped around him and continued walking.
Our silent impasse carried us to the training grounds, where the other warriors were assembling. From their midst, Seraphina approached, her gait a study in predatory confidence.
"Moon-berries?" she purred, her eyes on the pouch still in Kaelen's hand. "A particular fondness of mine."
Without a moment's hesitation, a smile breaking across his face, Kaelen offered my berries to her.
"They are all yours," he said.
From the pocket of my cloak, my own fingers closed around the few shriveled berries I had saved from a happier morning-the last gift from the boy I thought I knew. I crossed the short distance to the great iron brazier that warmed the grounds. Saying nothing, I opened my hand over the licking flames and let them fall, watching until the sweet flesh blackened and turned to cinder.
I did not look back to see if Kaelen noticed. But somewhere behind me, I heard his breath catch-just for a moment-before Seraphina's laughter drowned it out.
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