Chapter 5
The shovel broke on the third hour.
I stared at the splintered handle in my hands, then at the shallow grave I'd managed to scrape into the forest floor. Not deep enough. Nowhere near deep enough. But my palms were raw and bleeding, my nails torn down to the quick, and I had nothing left.
Nothing.
I knelt beside Papa's body, wrapped in the thin gray dress they'd given me when they stripped my Delta uniform. Omega rags. It was all I had to offer him. No ceremony. No pack witnesses. No words of honor for a man who'd served thirty years.
Just me and the dirt and the silence where my wolf used to be.
I lowered him into the earth as gently as I could, my arms shaking with exhaustion. His face was peaceful now, the pain finally gone. I wanted to say something. Anything. But my throat was still raw from screaming at those iron gates, and the words wouldn't come.
So I just covered him with dirt, handful by handful, until he disappeared.
When I finally stood, the sun was setting through the trees. Golden light filtered through the leaves, painting everything in shades of amber and rust. Beautiful. The world had no right to be beautiful when everything inside me was ash.
I walked.
I didn't know where I was going at first. My feet just carried me deeper into the forest, away from the packhouse, away from the fresh grave, away from everything. The burns on my skin pulled with each step. My ribs ached. My deaf ear rang with that constant high-pitched whine.
Good. The pain was good. It meant I was still here, still feeling something other than the hollow emptiness where my wolf used to live.
The trees thinned. The ground sloped upward, rocky and steep. I recognized this path. Moon Cliff. The highest point in Silver Moon territory, where young wolves came to howl at the full moon and feel closer to the Goddess.
I'd come here with Papa once, years ago. He'd pointed out the river far below, the way it carved through the jagged rocks like a silver ribbon. "Respect the cliff," he'd said. "It's beautiful, but it doesn't forgive mistakes."
I reached the edge and looked down.
The drop was dizzying. Hundreds of feet of empty air, then sharp rocks and churning white water. The river roared so loud I could hear it even through my damaged ear. The sound was almost soothing. Constant. Unchanging. Honest.
I stepped closer.
The wind whipped my hair back from my face, cool and clean. It smelled like pine and rain and freedom. No more scrubbing floors. No more Alpha Commands crushing my throat. No more watching Brittany smile while my world burned.
Just peace.
I closed my eyes and felt the void pulling at me, patient and inevitable. One step. That's all it would take. One step and gravity would do the rest.
No more pain.
No more grief.
No more me.
I leaned forward, my toes curling over the cliff's edge. The wind caught my dress, making it billow around my legs. For a moment, I felt weightless. Free.
I let go.
My feet left solid ground—
—and a hand clamped around my wrist like an iron shackle.
The world spun. I slammed backward into something solid and warm, the impact driving the air from my lungs. But that wasn't what made me gasp.
It was the shock.
Golden electricity exploded through my body where skin met skin, racing up my arm and detonating in my chest like lightning. Not pain. Not exactly. It was too intense for pain, too overwhelming, too—
Alive.
Deep in the hollow space where my wolf used to be, something stirred. A flicker. A spark. The faintest whisper of a presence I thought I'd lost forever.
Mate.
The word echoed through my mind in a voice that wasn't quite mine, wasn't quite hers, but was somehow both.
I looked up.
Mismatched eyes stared down at me—one gold, one silver, both burning with an intensity that made my breath catch. The man holding me was massive, easily a head taller than any wolf I'd ever seen, with shoulders broad enough to block out the sunset. Dark hair fell across his forehead, and his jaw was set in a hard line.
But it was his scent that made my knees weak.
Cedar and smoke and something wild and ancient that called to the broken pieces of my soul.
"Let go," I whispered, my voice cracking.
His grip tightened. "No."
That single word carried so much authority, so much absolute certainty, that for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
His other hand came up to cup my face, his thumb brushing across my scarred temple with a gentleness that didn't match his fierce expression.
"I've got you," he said, and his voice was rough velvet, a command and a promise wrapped into one. "And I'm not letting go."
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