Chapter 1

My mate was celebrating the naming feast of his first love’s son while our pup lay dying.

I mindlinked him from the healer’s den, begging him to send the best wolf healer for Evander. His response came sharp, laced with music and laughter in the background.

“Don’t interrupt us,” Viktor said coldly. “Elowen, if you let your jealousy spiral again, I swear I’ll reject you.”

Then he cut the link.

So I stayed by our son alone.

I held Evander’s hand as the warmth left it. I whispered old pack lullabies while the healer’s moonstones dimmed and the den fell silent. I kissed his forehead and felt his chest still beneath my palm, and I did not move even when they gently tried to take him from me.

That was the first pup I lost.

The burning chamber smelled of iron and sacred ash, the kind used to return wolf and flesh to the Moon Goddess. Dust drifted through shafts of pale light, soft and merciless, like the remnants of children already gone.

Soon, my pup would be part of it.

I stood there in a mourning dress that clung to my frame, hollow from days without food or rest. I did not feel hunger anymore, only a quiet emptiness that had no bottom.

I reached beneath the white cloth and touched Evander’s small hand. It was cold. Too still for something that once clung to me so tightly.

I placed two small blue paper stars into his palm—folded under trembling fingers the night before, because I did not know what else a mother was meant to give.

“Evander…”

The attendants hesitated before stepping forward. Gentle, careful, as though I might break. But I was already broken long before that moment.

They uncovered him.

My son was seven winters old, though he looked younger. Too small for a wolf pup, too fragile for the world he was born into. His lips were pale, his chest sunken, bruises still faint along his arms from the healer’s attempts to save him.

There was no dignity in death. Only silence.

The man beside me spoke softly. “The infection spread too quickly. He fought as long as he could.”

I did not answer.

I only smoothed his hair back, the way he hated when it fell into his eyes.

Then I whispered, “Let him go to the Moon Goddess. He doesn’t belong in this place anymore.”

They carried him into the fire chamber.

I did not cry.

I had no tears left.

Evander was free now. No longer asking questions I could not answer.

“Mother… why does Father only smile at Rowan?”

“Mother… did I do something wrong?”

“Mother… does Father still love us?”

Each question lived inside me like a wound that never closed.

Viktor had promised him a hunting trip beyond the northern forests. Promised to teach him how to call his wolf properly under the full moon. Promised everything a pup could believe in.

Instead, he left for Rowan’s naming feast with Selene.

And when I mindlinked him, telling him Evander was burning with fever and fading fast, he called me unstable.

Then he hung up.

By the time I carried Evander into the healer’s den myself, it was already too late. The sickness had reached his blood. His lungs failed. His small heart gave out while I held him and begged him not to leave.

I did not scream.

I only held him tighter and kept whispering, “Mother is here. Stay with me.”

But I was too late.

Ever since Selene returned with her son, Viktor had turned the pack against me. He called me unfit. Said I was jealous, unstable, dangerous to the heir. He locked me within the estate walls, cut my access to the pack treasury, and told others I was the reason discord spread.

“You harmed Selene’s child,” he said once. “You will pay for it.”

So I stood outside the cremation grounds alone, Evander’s ashes sealed in a small moonstone urn—light as breath, blue as the winter sky he once loved.

I held it close to my chest.

“We’re going home,” I whispered.

The wind moved through the valley. The sun was warm. But I had never felt colder.

**

When I returned to the pack estate, I found Selene’s daughter pressing a kiss to Viktor’s cheek, her hand resting too comfortably on his arm.

“Viktor, thank you for making Rowan’s feast so grand,” she said softly. “But… is Evander alright? Elowen sounded—”

Viktor did not pull away.

Instead, he rested a hand at her waist and smiled, as if he were not a wolf who had just lost a pup.

“She only said that to gain attention,” he said. “She has always been unstable. Evander was spoiled because of her.”

I stood in the hall, the urn pressed against my chest.

Something inside me went very still.

Not anger.

Not grief.

Only silence.

Then Viktor turned and saw me.

He stiffened.

“You should have said you were returning,” he muttered. “I would have sent someone.”

He had forgotten the last time I traveled alone beyond pack grounds, when I begged him to meet me and he told me his warriors were not my escorts.

That night, I nearly died on the road back.

And when I called him in fear, he only said, “You should not have been careless.”

But for Selene, he sent guards. For Selene, he moved the pack.

I looked at him now and said quietly, “It’s fine.”

His gaze lingered on me longer than usual.

Something uncertain flickered there.

“Did Evander get better?” he asked.