POV: Everly
They didn't come looking for her.
No search parties. No footsteps in the woods. No wolves sent to drag her back.
And that, somehow, hurt more than anything else.
By the time the sky lightened into the pale blue of morning, Everly's legs had stopped shaking. Her throat was dry, her eyes swollen. Her ribs still ached from where she'd curled in too tightly, holding herself together with nothing but silence.
Selene hadn't spoken since the rejection.
She remained still, somewhere low and quiet, like a heartbeat behind glass.
Everly didn't blame her.
She didn't want to speak either.
---
When she finally stood, her knees cracked. Her body felt too small. Too heavy. She hadn't eaten since the morning before the festival, and now her stomach twisted with both hunger and dread.
The forest was different in daylight. Colder. Emptier. Like it, too, was waiting for something to end.
She turned toward the estate.
And walked back.
Because no one had come for her.
Which meant they hadn't noticed she was gone.
Or worse…they had.
And didn't care.
---
The guards at the back gate looked up as she approached. One of them, a graying warrior named Toran, frowned slightly.
"Where the hell've you been?"
Everly kept her head down. "Cleaning."
It wasn't a good lie.
It wasn't even a full sentence.
But he grunted, too tired or too disinterested to press. The younger guard beside him, Ravi, barely sixteen, smirked but said nothing.
They let her pass without punishment.
That felt… wrong.
She stepped through the back courtyard, past the kitchens where smoke curled into the morning sky, and slipped inside through the servant's door.
No one stopped her.
Not even Mira, the Omega in charge of kitchen duties, who usually barked the moment Everly was two minutes late for anything.
She passed her in the corridor.
Mira didn't speak.
Didn't look.
Everly blinked.
The other servants… didn't speak either.
Some glanced her way. Some turned their faces quickly. But no one met her eyes. No one hissed an insult. No one shoved her aside.
They just... moved around her.
As if she were something fragile.
Or cursed.
---
By midday, Everly stood alone in the laundry courtyard, wringing bloodied sheets through freezing water. Her fingers were numb. The wind sliced between the stones. But she welcomed the sting.
Pain meant she was still here.
Still real.
Still surviving.
Selene still hadn't stirred.
But Everly could feel her.
Like a weight curled around her spine.
Waiting.
The dream, if it had been a dream, lingered in her thoughts like smoke. The garden. The door. The voice.
Not yet.
Soon.
She didn't understand it.
Didn't want to.
Not right now.
Right now, she needed to keep her head down. Fade again. Disappear.
That was how she survived.
---
But the whispers started by dusk.
She heard two Omegas in the hall near the linen room.
"She didn't deny it."
"Didn't speak at all."
"Maybe she's not even wolf. Maybe she's…..something else."
"What if she tricked the Moon?"
"She didn't do anything."
"Exactly. That's what's terrifying."
Everly turned the corner before they noticed her.
But their voices followed her in silence.
---
At dinner, she was sent to eat in the storage cellar.
Alone.
The food was hot. Fresh.
That was new.
The tray had roast meat and half a sweet potato with butter, along with a bowl of thick, herb-laced broth.
Everly stared at it for a long time before touching anything.
When she finally bit into the potato, her throat closed around it.
Because kindness like this didn't come freely in Ironfang.
It came before something worse.
---
After the meal, she was ordered to the Alpha's meeting chamber.
Two guards escorted her.
Neither spoke.
The doors opened, revealing the Alpha, seated behind his obsidian desk, and Kalia, lounging in a chair nearby with her legs crossed, arms folded.
Kyran wasn't there.
Everly's stomach knotted with something she didn't name.
The Alpha didn't look up from his scroll for a long moment.
When he finally did, his gaze was unreadable.
"You embarrassed my son," he said flatly.
Everly said nothing.
"You made a mockery of a sacred ritual."
Still, she was silent.
"You've caused unrest among the pack."
He leaned back.
"And yet… the Moon confirmed it. Didn't She?"
Everly's jaw tensed.
Kalia stood, walking slowly toward her.
"She didn't say anything," Everly murmured.
Kalia smiled. "But you felt it. Didn't you?"
Everly didn't answer.
The Alpha tapped a finger on the desk. "Here's what's going to happen. You will not speak of it. To anyone. Ever."
Everly blinked. "I haven't."
"And you won't. If you value what little place you still have here." He stood, walking around the desk. "You'll work. You'll obey. And you'll keep that cursed mouth shut."
He stopped in front of her, eyes narrowing.
"Because if I hear so much as a whisper of bond nonsense from your lips…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Didn't need to.
Kalia was watching her closely.
Studying.
Measuring.
Everly nodded once.
That was enough.
---
She was dismissed with no further punishment.
That, more than anything, unsettled her.
She returned to her small room in the cellar and lay on the straw pallet, eyes wide in the dark.
Her limbs ached.
Her chest burned.
And the silence stretched.
Selene didn't speak.
But she was there.
Everly could feel her grief, tucked quietly inside.
And below even that… the memory of the garden flickered again.
The door.
The voice.
The spiral carved into wood.
She hadn't touched it.
But it had pulsed like a heartbeat.
As if it had known her.
As if it had waited.
And maybe… still was.