KAEL'S POV
The silver moonflowers felt like ice in my hands.
I knelt before the tombstone, same as every month for three years. Same flowers. Same crushing guilt. Same emptiness eating me from the inside out.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the cold stone. "I'm so fucking sorry, Aria."
My wolf howled inside my mind—a broken, agonized sound that never stopped. That's what happens when you reject your true mate. The bond doesn't just break. It shatters, leaving jagged pieces cutting into your soul forever.
I traced her name carved into the marble: Aria Silvermoon. Beloved daughter. Lost too soon.
They didn't know the truth. Nobody did.
She wasn't just lost. She was murdered—by my choices, my cowardice, my desperate need to be the perfect Alpha everyone expected.
The memory hit me like it did every night: Aria's body crumpling as the silver blade meant for me pierced her heart instead. Her blood soaking into my hands. Her amber eyes—so full of love even as the light died—staring up at me.
"I loved you," she'd whispered with her last breath.
Three words that destroyed me more than any weapon ever could.
Because I'd loved her too. I'd just been too much of a coward to choose her.
Two years before her death
"Marry Selene Nightshade," my father commanded, slamming his fist on the desk. "The Nightshade alliance is the only thing preventing civil war. Your feelings for some omega girl don't matter."
"She's my mate," I'd argued, desperate. "The Moon Goddess herself chose—"
"The Moon Goddess doesn't pay for armies! The Nightshade pack does!" He grabbed my collar, eyes blazing. "You will reject that bond and marry Selene, or I'll kill the girl myself and make you watch."
I should've fought harder. Should've protected Aria. Should've told my father to go to hell and run away with her.
Instead, I stood before the Grand Council three months later and spoke the words that broke us both: "I, Kael Blackthorn, reject the mate bond with Aria Silvermoon."
I watched her face crumble. Watched tears stream down her cheeks as the bond tore apart, leaving us both bleeding from wounds no one else could see.
She'd stumbled from the chamber without a word.
I married Selene a week later.
Present
"I chose wrong," I told the tombstone, my voice cracking. "I chose duty over you, power over love, and it cost me everything. You died saving me, and I didn't deserve it. I still don't deserve it."
The sacred grove was silent except for wind rustling through ancient trees. Moonlight filtered through the branches, making the flowers on her grave glow silver.
My wolf stirred, restless and wrong. Three years of living as half a soul. Three years of a cold marriage bed and colder heart. Three years of ruling the territories with brutal efficiency because if I stopped moving, stopped working, I'd have to face what I'd done.
"Selene knows, you know," I continued, because talking to a ghost was better than the silence waiting at home. "She knows I'll never love her. That I visit your grave every month. That I sleep in a different wing of the manor because I can't stand touching someone who isn't you."
A bitter laugh escaped me. "I became exactly what my father wanted. The perfect Alpha. Strong, ruthless, unfeeling. And I hate it. I hate him for forcing my hand. I hate myself for taking it. But mostly, I hate that you're gone and I can't even beg your forgiveness properly."
I placed the moonflowers on the grave with shaking hands.
"I'd give anything to undo it," I whispered. "Anything to go back and choose differently. To choose you. But I can't, and you're dead, and I'm just... stuck here. Alive but not living. Breathing but not whole."
My wolf howled again, the sound echoing through my skull.
I stood, brushing dirt from my knees. The walk back to the manor would take twenty minutes through the forest. Twenty minutes where I could pretend the world didn't exist. Where I could remember what it felt like when Aria smiled at me—really smiled, with her whole heart.
Before I ruined everything.
I turned away from the grave, taking one step toward the tree line.
Then another.
On the third step, my wolf suddenly went silent.
Not calm. Not peaceful. Just... frozen.
Every instinct I had—Alpha and man—screamed at me that something was wrong.
I spun around.
The moonlight hitting Aria's tombstone had changed. It wasn't soft white anymore. It was silver—bright, pure, impossible silver that made my eyes water.
The light grew brighter.
Brighter.
Brighter.
Cracks appeared in the stone—thin lines of blazing silver spreading like lightning across the marble.
"What the—"
The tombstone exploded.
I threw my arm up, shielding my face as marble shards flew everywhere. The silver light erupted from the grave like a pillar connecting earth to sky.
Power slammed into me—ancient, divine, furious power that drove me to my knees.
My wolf didn't just wake up. It screamed.
Because we knew that power.
We'd felt it once before, three years ago, in the split second before Aria's heart stopped beating.
The light began to fade.
And through the blinding brilliance, I saw something impossible.
A figure rising from the shattered grave.
A woman, wrapped in silver light and moonbeams, standing where there should only be death.
She took one step forward.
The light dimmed just enough for me to see her face.
My heart stopped.
"No," I breathed. "It's impossible."
Silver-white hair cascaded down her back. Eyes that glowed like molten moonlight turned toward me. Power radiated from her in waves that made the air itself tremble.
She looked different—taller, ethereal, wrapped in divine authority that made my Alpha instincts scream to submit.
But I knew that face.
I'd seen it every night in my nightmares for three years.
"Aria?" My voice broke on her name.
Those glowing silver eyes locked onto mine.
And the woman I'd buried three years ago spoke.
"Hello, Kael."