The royal rear gardens of the Eboncrest exist inside a state of glass-like tranquility.

Towering white stone arches segment the space, overgrown with pale, winter-blooming ivy that thrives beneath the mild empire sun. Anastasia sits on a curved obsidian bench, a heavy leather-bound volume resting open across her lap.

She wears a crisp, ice-white tunic beneath her slate-gray cloak, her fingers gracefully turning the thick parchment pages. Her breathing is slow, steady, and unbothered.

Weeks inside Valerian territory had slowly rebuilt what Black Hollow destroyed. Color had returned faintly to her face. Her hands no longer trembled constantly.

Footsteps crunched softly across the snow behind her. Anastasia didn't look up immediately. Valerian guards rotated through the palace grounds constantly now. But then—a scent hit her. Mud. Blood. Dead bond residue.

Her entire body froze. Slowly, very slowly, Anastasia lifted her eyes.

It is Kaelen.

He has somehow breached the outermost garden perimeter by slinking through the palace's subterranean drainage ducts—a desperate, filthy rat crawling into a sanctuary. He looks completely hollowed out, a phantom of the proud Alpha King who had stood on the ceremonial platform weeks ago. His royal tunic is ripped to shreds, encrusted with dark river mud and dried blood, and his face is gaunt, pale, and trembling with a manic, hyper-fixated focus.

His beastly instincts, completely consumed by the spreading necrosis of the severed bond, had driven him here with a singular, delusional clarity: he has to reconnect with her. He has to tether his soul back to her light, or his bloodline will rot completely before the next full moon.

Anastasia looks up from her book.

Her gray eyes lock onto the disheveled, pathetic figure standing a few paces away. But she doesn't scream. She doesn't gasp, and she doesn't reach for the hidden bone knife beneath her sleeve. Her expression remains perfectly, terrifyingly unbothered.

Kaelen takes one slow step closer, his voice rough. "Ana…"

The name sounds shattered. Anastasia's eyes remain completely calm. 

Snow drifts quietly between them. Kaelen's breathing becomes uneven. "I searched everywhere for you."

No response.

"I thought you died."

Still nothing. Anastasia simply watches him silently while the winter wind moves through the cedar branches overhead.

Kaelen's hands start shaking. God, he hates this silence. He hates the distance. He hates the western palace surrounding her like a fortress. Most of all, he hates how calm she looks without him. The realization poisons him from the inside.

Kaelen takes another step forward. "Ana…" His voice cracks this time, real desperation slipping through. "I was wrong."

The words costly tear themselves out of him. Anastasia's expression doesn't change, not even slightly.

Kaelen swallows hard, his cracked lips trembling. The mighty Alpha of Black Hollow lowers his head for the first time in his life. "I'm sorry."

Silence. The apology hangs between them awkwardly. Pitifully. Too late.

Anastasia looks at him for several seconds before finally speaking. "You crossed western borders for that?" Her voice holds no emotion. 

"I came for you."

"No." Anastasia's eyes turn colder. "You came for yourself."

The words land like a blade, and Kaelen flinches visibly because she is right. The necrotic bond. The collapsing instincts. 

He reaches toward her instinctively. "Ana, please—"

Anastasia steps backward immediately. Not frightened—repulsed. Like his touch itself disgusts her.

Something inside Kaelen cracks. "Ana…" His voice sounds almost broken now.

He drops lower suddenly, one knee hitting the snowy ground, then both. Mud stains his hands as he reaches desperately toward the edge of her coat. "I can fix this. We can repair the bond. Elias has ancient texts—there are rituals—"

"No."

The answer comes immediate, absolute. Kaelen freezes.

Anastasia looks down at him quietly. And for the first time since they met, Kaelen understands something horrifying: she truly does not love him anymore.

Not buried, not hidden—gone. Completely gone.

The realization hollowed him out instantly. Panic surges violently through his chest.

"No," Kaelen says quickly, his voice rising into a sharp, erratic tempo. "No, Ana, listen to me—"

He stands abruptly and grabs toward her wrist. It is a desperate, animal action—the possessive instinct of a fading Alpha finally overpowering what little reason remains in his collapsing mind.

"I'm taking you home." His jagged, mud-stained fingertips reach through the falling snow. They almost touch her skin. Almost.

Then, the entire valley freezes. 

A cataclysmic wave of pure Alpha pressure detonates through the royal gardens. Kaelen's body locks instantly. Every primal instinct buried inside his bloodline screams a uniform warning: Death.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echo slowly from the deep shadows beyond the cedar path. They are measured, calm, and terrifyingly unhurried.

Draven Thorne emerges from the dark stone archway. He wears his long, pitch-black royal coat, dusted lightly at the shoulders with fresh frost. One gloved hand rests loosely, almost indifferently, against the dark iron hilt of the sword at his waist.

He does not look angry. That is the worst part. There is no visible rage, no dramatic display of territorial violence—only an absolute, crushing certainty.

The hidden Valerian guards throughout the garden perimeter immediately lower their heads, their internal wolves whining in instinctive, absolute submission to the sovereign aura.

Kaelen staggers backward under the sheer mass of the pressure. His knees crack audibly beneath the weight of Draven's dominance. Bone hits the frozen stone path with a brutal, heavy thud. 

Impossible.

Kaelen's bloodshot eyes widen wildly as he stares up through the slush. The spies said he was bleeding... they said he...

But nothing about Draven Thorne looks weakened. 

Draven stops precisely between Anastasia and Kaelen. The positioning isn't loud or performatively protective; it is simply inevitable—like no other hierarchy can naturally exist in this world.

His ice-blue eyes lower toward the shivering shape in the mud. Kaelen has never truly understood the staggering, bottomless gap between a border chieftain and an imperial sovereign before this exact second.

Now, it is carved into his bones.

Kaelen tries forcing his chest off the ground, but the weight increases, pinning him flat. Another sickening pop echoes from his fractured knee, his fresh crimson blood staining the frozen river stones beneath him.

Anastasia stands behind the broad, unyielding silhouette of the King in complete silence. She doesn't flinch from the pressure.

Kaelen looks up through his tangled, filth-crusted hair, his face twisted in pure agony. "Ana—"

Anastasia's voice cuts through the snowfall, flat and cold as mountain ice. "Black Hollow's Kaelen."

The formal title alone nearly destroys him. Her gray eyes remain dead to his panic.

"There's no place for you here anymore."

The words systematically crush whatever remains of Kaelen's ancestral pride, turning it into worthless dust. 

Draven finally speaks. His voice is quiet, almost a soft murmur against the wind, which only makes the terror of it absolute.

"Leave."

One word.

Kaelen's internal wolf, thoroughly terrified, screams at him to flee into the woods immediately, but the frantic madness of his obsession still claws through his teeth.

"You think she belongs to you now?" Kaelen snarled weakly, his voice shaking.

It is the wrong thing to say.

The temperature in the royal garden drops instantly into a sub-zero freeze. Draven takes one slow, deliberate step forward.

Kaelen stops breathing entirely. The Wolf King looks down at him the way an apex predator looks at a dying animal—without effort, without emotion, absolute.

Then finally, Draven speaks again, his voice dropping even lower, each syllable heavier than an executioner's axe.

"Touch her again…"

His gloved hand remains resting lightly against the sword hilt—still undrawn, still completely unnecessary. Draven's ice-blue eyes never left Kaelen's fracturing face.

"…Black Hollow disappears from the map."