No one said her name.
They circled it instead careful, cautious, like speaking it aloud might summon something none of us were ready to face.
The council chamber was heavy with smoke and tension when I arrived. Every Alpha, Elder, and Beta rose at once, the scrape of chairs echoing like a warning.
"Sit," I ordered.
They obeyed.
Reports lay stacked before me border movements, rogue sightings, market disturbances. Routine. Boring.
Until I caught the hesitation.
"Spit it out," I said coldly. "What are you afraid to tell me?"
Elder Rhex exchanged a look with my Beta. Too slow. Too guilty.
"There's… a name," Rhex said at last. "Being spoken in the outer territories."
My wolf stirred.
I leaned back, expression unreadable. "Names are spoken every day."
"Not this one."
Silence fell.
Then he said it.
Her name.
The sound of it hit like a blade between my ribs.
I didn't move. Didn't breathe. If I reacted, they would see weakness and I would not give them that.
"That's impossible," I said calmly. "She's dead."
"That's what we believed," the Elder replied. "Until multiple sources confirmed the same thing. A woman matching her description. Scarred. Traveling with rogues."
My hands clenched slowly at my sides.
Scarred.
Of course she was.
"And what else?" I asked.
"She refuses pack protection," my Beta added. "And when questioned… she denies ever belonging to us."
The words landed harder than any accusation.
Denies.
Belonging.
I stood.
The chamber shrank beneath my presence, fear rippling outward as my wolf pressed against my skin.
"She left," I said, voice like ice. "By choice."
No one challenged me.
But the truth clawed its way up my spine, ugly and undeniable.
I had let her go unguarded. Unclaimed. Unprotected.
Dead girls don't deny their past.
Living women do.
"Clear the room," I ordered.
They fled.
Alone, I braced my hands against the council table, staring down at the map burned into its surface. The borders. The Iron Pass.
Her name echoed again in my mind no longer a memory, but a warning.
She was alive.
And worse
She had learned how to live without me.