Chapter 17
Julian’s POV
When I returned to the Silverfang Territory, the first people waiting for me were not Pack Elders or business allies.
They were Selene’s parents–Elder Hartwell and Luna Hartwell of the Whitestone Pack.
They stood in the receiving hall of my estate, their faces grim and unwelcoming, arms crossed like sentinels carved from stone.
As I approached, my steps faltered.
I signaled my Beta to bring tea, trying to hold onto some shred of formality.
But the moment the cups touched the table, Elder Hartwell cut through the air like a blade.
“We heard you severed your Mate Bond with Selene,” he said, his voice low and sharp. “Explain.”
The question hit harder than any blow.
I motioned for them to sit.
They didn’t move.
I sank onto the edge of a chair, feeling smaller than I had since I was a boy facing the Pack Tribunal.
How could I even begin?
They had trusted me with their daughter.
When they agreed to our bonding, it hadn’t been for power or wealth.
It had been for her safety.
They had seen a male nearing thirty, clean of scandal, driven but loyal, and they believed–naively–that I would guard her heart as fiercely as I guarded my Pack.
And for a time, maybe I had.
Until I destroyed everything.
I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice cracked.
I swallowed, tried again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my throat raw.
“I failed her.”
I lowered my gaze to the floor, unable to meet their eyes.
Every heartbeat in the silence between us felt like a hammer striking bone.
I forced myself to speak the truth.
All of it.
The way Claire had returned,
77
the way old regrets had twisted my judgment,
the way I had chased memories instead of protecting the
I told them about the seventy–eight missed calls.
About Selene bleeding alone on the side of a dirt road.
present.
About the severance scroll signed in my own blood, blind and stupid.
When I finished, the hall fell into a silence so thick it was hard to breathe.
Then Elder Hartwell moved.
The slap landed before I even saw it coming.
Chapter 17
A loud, brutal crack.
My head snapped sideways from the force of it.
The taste of iron filled my mouth, but I didn’t lift a hand to defend myself.
I stood still.
I accepted it.
I deserved worse.
Inside me, my wolf whimpered and lay flat against the ground, submitting fully, ashamed.
“You were given our daughter’s trust,” Elder Hartwell said, his voice trembling with rage.
“And you shattered it.”
“I know,” I rasped.
Luna Hartwell stepped forward, her voice like a winter wind cutting to the bone.
“If anything happens to her,” she said, “your pack will answer for it.”
Panic seized me by the throat.
Panic
“No,” I said quickly. “She’s alive. She’s safe.”
I dragged in a breath, forcing myself to stand straighter.
“She’s in Yoria,” I said. “At the Syndicate Research Center.”
I met their gaze finally, even though my vision blurred at the edges.
“She severed our bond cleanly.
She’s moved on.”
Luna Hartwell turned away, pressing her hand to her mouth, her shoulders trembling.
Elder Hartwell’s expression hardened further.
He stepped closer, his presence suffocating.
“Why didn’t she reach out to us?” he demanded.
I swallowed hard, shame flooding my veins.
“Because…”
The word caught.
I forced it out.
“Because in order to survive, she had to leave everything behind.”
Including me.
Including them.”
I saw the blow land in their eyes even if no hand was raised this time.
Selene had cut all ties to the world that had failed her.
And it was my fault.
All my fault.
I watched helplessly as the Hartwells turned and walked away, their footsteps heavy with grief.
The heavy oak doors closed behind them with a hollow thud that echoed through the cavernous hall.
And I stood there-
alone.
Chapter 17
The sting of Elder Hartwell’s slap burned against my skin.
But the ache in
my
chest-
the empty, torn void where my bond to Selene had once lived-
that pain would never fade.
Inside me, my wolf whimpered again.
“Fix it,” it begged, its voice cracked and broken.
“Bring her back. Make it right.”
I pressed a hand against the hollow ache in my chest, as if I could physically hold the pieces together.
“I can’t,” I whispered back.
“We need her,” the wolf pleaded, crawling brokenly across the shattered bond that no longer existed.
“I know,” I whispered.
The wolf let out a low, keening howl inside my mind—a sound so raw, so stripped of pride, that it left me shaking.
I remembered the promises I had once made to her beneath the Blood Moon.
Vows of protection.
Of loyalty.
Of never letting her feel alone.
Vows I had shattered with my own hands.
And now, no matter how many times I replayed it, no matter how many times my soul screamed for a second chance,
the ending was always the same.
Selene was gone.
Alive. Thriving.
But gone.
And I-
I was just a broken Alpha standing in an empty hall, drowning in the ruins of what I had destroyed.
