Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen
PRESENT TIME

“I’m sorry, Niklath.”

The words fall from my lips before I can catch them. They feel foreign in my mouth, like something heavy and half-formed, but they come out anyway. My voice shakes, not from fear, but from the exhaustion of carrying too many emotions without release. “If you really care for me the way you say you do… then you have to let me go. I can’t keep doing this, pretending I’m whole when I’m crumbling in places I don’t even recognize anymore.”

He does not move, but I can feel the way his presence stretches across the space between us, like heat before a storm. The air thickens, pulsing with energy only I seem to feel. He says nothing, and still, I feel the gravity of his silence pulling at something inside me.

“I need to find myself again,” I whisper. “Before Angelica. Before Cecilia. Before this version of my life swallowed me whole and left nothing but echoes behind.”

The words hang there, suspended. I expect resistance. I expect that Alpha energy to push forward again to fight. I expect his wolf to take over and claim but what I get instead is stillness.

A silence that feels heavier than any argument. I watch him. I watch how his hands curl once, then loosen. I see the war playing out in his eyes, the instincts battling the man. He has never been good at surrendering. It goes against everything he was born to be. But this moment… this is different.

Then, slowly, he steps forward. He doesn’t utter one word. He only leans down, presses his lips to my forehead, and breathes me in like he already knows he’s losing something sacred. The kiss lingers…long, aching, quiet. It is a kiss that says all the things his pride or maybe his wolf will never let him voice aloud.

“I understand,” he finally says, and the words crack something in my chest. His voice is lower than usual, rough around the edges, like the growl of a wolf beneath the skin. “But don’t shut me out completely, Miara. Wherever you go… whatever you need… just tell me. Let me know you’re safe. That’s all I ask.”

I nod, even though my eyes are burning. “I will.”

I turn to leave and I try my hardest not look back. My hand finds my phone on the edge of the desk. My fingers tremble slightly as I swipe to my contacts and press the name that grounds me. Marianne. My lifeline.

She picks up quickly. “Mia? Calling me twice in one day.. I feel special.”

She tries to say it in a jovial way but her voice is already tight with concern. She must have felt this unraveling before I did.

“I lied,” I whisper, pressing a hand to the center of my chest. “Everything isn’t alright. I can’t stay here. I can’t breathe. I need to leave. Please… book a flight. Find somewhere quiet. Somewhere far.”

She pauses, her silence laced with understanding. When she speaks again, her tone is calm and grounding. The voice she uses when she knows I’m unraveling from the inside out especially these past few months.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, staring out the window at the distant Zürich skyline. “Just somewhere that doesn’t feel like this. Somewhere I can remember who I am without him watching.”

Another pause. Then she speaks again, her voice steady and clear, like she had already considered this the moment Niklath and I began to falter. “Lofoten.”

I ask. “Where?”

“Lofoten Islands,” she says. “Northern Norway. Quiet. Wild. Solitude like you wouldn’t believe. Mountains that kiss the sea. Cottages with firewood and nothing else. You can walk for hours without hearing a single voice. It’s where people go when they need to disappear. To remember themselves.”

I close my eyes and try to picture it…The jagged cliffs. The dark green water licking at rock. The vastness. The silence. A world untouched by memory. It is perfect.

“Book it,” I say.

“I already am,” she replies softly. “You leave at dawn.”

I lower the phone, ending the call. My feet carry me to the window, and I stand there for a long time, watching the last light slip behind the curve of the city. I let my fingers press lightly to the glass as if it might answer me.

What am I walking toward?

What am I leaving behind?

A marriage that never held the words I needed. A man whose silence I once mistook for protection. A bond that felt more like destiny than choice… and yet somewhere along the way, I lost myself in its shadow.

I need to breathe. To walk without being watched. To live without being claimed. And still…My heart tugs toward him.

I can still feel the warmth of his body behind me. The sound of his heartbeat when I laid my head on his chest at night. The way his wolf stirred beneath his skin whenever he sensed I was slipping. That part of him was always the most honest. His wolf. It never lied. Never calculated. Never hesitated when it came to me.

Only a handful of times in our marriage had he let me see it fully and each time, it came when I least expected it. Each time, it was raw. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. If he shifts in front of me again… If that massive black wolf with the glacier-blue eyes lowers his head in surrender, whimpers like he did when I told him I couldn’t take another betrayal, I won’t have the strength to walk away.

He knows that. Maybe that’s why he let me go. Maybe he wanted me to have a chance. A real one. Maybe letting me walk was his truest act of love because a part of me does feel he loves me…only a part. I press my fingers harder against the glass until my hand aches. Outside, the lights of the city blur. Zürich moves on. Quiet. Steady. Unbothered.But I do not move. Because part of me is still standing in that room with him, remembering how his eyes looked when I said goodbye. How his fingers flexed like they were reaching for something they knew they couldn’t keep and somewhere deep inside me, beneath the layers of pain and strength and survival, I still feel the bond.