Chapter 55 What Remains of the Wolf
Grayson:
I remained.
But a man cannot remain and remain whole.
By the second morning, the cold hurt less. That frightened me more than the ache had.
Pain meant sensation.
Pain meant resistance.
The dullness spreading through my limbs felt like something far more final.
Someone pressed water into my hand. I didn’t remember taking it. I didn’t remember drinking it either.
Salt crusted my skin, my hair, my lashes.
My hands shook when I stood, a fine tremor I couldn’t stop. I locked my jaw and forced my hands to still, the way I’d been trained to do.
It didn’t work.
My head spun and the world tilted when I turned too quickly. My knees buckled without warning, and for one humiliating second I had to catch myself on a rock.
A low mournful sound tore out of my chest before I could stop it. Not a howl. Not a word.
Something smaller.
My wolf recoiled at the sound like it had been struck.
Boots scraped nearby.
“Don’t,” I growled, voice rough and unrecognizable.
They froze.
Helena stepped into my line of sight, her presence steady, delibrate. She dismissed the others. When she spoke, it was quiet enough that only the sea heard us.
“This isn’t strength,” she said. “This is what happens right before you lose yourself.”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
Because if I opened my mouth, her name would fall out. And I wasn’t ready for that again.
The beach crews packed up around us in stages.
Lights went dark.
Drones lifted and vanished one by one.
The war front dissolved into morning, leaving behind wreckage and footprints and the smell of broken things.
I stayed.
I let the sun burn my skin and like grief was seeping deeper into my bones.
I would not leave. I could not.
Leaving felt too close to acceptance.
A young warrior approached late in the morning, mud caked to his boots, eyes too wide for someone who should have been hardened already. He held out a twisted shard of metal wrapped in fabric.
“Found it down current,” he said. His hands shook. “We thought...”
“What did you think?” My voice scraped my throat raw.
He swallowed. “We thought we might find something.”
I took the metal. Breathed in. Searched it for her scent with an animal desperation that made my vision blur.
Nothing.
I hurled it into the sea.
They'd brought Harrow to me before they had moved him inland.
Bandaged, pale, eyes too bright with pain and fury.
He tried to stand when he saw me. I stopped him with my body, pressing him back down with my weight.
“Don’t,” I warned.
He obeyed.
For a brief, fragile second, we were two wolves weighed down by the same grief.
Neither of us spoke. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t tear something open.
They loaded him into the medic transport.
As they wheeled him away, his hand flung back once, fingers curling and uncurling like he couldn’t decide whether to hold on or let go.
The transport doors closed.
Something inside my chest cracked open silently.
The doctors had put him in induced coma. It was necessary. He would have a long recovery ahead.
I crouched at the cliff’s edge and let the sun hit my face. My bones ached with the effort of existing. With the hunt. With the endless, useless need to rip open the sea and pull her out by force.
I didn’t know then how fast the pack would rearrange itself. How quickly grief would turn into opportunity. How silence would invite plans.
I only knew this:
I would not accept presumed dead.
I would not accept lost.
I would not accept silence as an answer.
So I stayed.
I howled until my throat bled and the moon receded.
When they tried to lift me, to force rest, I shook them off with the slow, indifferent strength of a wolf who had already decided what would be done.
I would sleep when I found her.
I would rest when there was proof.
Until then, the cliff and the sea and the cold were my vows.
Someone touched my shoulder.
A mistake.
My wolf surged, a low, guttural snarl tearing loose before I could leash it. Boots shuffled back. Space opened instinctively.
Helena waved them off.
“You need food. Water,” she said. “This isn’t martyrdom. It’s suicide.”
I stared out at the water.
“Did they find her?”
Silence answered.
My wolf pressed its forehead against the inside of my skull, wounded and relentless.
Mate lost.
Mate hurt.
Find mate.
A hand landed on my back again. Heavier this time.
Alpha Marcus.
“There are things that must be addressed,” he said.
I blinked once. Slowly.
“Like what.”
“The Council is asking for your presence.”
I turned just enough to look at him. He flinched. Not from fear. From recognition.
“They can wait.”
“They won’t,” he said. “Rumors are moving faster than truth.”
Rumors.
Of Evie.
Of the attack.
Of the Alpha who went feral on a cliff and forgot how to be a man.
“Say it,” I whispered.
Marcus swallowed. “The Elders want to discuss appointing a temporary Luna.”
The world went silent.
Sound dropped out. Heat flashed through my veins like lightning.
“Who,” I said softly, “suggested that.”
He hesitated. He didn’t need to answer.
Isabelle’s scent lingered faintly on the wind. She had been here. Watching. Measuring the damage she’d helped create.
Something in me shifted.
This wasn’t grief anymore.
This was alignment.
“I know,” I snapped, then quieter, “I know.”
My legs trembled when I stood. I hated that they did. Hated that two warriors moved closer, not to restrain me, but to catch me if I fell.
I stood anyway.
Because even if Evie was gone...
NO.
Even if Evie was missing...
I would not let the pack crown another Luna over her absence.
“Harrow lives,” Marcus said quickly. “Barely. But alive.”
Relief cracked through me. Small. Sharp. Gone almost as soon as I felt it.
“He will recover?”
“Yes. Slowly. His first words when he woke...”
Marcus stopped.
“What did he say.”
He exhaled. “He said, ‘It wasn’t an accident.’”
The cold returned all at once.
I nodded.
I already knew.
But now I could use it.
When I finally stepped back from the cliff, no one spoke.
They bowed their heads.
Not in relief.
Not in victory.
In mourning.
In fear.
In recognition of a wolf who had nearly torn himself apart and come back carrying something sharper.
I walked through them slowly, every muscle shaking, every breath a conscious act. Helena fell into step beside me. Marcus followed like a shadow.
Drones dimmed their lights. Warriors parted.
They watched like men watching something crawl out of the grave.
Maybe I had.
Maybe I hadn’t.
But I was done waiting for the sea to answer.
Now, I would make the world speak.