Chapter 48

Chapter 48
Rowan’s POV 

I didn’t sleep.

Not even for a second.

My body was exhausted, but my mind refused to settle. I stood on the balcony outside my room with the night air chilling my skin. I watched over the quiet darkness of the pack grounds. 

Even though everything seemed calm, my wolf was alert and growling inside me, reacting to the memory of Lyla not being here, gone for hours without a sound, without a trace.

It had been hell searching for her.

The woods. The border. The roads.

Every second she wasn’t found chipped at something inside me, something I didn’t want to name, something I’d ignored too long.

And when I saw her walking out of the shadows…

Clothes wet from dew. Face pale. Eyes red from crying.

Something inside me snapped.

I didn’t think. I just held her.

That was the moment I knew the truth.

I wasn’t just angry because she’d run off.

I wasn’t just scared because she was in danger.

I cared in a way that went deeper than reason, logic, or position and I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t push it away anymore. I hated that Damon knew it before I did.

And I hated that Lyla was caught in the middle of it all.

That thought kept me awake the rest of the night.

When the first light stretched across the sky, I went straight to my office. I didn’t wait to be called. I didn’t need to be asked. There was too much to handle, starting with the same elders who wanted Lyla gone yesterday.

I walked into the council room and they were already waiting.

Five elders. Three advisors. My beta’s seat empty, Damon wasn’t here yet.

And Dalia, sitting beside her parents with a dramatic scowl she probably practiced in a mirror.

Of course she was here.

I took my seat at the head of the room and didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“What’s the update on the necklace?” I asked, cutting right through their talking.

Dalia leaned forward, lips tight. “Still missing. And the only person who entered my chamber yesterday was Lyla.”

Her mother nodded dramatically. “We’ve been saying it from the start, she brings trouble into this pack. Look at how things were before she came.”

“She’s deceitful,” added one of the elders. “She brought danger straight to our borders.”

“She’s unpredictable,” Dalia added, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Even last night, she ran away instead of answering for her actions. That says everything.”

I let them talk for a moment, not because I wanted to hear more, but because I needed to feel how much room I had before I shut this down.

“And how do you know she took it?” I finally asked.

Dalia blinked. “Because it’s gone.”

“That isn’t proof.”

“You think she didn’t take it?” Dalia shot back. “You believe her over your own fiancée?”

Silence filled the room.

One of the elders stepped in. “Alpha Rowan, it’s not just about the necklace anymore. A man from outside the pack has threatened her. We heard it ourselves. If she’s really from the Darkmoon Pack, if Alpha Kaiden is now searching for her, then she’s a danger to all of us. She should be sent away before a war begins.”

“And if that man comes for her before she’s gone?” another elder added. “She’ll lead trouble right to us.”

“So we just… hand her over?” I said quietly.

One of them opened their mouth to speak, but I raised my hand. I didn’t want any more excuses.

“She isn’t going anywhere,” I said, voice steady. “As long as Lyla is under my protection, no one is throwing her out. And you will not repeat this conversation to anyone outside this room. Not one word.”

“Rowan,” Dalia’s father snapped, “she is a threat to your own mate. To your own future Luna. You’re choosing a stranger over your own people.”

That was when Dalia looked at me.

And there it was again.

That smug, satisfied look she thought she hid well.

The look that told me she never cared about the necklace.

She cared about the war she was trying to start.

I stood up slowly.

Meeting over.

“Everyone leave,” I said. “I’ll deal with this myself.”

Chairs scraped as the room cleared. Dalia stood, glaring like she’d been robbed. Damon walked in then, late, but one look at my face and he knew not to speak.

When the door shut behind the last person, Damon finally stepped forward.

“You really sent them all away like that?” he asked.

“They needed to go,” I said.

“You didn’t deny her leaving because she’s innocent. You did it because of you.”

I looked up at him.

And suddenly, the argument from last night wasn’t over.

“It’s not about me,” I said.

“It is,” Damon said calmly. “You think I don’t see it? You can’t let her go, but you don’t want to admit why.”

“Be careful,” I said, voice low.

“I am. Are you?”

The room went still.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then I looked away, letting out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“I’m not removing her because she hasn’t done anything wrong,” I said.

“That’s part of it,” Damon said. “But it’s not the only part.”

“I don’t need your opinion on this.”

“You do if it’s clouding your judgment.”

That one landed.

He stood there, waiting like he wanted me to say it.

Like he wanted me to admit something neither of us wanted spoken out loud.

But I didn’t.

Couldn’t.

“Get out,” I said.

He stared at me a moment, eyes full of disappointment and something sharper. Then he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like an Alpha sitting in that seat.

I felt like a man who was losing control of everything that mattered.

And I wasn’t even sure how to stop it.



The office felt too small. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that crept under your skin and stayed there, pushing your thoughts into corners you didn’t want to explore.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a leader holding everything together. I felt like a man stuck between duty and something I didn’t want to name.

I stayed in the office longer than I should’ve. Papers lay untouched on my desk, reports scattered under my hands. Patrol schedules. Security updates. None of it did enough to erase the image of Lyla crying on her bed, or the sound of her voice when she said she would leave if she was just going to bring trouble to the pack.

She wasn’t trouble.

But she believed she was.

And a small part of me wondered if I was doing the same thing, making her feel trapped just because I didn’t want her gone.

Damon loved her. That much was clear. He didn’t hide it. He didn’t deny it. Everything he did; every motion, every word had her at the center, and I envied him for that. He didn’t ask himself a hundred times whether he was allowed to feel something before he acted.

I used to think I was the stronger one.

But in moments like this, Damon made me feel like I was stuck in a battle I’d already lost.

A knock pulled me out of my head. One of the border guards stepped in, holding a tablet and a concerned expression.

“Alpha. You asked to be updated on suspicious movement near the perimeter.”

I nodded. “What did you find?”

He turned the tablet around, showing surveillance images captured between midnight and dawn.

Images of the forest.

Of shadows. Of someone watching the pack from behind the trees.

Not one wolf I recognized. Not a runner. Not a scout. A stranger.

The same height. Same build.

The same man who threatened Lyla at the party.

“He was seen twice between 3 AM and 4 AM,” the guard said. “Didn’t get closer than the outer tree line, but he left something.”

He pulled a plastic pouch from his pocket and set it on my desk.

Inside the pouch was a folded piece of paper.

I took it out.

Unfolded it.

And froze.

It was a photograph. Of Lyla.

Taken from behind a tree.

Her back was turned. Hair falling loose. She was talking to Damon in front of the bakery. Smiling.

And under the picture, in big black letters:

'We know where she is.'

My wolf roared inside me, pacing furiously, demanding I tear down whatever stood in the way.

I stood up so fast the chair behind me scraped the floor.

“Send double patrol to every border point. No one comes in. No one crosses out without clearance.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Tell Damon to meet me in my office—now.”

The guard nodded, hurried out, and I barely held myself together long enough to breathe properly.

Someone was closing in on Lyla.

And not just in rumor or in story, or in memory.

In reality.

And I knew without a doubt that if Kaiden or anyone loyal to him, got a hand on her, she would never come back alive.

I needed answers. I needed plans. I needed—

I paused at the window. And there she was.

Outside the bakery.

Laughing.

Smiling.

Wiping flour off her cheek with the back of her hand.

As if nothing in the world was wrong.

Damon was there with her, leaning against the counter, eyes soft, body relaxed. They looked natural together. Like they belonged in the same room, the same breath, the same life.

Something dropped in my chest.

Hard.

Sharp.

And real.

I froze, one hand on the window frame, watching them long enough for the truth to burn its way into every part of me.

She wasn’t mine.

Not by right.

Not by promise.

Not by bond.

But seeing her there happy, alive, glowing under the light of something warm made me feel like I was losing something I never got the chance to have.

My phone buzzed.

Damon.

Already on his way up to see me.

I stepped back from the window and let the curtain fall back into place, shutting out the sight I wasn’t ready to face anymore.

He knocked and came in without waiting.

“What did you need?” he asked.

I didn’t look up.

I picked up the photograph from my desk and slid it toward him.

His eyes narrowed.

Then widened.

Then filled with the kind of quiet rage I’d been feeling since the moment I saw it.

“Who took this?” he asked.

“Someone watching us from the forest.”

He said nothing, jaw tight, chest rising and falling fast.

“They’re getting closer,” I said. “And they’re not hiding anymore.”

Damon met my eyes.

And for the first time since the argument, we weren’t on opposite sides of the room anymore.

“We protect the pack and Lyla,” he said. “No matter what happens. You and I. Both of us.”

I nodded.

And for a moment, just a moment, it felt like we were back to being Alpha and Beta again.

Not rivals. Not men in love with the same woman. Just protectors.

The silence didn’t last long. Footsteps sounded in the hall.

Rapid. Heavy. Urgent.

The door flew open and Ella ran in, out of breath.

“Alpha—”

She looked from me to Damon, then back to me, panic spreading fast across her face.

“It’s Lyla,” she choked out.