Chapter 101: What Cannot Be Undone

Chapter 101: What Cannot Be Undone
The snow kept falling.
Thin, windless sheets of it drifted through the trees, silent and constant, as if the world itself refused to acknowledge the chaos unraveling inside me.
I didn’t remember crossing the courtyard. My feet moved on instinct, carrying me between the dark shapes of buildings, around the communal hearth, past the barracks and the outer kennels. A few wolves raised their heads when I passed. No one stopped me. They must have seen the mark already.
They must have known.
I ducked into the forest just beyond the training ring, into the narrow paths that only I used, where the underbrush grew too thick for patrols and the air smelled like moss and frozen earth. I climbed a rise and dropped to the ground behind an outcropping of stone. My body pressed into the snow, hands curled beneath my knees. I stared at the dirt between my boots like it held answers.
It didn’t.
My throat ached. Not from shouting. I hadn’t spoken since I fled. The fire of the second mark still burned faintly beneath my skin, a gentle throb at the base of my throat like a second heartbeat.
I pressed my hand over it. Hard.
It didn’t fade.
“You don’t belong to him,” I whispered.
The wind did not answer.
I wanted to scream. To claw the skin until the mark bled out and vanished. But it wouldn’t change what had already begun. The bond had recognized something before I gave it permission to. My wolf had moved. My body had chosen.
And I hated that part of me for it.
I hated the way my heart had fluttered when Roran’s fingers brushed mine. The way his voice curled around my name like a promise. The way his scent had become a comfort I didn’t ask for.
I pressed harder against the mark. It pulsed beneath my palm.
“No,” I said again. “You don’t get to exist.”
But it did.
The second mark had formed. Not in place of Kael’s, but beside where it had once been. Fainter. Not burned into me like a brand, but laced beneath the skin like moonlight woven through shadow. Beautiful. Dangerous.
My stomach turned.
I had loved Kael with everything I was. I had bled for him. Burned for him. Buried him with my own hands and mourned him until there was nothing left to tear apart. I had carried his child, worn his crest, stood as Luna at his side. The first time he had touched the curve of my stomach, he had wept. He had called me his forever.
How could fate mark me again?
How could it be so cruel?
“I don’t want this,” I whispered.
But my body trembled, not from cold, but from the aching, impossible truth beneath those words.
I did want it.
Somewhere in the deepest part of me, I wanted the warmth of a bond again. I wanted the steadiness of Roran’s presence. The quiet way he let me unravel without trying to fix it. The way he didn’t flinch when I was angry, didn’t run when I broke.
I wanted to live.
But I had promised Kael I wouldn’t forget.
My hand curled into a fist. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth to keep from sobbing.
If I let the mark grow, if I let the bond strengthen, would it erase Kael piece by piece? Would I wake one day and no longer remember the sound of his voice? The way he whispered my name when no one was listening? Would my wolf forget the way his scent had wrapped around me like home?
The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of pine and smoke. Roran’s scent.
I tensed.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t have to. I felt him pause somewhere along the lower ridge, his presence brushing against the edge of mine like a question he hadn’t dared ask yet. My wolf surged toward him without hesitation, but I shoved her back.
No.
Not yet.
Not now.
Not when everything inside me still felt broken in half.
I curled tighter into myself, letting the cold gnaw at my skin. Letting it remind me I was still here. Still real. Still mine.
The bond pulsed again.
I did not answer.
Time passed. I didn’t track it. I sat until the snow had crusted over my boots, until my fingertips ached with chill. Until the sun began to dip behind the trees.
Only then did I move.
I rose slowly, limbs stiff, and climbed back down the ridge toward the den. I moved like a shadow. Avoided the common halls. Took the long way around the back storage passage to reach my room. I shut the door behind me without making a sound.
Talon wasn’t there. I had left him in Dessa’s care while I tracked the patrol. My chest ached at the thought of him. Of his small, warm body curled against mine. Of the questions he might one day ask.
Of how I would answer them.
Would I tell him his father died a hero?
Would I tell him that his mother had tried, and failed, to stay untouched by the world afterward?
I undressed in silence. Pulled a fresh shirt over the mark without looking at it. I didn’t need to see it to know it was still there.
In the mirror, my eyes looked bruised with exhaustion.
I crawled into bed. Lay on my side. Pulled the blanket to my chin and stared at the wall.
Sleep did not come.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw both of them. Kael’s face the night we met. The shape of Roran’s hand reaching for mine. The way both had held me. The way both had seen me.
The ache of wanting rose again.
I didn’t want to feel it.
I wanted to burn it out.
So I did what I had done every night since Kael died.
I locked the feeling away. I buried it beneath layers of silence and grief and guilt. I told myself it was better not to want. Better not to hope. That the bond could be suppressed, if I was strong enough.
That love was not stronger than memory.
That I could remember Kael and still be alone.
Because to do anything else—to allow the mark to bloom, to allow the bond to breathe—meant choosing life again.
And I wasn’t ready.
I curled tighter into the blankets.
The mark thrummed once beneath my skin.
I turned my face into the pillow and let the dark take me.