Chapter 82
Hardin stood alone in the dim pre-dawn light, fingers tracing the line of the great river for the thousandth time. The current had swallowed Rhianna that night. He had replayed the scene in his mind until it was etched into his bones: her fragile body running through the forest, the rogues Brittany sent closing in, her desperate leap into the raging water rather than be taken.
He had never stopped believing she survived.
He couldn’t afford to.
A sharp knock shattered the silence.
The door flew open before he could respond.
Rylan—his most reliable scout, lean and scarred from too many rogue encounters—stumbled in, cloak dripping with morning dew, chest heaving. His eyes were wild, pupils blown wide with disbelief.
“Alpha,” he gasped. “We have her.”
Hardin’s world narrowed to a single point.
The map forgotten.
The room forgotten.
Only those three words.
He turned slowly, every muscle coiled like a spring.
“What did you say?”
Rylan swallowed hard, forcing his voice steady.
“Rhianna. She’s alive. She was seen. Yesterday. In a village market attached to a royal palace beyond the river.”
Hardin crossed the room in two strides, grabbing Rylan by the front of his cloak. Not in anger—fear. Raw, choking fear that this might be another cruel rumor.
“Tell me everything,” he growled. “Every detail. Now.”
Rylan didn’t flinch.
“Our contact—old Marek, the herb trader we’ve used for years—was setting up his stall at the edge of the market square. Mid-morning. Busy day. Villagers everywhere, children running, vendors shouting. Then he saw her.”
Hardin’s grip tightened.
“She walked right past his stall. Arm\-in\-arm with the prince of that realm. Tall, golden-haired, royal bearing even in plain clothes. They were laughing. She wore a simple gray cloak and… a flower crown someone must have given her. Petals in her hair. She looked… healthy. Stronger than we ever imagined after the river. But she moved like someone who belonged there. Like she was happy.”
Hardin released Rylan abruptly, stepping back as if the words had burned him.
Happy.
With another man.
The scout continued, voice quieter now.
“They stopped at a stall selling spiced cider. The prince bought two cups. She tasted hers and made this little face—like she’d never had anything so strong before—then laughed. Real laugh. The kind that makes people around her smile. Marek said she looked… alive. More alive than any ghost we’ve chased.”
Hardin’s claws extended involuntarily, scraping grooves into the table.
“And then?” he asked, voice dangerously low.
Rylan met his eyes.
“Marek locked eyes with her. Right in the face. He was close enough to smell her—faint wolf scent, still there, but weak, damaged. He stared straight at her, hoping for something. A flicker. A spark. Recognition. Anything.”
Hardin waited.
“She looked back,” Rylan said softly. “Straight into his eyes. No flinch. No pause. No widening of pupils. Nothing. Like she’d never seen him before. Like she’d never seen any of us before. Her expression was polite, distant, curious at most. Then she turned away and kept walking with the prince. Arm still linked. Smiling like the market was her world.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Hardin’s wolf howled inside him—agonized, furious, helpless.
Memory loss.
Complete.
She didn’t know who she was.
She didn’t know Sebastian had abandoned her.
She didn’t know Brittany had tried to kill her.
She didn’t know Hardin had spent every night since she vanished tearing the world apart to find her.
She was smiling at another man.
A prince.
Looking like a couple.
Hardin turned away from Rylan, bracing both hands on the table. His shoulders shook—not with sobs, but with the effort to keep from shifting and ripping the room apart.
“She’s alive,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone.
Rylan nodded. “Yes, Alpha. She’s alive.”
Hardin straightened.
The pain in his chest was a living thing, clawing at him, but beneath it burned something unbreakable.
Resolve.
“Prepare the elite guard,” he ordered, voice cold and precise. “Full armament. Stealth crossing. Black cloaks, no insignia. We move tonight. We cross the river. We bring her home.”
Rylan bowed. “It will be done. How many?”
“Twenty of our best. Silent. Fast. No mistakes.”
Rylan turned to leave.
Hardin’s voice stopped him at the door.
“And Rylan?”
The scout paused.
“If anyone tries to stop us… if that prince stands in the way…”
Hardin’s eyes glowed gold.
“We take her anyway.”
Rylan nodded once, then slipped out.
Hardin stood alone again.
He stared at the map.
The river line stared back.
She was on the other side.
Alive.
Happy.
With someone else.
The thought twisted like a knife, but he refused to let it cripple him.
She didn’t remember.
That was the only thing keeping him sane.
If she remembered—if she knew what Sebastian did, what Brittany ordered, what Hardin had failed to prevent—she would hate them all.
But she didn’t.
Not yet.
And while she didn’t remember, there was still time.
Time to reach her.
Time to remind her.
Time to bring her back to where she belonged.
He closed his eyes, breathing deep.
The faint pull in his chest—the one that had always been there, even without a Goddess-given bond—flared brighter than it had in months.
Rhianna.
He whispered her name like a prayer.
Then the doors exploded inward again.
This time, it wasn’t scouts.
Elder Mara led the charge, flanked by Elder Cavan and four more council members. Behind them marched eight armored pack enforcers—wolves hand-picked by the elders, loyal to tradition over any single Alpha. Their faces were grim, weapons drawn but not raised.
Mara’s voice rang out like judgment.
“Hardin Blackwood.”
Hardin turned slowly.
“You are summoned before the full council. Immediately.”
Hardin’s aura flared—black, suffocating, pressing against the room like a storm cloud.
The enforcers shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m in the middle of an operation,” Hardin said, voice flat. “It can wait.”
Elder Cavan stepped forward. “It cannot. Reports have reached us. Your obsession has gone too far. You are mobilizing warriors for a crossing into foreign territory without council approval. You are risking open conflict with an allied royal pack. You are unfit.”
Hardin’s lips curled.
“Unfit?”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “You have ignored every warning. The pack suffers. Trade routes are neglected. Warriors are exhausted. Your personal vendetta—”
“She is not a vendetta,” Hardin snarled. “She is Rhianna. Sebastian’s abandoned mate. My brother’s failure. And she is alive. Seen today. With her memory gone. Smiling at a prince like she belongs to him. And you call that a vendetta?”
The elders exchanged glances.
Mara’s expression hardened.
“All the more reason to stop this madness. If she lives, she lives. She is no longer pack. The bond was severed. She has moved on.”
Hardin took a step forward.
The enforcers raised weapons.
“You will come with us,” Mara said. “Now. Or we will take you by force.”
Hardin looked at each face.
Old. Stubborn. Blind.
He could fight.
He could tear through them.
But that would fracture the pack beyond repair.
And he needed the pack whole when he brought her home.
He lifted his chin.
“Fine.”
The enforcers moved in.
They grabbed his arms—rough, bruising.
Hardin didn’t resist.
Not yet.
They dragged him from the war room, boots scraping against stone corridors that had once belonged to his father, then to Sebastian, now to him.
Down the long hall.
Past warriors who stared in stunned silence.
Past servants who whispered.
Through the heavy double doors of the council chamber.
The doors slammed shut behind him with a finality that echoed like a tomb closing.
Inside, the council waited.
Hardin stood tall, wrists bound in silver-laced chains that burned against his skin.
But his eyes never wavered.
He thought of her.
Flower crown.
Laughing.
Arm\-in\-arm with a prince.
Memory gone.
But alive.
The council could strip his title.
They could chain him.
They could try to break him.
But nothing—nothing in this world or any other—would stop him from crossing that river.
Even if he had to do it in chains.
Even if he had to crawl through hell.
Rhianna was alive.
And Hardin Blackwood would bring her home.
Or die trying.