Chapter Fourty Eight

Chapter Fourty Eight
Grey smiled again as he lowered himself to the floor. “Do one more thing for me.”

Matthew nodded out of habit, then froze when Grey looked up at him, that same warm smile still in place.

“Dig up Oliver’s grave.”

The words didn’t register at first. Then they did.

Matthew’s breath hitched. “M-my Alpha?” His voice came out strained, edged with unease. “Oliver is… he’s dead. We buried him ourselves.” He hesitated, then added more quietly, “We shouldn’t disturb the grave of the dead.”

Grey didn’t answer at first.

He seemed distant—eyes unfocused, as if listening to something only he could hear.

That silence did nothing to ease Matthew’s dread.

His hands tightened at his sides, fingers curling slowly—as if bracing himself against loyalty, against fear, against the certainty that whatever Grey was about to do could no longer be undone.

“You’re asking me to desecrate a grave.”

Grey finally looked at him. His smile tilted, faintly amused.

“Just do as I say,” he ordered. “It seems my sweetheart and his pack have been playing hide-and-seek with me.”

A pause.

“They fooled me completely.”

Matthew frowned. He understood tactics, deception, strategy—but Grey’s words slipped through his grasp like smoke. He couldn’t understand what was going through his head.

Grey’s gaze softened, almost tender, as he murmured—more to himself than to Matthew,

“And strangely… I’m not angry.”

Another pause.

“I’m relieved.”

Grey would have followed Matthew himself—would have torn the earth apart with his own hands—but his body refused him. He lowered himself into the chair, breath shallow, forcing his trembling limbs to obey.

Once, he had welcomed the idea of death. Once, he had thought it fitting.

That desire was gone.

Now that there was a real chance—no, a certainty forming—that his beloved still lived, Grey no longer wished to die. He wanted to endure. He wanted to last.

This final proof was all he needed.

Oliver was alive somewhere in this world, breathing, moving, choosing a life that did not include him—and Grey would change that. Carefully. Patiently. He would draw Oliver back, keep him close, make Oliver forgive what had been done, and then that would peel the curse from him layer by layer.

Not through force.

Through devotion.

They would live together again.

Grey closed his eyes, a fragile smile ghosting across his lips.

He didn’t want to be apart from Ollie ever again.



The guards followed without question.

Boots pressed into damp soil. Grey had chosen these men carefully over the years—men who had learned when to speak and, more importantly, when not to. Men who would obey even when the order seemed like blasphemy.

Matthew walked at the front.

They stopped.

Matthew didn’t need to look at the marker to know where they were. Oliver’s grave. The name stared back at him, carved clean and deep, unchanged by time. His chest tightened, breath catching just enough to hurt. Matthew swallowed. The sound felt loud in his own ears. “Dig.”

No one moved immediately. Then iron struck earth. The first shovel sank in with a dull, hollow thud. Another followed. Then another. The rhythm was uneven at first—before settling into something grimly methodical. The sound scraped against Matthew’s nerves, metal biting into soil over and over again, too sharp for the stillness surrounding them.

No one spoke.

Breath grew heavier. Muscles strained. Sweat broke despite the cold, sliding down temples and necks. The dirt peeled away far more easily than it should have, crumbling and sliding aside as though it had been turned before.

Minutes stretched. The hole deepened. The torches burned lower. Then—Scrape. The sound was unmistakable.

Wood.

Metal.

A guard froze mid-motion, shovel half-raised, knuckles white around the handle. His voice came out tight, despite the fear threading through it. “Commander… the coffin.”

Matthew stepped forward. His hand lifted slowly, fingers trembling—not with exertion, but with something far worse.

“Open it.”

The words cost him.

They wedged the tools beneath the lid. The coffin resisted, old nails shrieking as they were pried loose one by one. Each sound dragged out, long and grating, echoing far too loudly in the quiet night. The lid shifted a fraction. Then another. Finally, it cracked open.

They pulled it back. And everything stopped. Silence fell—thick, absolute. It pressed down on Matthew’s chest, stole the air from his lungs, and made his skin prickle with instinctive wrongness. Inside lay a body. Burned black. The flesh—if it could still be called that—was twisted and shriveled, pulled tight over a form locked in agony. The face was frozen mid-scream, features melted and warped, lips drawn back, skin cracked and fused as though fire had kissed it and never let go. Hollow eye sockets stared upward, empty and dry.

Too dry.

Matthew waited for it.

The smell.

The rot.

It didn’t come.

Nothing but damp earth and smoke-stale air filled his lungs.

His pulse spiked.

Slowly, dread pooled heavy and cold in his stomach, and then he leaned closer. His hand rose again, hovering inches above the body. For a long moment, he didn’t touch it. Couldn’t. Then his fingers pressed down. The resistance was immediate.

Unnatural.

The surface didn’t yield. Didn’t give beneath his touch. It was solid. Dense.

Hard.

Too hard.

Matthew recoiled sharply, breath hitching as if he’d been struck.

A murmur rippled through the guards—low, uneasy sounds as they began to notice the details that refused to align. The way the body held its shape. The uniform weight. The absence of collapse. No fragile bones. No brittle remains. Structure where there should have been ruin. “This isn’t…” someone whispered, voice barely audible.

Matthew swallowed hard, throat burning.

“A corpse,” he finished.

The truth slammed into him, cold and merciless.

It was a mannequin.

Matthew’s gaze lingered, unease tightening in his chest. Something still felt… off. Not just wrong—unfinished. His eyes traced the line of the neck, where burned material met warped skin.

There.

On the left side.

A mark.

At first glance, it might have passed for nothing more than damage from the fire—a warped symbol, half-melted, partially swallowed by blackened “flesh.” But Matthew knew magic too well to be fooled for long. He crouched slowly, breath shallow, torchlight catching faint lines etched beneath the surface.

A spell mark.

Old.

Powerful.

It had been carved deep, woven into the structure itself.

Understanding crept in, cold and deliberate. Someone had used magic to force the illusion—to make this thing pass as human. To give it weight. Texture. The subtle inconsistencies of flesh that fooled even a bond.

For a time, it must have worked flawlessly.

But magic, like anything buried and forgotten, decayed.

Three years underground. Soil. Pressure. Silence. The spell had thinned, frayed at the edges, its hold weakening until the truth began to surface—hardness where there should have been decay.

A mannequin. Oliver had never been here.

His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms as the realization settled fully, heavily, into his chest.

Matthew drew a slow breath, forcing the surge of emotion back into something usable.

“Don’t touch it with bare hands,” he said sharply.

The guards stilled at once.

“Gloves. Cloaks. Anything you have.” His gaze swept over them, hard and commanding now, the tremor gone from his voice. “If magic was used on this thing, I don’t want skin contact. I don’t want residue carried back to the estate. And I don’t want anyone triggering whatever remains of that spell.”

They moved quickly, discipline snapping into place. Leather gloves were pulled on. Cloaks were wrapped tightly around arms and shoulders. One guard tore a length of canvas from the supply pack they’d brought, spreading it beside the grave.

Matthew crouched again, careful this time. He pointed, precise.

“Lift from underneath. Don’t bend it. Don’t separate anything.”

The guards complied, slipping their hands beneath the rigid form. It was heavier than it looked—dense, unnatural. The mannequin came free of the coffin with a dull, hollow scrape, ash and dirt sliding from its surface as they laid it onto the canvas.

“Wrap it,” he ordered.

They folded the canvas around the body, sealing the mannequin away inch by inch. No one spoke as they lifted it. They carried it out of the cemetery in silence. Their footsteps were unhurried as they made their way to Grey's office.