Chapter 70 What Time Leaves Behind
Grayson:
Time did not announce itself.
It arrived the way erosion does: gradual, incremental, quiet, undeniable only when you looked back and realized the shape had changed.
My Father died on a clear morning.
No emergency alarms rang.
No rushed calls.
Just a message delivered with the same controlled phrasing Silverbourne used for all inevitabilities.
Alpha Marcus Knight passed peacefully in the early hours.
Peaceful was a word meant for the living.
The city responded the way it always did.
Funeral
Burrial.
Ceremony.
Remembrance.
Order.
Statements prepared in advance.
A succession already in place.
Grayson Knight confirmed as Alpha.
No disruption.
No vacancy.
Marcus would have approved of that.
I stood beside his body before the city saw him.
He looked smaller without the authority of his alpha aura holding him upright. Not frail, never that, but finished. Like a man who had set something down after carrying it longer than intended.
I did not cry. I had learned what grief did to men in power. I signed what needed to be signed and stood where I was meant to stand.
I supported my mother, but she went into seclusion after the ceremony, as is expected after losing a mate.
I let the city mourn its former Alpha while I buried my father.
The year he died, I still went to the cliff. I always went on the same day.
The anniversary of the accident.
The coast was empty that morning, the sky washed a pale blue, the sea calm in a way that felt intentional rather than merciful.
I stood at the edge where the barrier met the open air. Below, the water moved endlessly, unbothered by memory. Search teams had stopped coming long ago.
Officially.
Not unofficially.
There were still sensors in the water. Still, occasional scans were logged under maintenance reviews. Still reports that crossed my desk that said nothing and meant everything.
I read them all. I always did. Not doing that meant accepting it, but my wolf and I would have felt if she weren't alive anymore.
I stayed until the sun shifted high enough to hurt my eyes. Then I turned away.
I went to the Hart house after.
I always did.
Evie’s mother still lived there.
The house aged the way people do when they decide not to change anything. Same furniture. Same curtains. Same small repairs done carefully, as if disturbance might cause collapse.
Judy answered the door now. She had taken over without ceremony.
No official appointment.
Just presence.
She smiled when she saw me, tired but sincere.
“She’s in the kitchen,” she said quietly.
I nodded and stepped inside.
Mrs. Hart was seated at the table, hands wrapped around a mug she hadn’t been drinking from. Her hair had gone fully white in the last few years. Not from age alone.
She looked up when she heard my footsteps.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re right on time.”
She said it every time I came, the same words in the same order, as if the day reset itself when I crossed the threshold.
“I try to be.”
She smiled faintly.
“Richard hates being late,” she said. “Always says it's rude to be late.”
“Yes,” I replied.
She nodded, satisfied, and returned her attention to the empty place across from her.
"It's Tuesday right? Richard has meetings on Tuesday." She asked, her gaze fixed on the head of the table.
It wasn't Tuesday, but I never corrected her.
“Evie says the sea looks clearer today,” she said, peering toward the window. “Don’t you think?”
I simply nodded and sat where I always sat.
“I brought the bread you like,” I said.
“Oh good,” she replied. “She forgets sometimes.”
She meant herself.
Or Evie.
Or both.
Time blurred things like that.
We ate quietly.
No pretense.
No careful conversation.
Just shared space.
At one point, she reached for a third plate before catching herself.
Her hand paused, uncertain, then completed the movement anyway, as if following memory rather than intention.
Later, while she rested, I walked the house.
Evie’s room was unchanged.
It always was.
I had stopped trying to preserve it myself. Judy handled that now. Gently. Without fuss.
Somewhere along the way, the room had stopped feeling like a shrine and started feeling like a pause.
A sentence unfinished.
I left before dusk.
Silverbourne glowed when I returned.
The city had learned how to move around absence efficiently.
Trade flourished.
Borders held.
The council functioned.
Isabelle remained influential, never central, never absent. Her power had narrowed, refined.
Hart Industries was gone.
Absorbed.
Rebranded.
A footnote now.
I did not stop that.
I learned from it.
Years passed.
Not marked.
Just felt.
I stopped correcting people when they said lost Luna.
I corrected systems instead.
I rewrote policies.
Restructured authority.
Built redundancies that did not rely on trust.
Jude remained at my side.
So did the silence.
No Luna was ever named.
The city stopped asking.
Not because it understood.
Because it adapted.
And I let it.
On the fourth anniversary, I stood at the cliff longer than usual.
The wind cut sharper that year.
I placed my hand against the barrier and closed my eyes.
Still no break.
Still no severance.
Still the faint pull that had never faded, never weakened, never gone quiet enough to dismiss.
I had learned not to interpret it.
Just to live with it.
Later that night, alone in the estate, I stood at the window Marcus used to favor.
The city spread beneath me, vast and obedient and unchanged.
I thought of my father.
Of what he’d said.
Inheritance wasn’t power.
It was unfinished responsibility.
And grief didn’t end.
It reorganized.
I had become Alpha without healing.
Without closure.
Without answers.
The city had learned to function without Evangeline Hart.
I didn't.
Time had not erased her. It had only buried her under habit. And habits could be broken.
I turned from the window and reached for the report Jude had left on my desk.
New markets. New movements. New irregularities.
Somewhere beyond Silverbourne’s borders, something was shifting.
I did not know it yet. But I felt the disturbance.
After all these years, one truth remained unchanged:
The bond had never gone silent.
And time, no matter how long it had been, it had failed to teach me how to let go.
Love always refuses to accept time...