<h1 ss="test-[24px] w-title" data-v-85816c8f="">Chapter 4</h1>


    Freya’s POV


    “You won’t forgive me?” I repeated slowly. “Three years of standing by your side, and you can’t even give my parents a single moment of shelter?”


    My voice dropped, fangs sheathing into my words. “Do you even know what built yourpany, your pack alliances, your so-called future?”


    He said nothing.


    “Fine,” I growled, stepping back. “I’ll go.”


    No tears. No breakdown. Just the cold steel of my spine locking into ce.


    I was a soldier of the Iron Fang Legion. Daughter of two fallen Alphas. I had bled for this nation. I would not beg for crumbs of respect in a house that stank of hypocrisy.


    As I turned, I heard Giselle scoff. “She’s just leaving? Like that?”


    “She should be thankful Caelum even mated her,” Eleanor hissed. “She’s an orphaned Omega, thinking she’s fit for an Alpha’s home. Pathetic.”


    Let them talk. My wolf and I were already done with this den of cowards.


    I carried the urn out beneath the rain, wind howling like ghosts in mourning.


    The Citadel Memorial Sanctuary rose in the distance—white-stone towers etched with the emblems of the fallen. Here, the remains of Lycan warriors were held until they could return to ancestral soil. My steps echoed across the sacred courtyard, the weight of legacy pressing on my shoulders.


    I ced the urn atop the obsidian altar, fingers trembling—not with weakness, but with reverence.


    “Just a little longer, Mother… Father…” I whispered, unfolding the crimson battle-g of the Lycan Nation and draping it across the urn. The sigil of Iron Fang glimmered faintly in the low light.


    “You’ll be home soon. I swear it by the blood of our blood.”


    My ws flexed unconsciously.


    “And I’ll find Eric. He’s not dead. I’d feel it if he was. He’s out there—somewhere beyond the Northern Ridge. He would never abandon us.”


    My brother had been the strongest of us. A tracker. A Shadowstep. Five years ago, he vanished during a ssified border mission. No body. No trace. No howl on the wind to mourn.


    But I would find him.


    Once my parents wereid to rest beneath their ancestral tree, I’d head north. Even if I had to tear through rogue ns and border patrols. Even if I had to bleed again.


    I turned from the altar. Rain swept across the cobblestones like a cleansing rite.


    As I descended the steps, I overheard two guards murmuring beneath a carved arch.


    “Did you see the procession? Half the Council’s here.”


    “They say the Alpha Lord of the Whitmores passed. The funeral’s today.”


    “Spirits keep us. Then who leads them now?”


    A shiver crawled up my spine as the second voice dropped to a whisper.


    “Who else? The Phantom of the West. Lord Ss himself.”


    The name hit like a thunderp.


    Ss Whitmore—the warborn Alpha said to be half-shadow, half-wolf. Ruthless. Unmated. Untouched by politics yet feared by all. Some said he tore apart a rogue battalion with his bare hands. Others said he’d been born under a blood moon and never cried as an infant.


    I paused at the sanctuary gates.


    A line of ck-armored vehicles choked the road, engines rumbling low like beasts held on a leash. Then one stopped. The door clicked.


    A man stepped out.


    The world tilted.


    Even with a ck umbre shielding half his face, the dominance he exuded struck like lightning. The kind that prickled the nape of your neck and made even Alphas lower their heads.


    He was tall—almost impossibly so—dressed in tailored ck. His jaw carved in obsidian, lips pale and unreadable. His hands, gloveless despite the chill, were long, brutal, elegant.


    Predator hands.


    But it was his eyes that held me.


    Obsidian. Soulless. Not with evil—but with absence. A void where grief, rage, joy… didn’t exist. The eyes of a wolf who’d seen too much death and never came back from it.


    I stopped breathing.


    “Lord Ss,” his attendant murmured. “This way, please.”


    So it was him.


    He passed close enough for me to scent the cold metal and cedar on his skin. My wolf stirred, not with heat, but with ancient recognition.


    Power. Danger. Hunger wrapped in elegance.


    I didn’t dare look back.


    But long after he vanished into the temple, my palms were slick with cold sweat.


    I forced myself to move, to shift back into the rhythm of the living.


    A buzz snapped me out of my trance. My phone screen lit up with Caelum’s message:


    “Mother and Giselle have left. Come back—we need to talk.”


    I drove back through the storm in silence. The mansion loomed ahead, but it no longer felt like home.


    Caelum was waiting in the great hall. No armor. No growl. Just soft eyes and fake regret.


    “Did you ce the urn safely?” he asked.


    I nodded. “Yes.”


    He stepped forward and pulled me into his arms.


    “Freya… I’m sorry. I know today was hard. I’ll make it up to you.”


    His scent used to soothe me—used to mean something. Now it was just a lie dressed in pine.


    I didn’t flinch. I didn’t rage.


    I simply stepped back and looked him in the eye.


    “You denied warriors their honor,” I said, my voice low and sharp. “You spat on the blood that built your life.”


    “You think you can fix that with words?”


    He blinked, startled.


    And then I said it.


    Clear. Final. Alpha-strong.


    “Caelum ckthorne, I reject this mating bond. I want a divorce.”