Freya’s POV
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Jocelyn’s face drained of all color before she lunged forward and seized Ss’s sleeve. Her fingers clung desperately, knuckles white, her voice trembling like brittle ss.
“Ss, you can’t do this to me! I sacrificed an eye for you. I gave everything—how can you cast me aside as if none of it matters?”
Her plea echoed in the Stormveil Primal Hall, heavy with the scents of wolves bristling, the tang of burning resin smoldering in the braziers, and the charged silence of a pack witnessing something ruinous.
Ss looked down at her, his eyes ice-sharp, his aura cutting against hers like a de. “Your eye was never sacrificed for me,” he said, voice low but edged with Alpha finality. “You were cornered, Jocelyn. You didn’t stand in front of me to save me-you simply failed to escape. If you’d had a chance to run, you would have. And for that injury, I havepensated you for years. Tell me-has that never been enough?”
The tremor in Jocelyn’s body deepened. Her mouth opened, her lips shaking as if she wanted to spit venom back at him. But here, under the scrutiny of the entire Stormveil assembly, what could she say? That she deserved more? That his entire life belonged to her because of one misstep years ago?
Her pride trapped her in silence.
“But… my feelings for you…” she whispered, words so fragile they cracked before they left her mouth.
Ss cut her down before she could finish, his words mming through the hall like a thunderp. “Jocelyn Thorne. I have never, from the beginning to this moment, felt even a flicker of affection for you. What you received from me was repayment for your injury-nothing more. And now, that debt is paid. Entirely.”
He tore her grip from his arm as though it were no more than cobweb. I felt the finality in his movement-the brutal, decisive severing of a tether she had clung to
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for years. He turned from her without hesitation, his hand closing around mine instead. Together, we walked away from the hall’s center.
Behind us, Jocelyn staggered backward, nearly copsing to the stone floor. Gasps rippled through the gathered wolves. I caught the shifting scents in the air: pity, mockery, contempt. Once, those eyes had worshipped her. Once, her scarred eye had been a badge of martyrdom that elevated her above us all, a story whispered in reverence across Stormveil’s branches.
Now, stripped bare, she was just another wolf left bleeding under the weight of truth.
Her fists clenched at her sides, nails digging so deep into her palms I smelled the faint copper tang of her own blood. She wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not in front of those who had once envied her. But the copse of her pride was sharper than any visible wound.
“Jocelyn, don’t just stand there,” Lennon Thorne’s voice snapped,ced with panic. “Go after him! Beg Alpha Whitmor’s forgiveness. If you kneel, if you humble yourself, he might take back his words!”
Ken Thorne’s staff cracked against the stone floor, the sound reverberating like a gunshot. The old patriarch’s voice cut cold through the tension. “Enough! Do you intend to drag Stormveil’s name further through the mud? Have you no shame?”
Silence fell instantly.
Ken turned his re to Emilia, Jocelyn’s mother, his eyes sharp as a hawk’s. “As for Aurora’s case, I know everything. Stormveil has already done what it must. What you should focus on, Emilia, is not forcing Freya to pay for Aurora’s sins, but on earning forgiveness from the family whose child was burned alive. That is where your fight lies-not here.”
Emilia’s face twisted, lips pressed thin, humiliation and rage battling in her aura. Lennon fell silent beside her, his wolf crouching under Ken’s authority.
Jocelyn, meanwhile, stood frozen, her eyes hollow, her spirit splintering. She wasn’t hearing a word her grandfather spoke. All she saw was the ruin of her carefully constructed world copsing around her.
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She had lived years in the warm glow of Whitmor protection, raised above her cousins, adored, feared, envied. That eye, her scar, had once been her crown. And now, stripped of Ss’s acknowledgment, she was naked, exposed.
Her wolf trembled on the edge of breaking.
But Ss and I were already gone.
When we stepped out of the towering fa?ade of the Whitmor-financed Stormveil business tower, the night air hit my lungs like ice water. I could still taste the storm of tension inside, but Ss walked at my side as if the world itself no longer held weight.
We slid into his vehicle, leather and steel infused with his scent-iron, smoke, the undeniable mark of an Alpha who bore his legacy like a chain. I turned toward him, unable to stop my gaze from drinking in the hard lines of his profile.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, his voice calm, almost amused, though his grip on the steering wheel was taut.
“Because I need to know,” I said softly. “Those words you spoke in front of everyone-are they real? Do you regret them?”
His lips curved, not in mockery but in something achingly close to tenderness. “Which words? That if you wished to use me, I would wee it?”
Heat pricked the back of my throat. “Not those. I know you said that to shield me. To give me face.”
Ss shook his head, his wolf aura flickering faintly in the enclosed space. “Not for show. For truth. Freya, if you wish to wield me as your weapon, your shield, I would dly let you. Because it means I have purpose. It means I matter to you.”
The words struck like a de across my heart. To anyone else, they might sound like poetry. But I saw it-felt it-the jagged fracture behind them.
“No, Ss,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Don’t say that. Don’t be d to be used.
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True bond, true love-those things aren’t about usefulness. I like you because I like you. Whether you serve a purpose or not. Whether you’re strong or weak. It has nothing to do with usefulness.”
His hands tightened on the wheel, the leather creaking under the force. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Then, his voice was rough, raw.
“All my life, I was told I must be useful. That only then could I be tolerated. My mother’s death-because I couldn’t hold her. My father’s hate-because I wasn’t enough. My grandfather’s approval-only because I could be forged into an heir. Everything I am is measured in usefulness.”
His wolf flickered beneath his skin, and I saw the truth of it in his aura-scarred, bruised, chained by expectation.
But I met his gaze, steady, unyielding. “Yes. Being useful has its ce. But love isn’t weighed on that scale. And if you base your worth on being used, what happens when you’re not? When someone no longer needs you, will you let them cast you aside like broken steel? That’s not love, Ss. That’s very.”
The car was silent save for our breath, two wolves wrestling with ghosts in the dark. His wolf stirred, restless, but in his eyes I saw the first flicker of something else.