[Rheakar's POV]
Dawn rose blood-red over Grimhowl, painting my mate's abandoned chambers in shades of accusation.
I stood at the threshold, watching the light creep across surfaces that still held her scent—jasmine and winter rain, already fading like smoke on the wind.
The bed stretched before me, perfectly made with the precision she had always brought to every task. The sight of those undisturbed sheets struck me harder than any blow in battle.
Lyanna had never intended to return. Never meant to sleep here again.
The realization burned through me like acid, dissolving the last pretense of composure I had maintained through the night's fruitless search.
"Alpha."
Korin's voice came from the doorway, steady despite the fresh wounds marking his arms from pushing through rough terrain.
"We have searched the entire eastern territory. The trail dies at the river where it meets the rapids. After that..."
He paused, and I heard what he did not say.
After that, rogue scents overwhelmed everything else.
"She planned this," my voice carrying the kind of calm that preceded storms. "Look at this room, Korin. Nothing disturbed, nothing taken except what she could carry. My mate carrying my three heirs, and she simply... walked away."
"The rogues, Alpha. Their presence at the river…"
"It's convenient, isn't it?" I turned from the bed, studying my Beta's face.
Korin had served me faithfully for fifteen years, had stood beside me through every challenge to my authority.
Now his grey eyes held something I could not quite name—grief that seemed to mirror my own, but beneath it, something else.
"Tell me, old friend, how does a pregnant woman slip past my guards, evade my patrols, and reach the border without anyone noticing until dawn?"
"The new moon made tracking difficult," Korin replied, meeting my gaze without flinching. "And the guards at River Post reported unusual movement in the eastern quadrant. By the time they realized it was a false alarm…"
"Enough." I raised my hand, silencing him.
The rage building in my chest needed direction, and dissecting failures would not return what had been stolen.
"I want hunting parties in every neighboring territory by midday. Send envoys to every pack within a hundred miles. Offer rewards that could buy entire territories."
"What about the rogue lands?"
"We track every rogue band from here to the southern wastes. She carries my legacy, Korin. Three future Alphas whose strength would have been worthy of our bloodline."
I moved to her vanity, where her jewelry remained arranged as if she might return any moment to select pieces for the evening meal. My fingers found the silver necklace I had given her at our mating ceremony—left behind like everything else that had bound her to me.
"What message shall I send to the other packs?" Korin asked, his pragmatism cutting through my brooding.
"Tell them that any pack offering shelter to my Luna commits an act of war." I watched my reflection in her mirror—a wild-eyed man with an obsession he could not master. "Tell them Alpha Rheakar of Grimhowl Pack will burn entire territories to ash before accepting this theft."
***
Days blurred into weeks of fruitless searching. Every morning, I stood in Lyanna’s chambers, watching her scent grow fainter, feeling the mate bond stretch thinner but never break.
The hunting parties returned with nothing—rumors and false sightings that led nowhere. My patience eroded with each failure until even my most loyal warriors began avoiding my presence.
"Perhaps the Luna has already passed, my Alpha" one of my concubines suggested during the evening meal.
There's a poorly concealed hope in her voice—for the concubines, Luna's death is a chance to grab a bigger piece for themselves.
"No pregnant woman could survive rogues and wilderness alone. The pack needs closure, my lord. They need their Alpha to…"
The snarl that tore from my throat silenced not just her but the entire hall. "The Luna lives until I see her dead body. Anyone who suggests otherwise questions my judgment!"
The silence that followed was absolute.
Only Korin remained steady through my volatility, organizing searches with tireless efficiency, standing at my shoulder when my temper sent others fleeing.
Sometimes I caught him staring at nothing, lost in what I assumed was his own grief for the Luna he had served, the heirs he would have helped train.
"She was stronger than I credited," I admitted to him one night, after another day of failed searching. "I thought of her as soft, malleable. But this… this required planning, courage, desperation I never saw in her."
"The prospect of losing one's children can transform anyone," Korin replied carefully. "She feared the tradition. Perhaps If we could have…"
"Could have what? Abandoned centuries of precedent? Allowed three Alphas to share power?" I laughed, the sound bitter as winter wind. "The tradition exists for a reason, Korin. It ensures only the strongest leads. She would have doomed our pack to civil war."
"Of course, Alpha," he said, but something in his tone made me study him more closely.
"You think I am wrong?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that a mother's love operates by different laws than pack tradition. And sometimes those laws prove stronger than any Alpha's command."
Before I could respond, commotion erupted in the courtyard. The hunting party had returned—but their faces told me this was not another failed search.
The lead tracker approached, carrying something that made my blood freeze. Lyanna's traveling cloak, torn and bloodstained, the fabric that had wrapped around her and our unborn sons now reduced to rags.
"We found it in a rogue den twenty miles south," he reported. "Along with... remains. A she-wolf, pregnant, too damaged for identification. The timing fits, Alpha. Three weeks since her disappearance."
My fingertips feel electric as I hold my mate’s torn cloak. He radiates her scent, her warmth. I strain with all my might, turning to our unbreakable bond, cemented before the face of the Moon Goddess herself.
Nothing. I have nothing to cling to, and it makes the blood boil in my veins, my wolf is bursting to get out. That’s can’t be right. She can’t be gone. She can’t leave and take my heirs with her.
That night, alone in my chambers with Lyanna’s necklace in my fist, I stood at the window overlooking territories that stretched to the horizon. The metal bent under my grip, reshaping beneath the pressure of my rage and grief.
"If you live," I swore to the moon hanging cold and distant above, "if this is all an elaborate deception, I will find you, Lyanna. No distance will be far enough, no sanctuary strong enough. And if you are truly dead..."
I crushed the necklace completely, feeling the metal bite into my palm.
"Then this world will learn what happens when Alpha of Grimhowl Pack is robbed of his legacy. Every rogue, every pack that failed to help, every soul that stood between us… They will all pay the price of your loss."