CHAPTER 92 — Time Passing Painfully

POV: Raevan

The year does not heal me.

It hollows me.

Ashra used to echo with training drills, arguments, the clang of steel—life. Now the halls ring with something colder. Quieter. Fear hangs in the air like incense. Servants step carefully around corners. Warriors avert their eyes. Even the wind whistles differently through the fortress battlements, as if mourning what this empire used to be.

And all of it—this empire, these wolves, this legacy—rests on my shoulders. Shoulders that haven’t carried anything but grief for twelve long months.

Soraya is gone.

Dead.

Or so the dunes tell me. The desert took her, and the desert never gives back.

Kaide says she might have survived. That Zehrael wolves are difficult to kill. That her tracks were only a trail, not a promise. But I saw the blood. I saw the cliff. I saw the emptiness afterward.

Hope is a poison I drank once already.

I won’t drink it again.

***

Azhara gave birth six months after Soraya vanished. A son. The infant cried the moment he touched the air—loud, sharp, demanding. Warriors celebrated. Elders wept with relief.

And I…

I felt nothing.

I stood beside Azhara’s bed, staring down at a boy who had my hair, my eyes—my curse. He reached toward me with tiny fingers, as if instinctively knowing who I was supposed to be. Father. Protector. Alpha. My chest didn’t move.

My heartbeat didn’t lift.

There was no warmth, no fierce pride, no instinctual bond. Only a quiet ache. Like betrayal turned inward.

Azhara noticed. She always notices.

“You don’t even want to hold him,” she hissed when the midwives left. “Your own son. Is it because he’s mine and not hers?”

I didn’t answer.

My silence was answer enough.

Since that day, she’s screamed the same accusation through the walls at least a hundred times:

“You’re still in love with her! She ruined you, Raevan! She cursed you!”

And she’s right.

Soraya ruined me in every way a man can be ruined.

***

Three weeks after the birth, the wedding took place. A formal ceremony. Required by tradition, pressured by elders, sealed by blood and law.

Azhara wore gold; I wore black.

We stood beneath the desert moon and recited vows written centuries ago by wolves who actually believed in them. The entire pack watched.

I kept my face stern. My voice steady.

My heart dead.

There was no kiss at the end.

Azhara didn’t lean in for one, either. She doesn’t crave affection—she craves possession. And she got exactly what she wanted: a crown tied to my neck.

But she never got me. Not the way Soraya did.

Not even close.

The marriage is cold stone.

No warmth. No intimacy. Not a single night spent together after the ritual.

Azhara sleeps in her own chambers with the baby. I sleep in the Alpha’s quarters—alone. When she tries to force closeness, to demand attention, my temper frays. My wolf rises. She sees it and steps back, scared but furious.

“Do you think she would’ve stayed with you?” she snaps during one of her tirades. “Do you truly believe she’d ever want a monster?”

And I… I let my silence cut deeper than any claws.

Because yes.

Soraya would have wanted the monster.

She already did.

***

Ruling used to be exhausting.

Now it’s all I am.

I drown myself in war councils, border patrols, punishment decrees, raids. My claws have become far too familiar with blood. I snap at soldiers who breathe wrong. I tear apart enemies before interrogating them. I break furniture, walls, sometimes entire training arenas when something inside me fractures.

The dread wolf.

That’s what they whisper again.

The title I earned through violence and chains years ago.

I never wanted it back.

But here it is.

I’ve fulfilled their prophecy.

***

Ashra grows darker under my rule. The market stalls shut earlier. The music halls stay silent. Even celebrations feel forced, joy drained from their roots.

Some wolves obey me out of loyalty.

Most out of fear.

A tyrant. That’s what I’ve become.

But I cannot stop.

If I stop, the memories rush in like a sandstorm, ripping me apart.

The memory of Soraya’s laugh.

Her tears.

Her stubborn defiance.

Her voice in the darkness of Zarek’s dungeons whispering she wasn’t afraid of me.

Her scent. Gods, her scent.

Moonlight and cold wind and something I don’t know how to name.

I remember the way she looked at me the last time—surprised, hurt, betrayed—as if she’d expected me to save her from everyone… including myself.

I failed her. I fail her every day that she’s not here.

***

Kaide hardly speaks to me anymore.

We used to fight side by side.

Now we argue more than we agree.

He calls me reckless, cruel, lost. He’s right every time. But I can’t admit it.

So instead, every word from his mouth feels like a blade.

“You can’t rule like this forever,” he told me last moon cycle. “You’re killing the pack.”

“I’m keeping it alive,” I snapped. “Without weakness.”

He stared at me with such disappointment it burned worse than a wound.

“She would hate what you’ve become,” he said softly.

I nearly hit him.

Nearly tore into him the way a wild beast would. He saw it in my eyes and stepped back, shaking his head as if he no longer knew the man standing before him.

Since then, he’s kept his distance.

I’ve kept mine.

And Ashra fell one inch deeper into shadow.

Some nights, I shift and run into the dunes until my paws bleed. Some nights, I sit alone in the war room staring at the map, imagining a different world where Soraya lived and Zehrael didn’t fall. Some nights, I wake up hearing her voice, only to find nothing but darkness.

But most nights… I stand on the highest tower, looking toward the distant horizon.

Toward the sands she vanished into, the cliff where her tracks ended.

Toward the land where hope died.

And every night, without fail, the same thought claws through me: If she were alive… My wolf would know. Wouldn’t he?

Wouldn’t he?