The meeting room felt like a coffin of unspoken grief, its walls enveloped in the musk of aged oak and burnt candle wax. Stillness clung to the corners like specters, their dance a macabre reminder of the emptiness gnawing at the pack’s core. Nathaniel Daemron, Alpha of the Duskbane Pack, sat at the head of the table, his posture rigid as iron, but his knuckles whitened where they gripped the armrests. The air tasted of sweat and fear, thick enough to choke on.

  Around him, advisors exchanged glances that skittered away like roaches when his gaze swept the room. He could feel their thoughts anyway—pulsing, bleeding into the silence. Weak. Leaderless.

  A pack unraveling.

  Pathetic. His wolf bristled, its claws pricking at the fraying edges of his control. But Nathaniel smothered the instinct. Emotions were luxuries for lesser men. For warriors, there was only discipline. Only duty.

  Yet the scent of lilies lingered in his nostrils, phantom and cloying. Her scent.

  No. He tried slamming the memory down, but it surged anyway—a flash of rain-soaked earth and the hollow thud of dirt on a mahogany casket.

  “She would’ve hated this,” his father had muttered that day, staring at the grave as if it were a battlefield he’d failed to conquer. The rain had plastered Norman’s silver hair to his skull, carving rivers through the ashes smudged on his cheeks. Ashes.

  Nathaniel had watched them dissolve, thinking how absurd it was—his mother, reduced to a jar of mud.

  Seraphine Daemron, the Luna who’d woven sunlight into the pack’s soul, now dust in the wind.

  The memory clawed at his throat. He swallowed it.

  “Alpha.” Valdar’s voice cracked like sun-dried wood. The general advisor’s fingers trembled where they gripped his notes. “We…we have to address the Luna situation.”

  Situation. A sterile word for the hemorrhage in their ranks. Nathaniel’s jaw twitched. “Elaborate.”

  Beta Cole, ever the martyr, stepped into the silence. “The pack needs stability. A Luna isn’t just a mate—she’s a pillar. Without one, morale is…” He trailed off, but the unspoken words hung like smoke. Dies. We’re dying.

  Nathaniel’s wolf snarled, but his voice remained aloof. “The pack’s strength lies in its discipline. Not in sentiment.”

  A choked noise came from the far end of the table. Norman Daemron, former Alpha and a ghost of the man he’d once been, leaned forward. His eyes—the same storm-gray as Nathaniel’s—now bloodshot, rimmed with sleepless purple. “Sentiment?” he rasped. “Is that what you call your mother’s legacy?”

  The room froze.

  Nathaniel’s pulse roared in his ears.

  Don’t.

  Don’t drag her into this. But the damage was done. Smell of the phantom lilies thickened, suffocating.

  Flashback:

  The funeral pyre had been too small. Norman had insisted on a coffin instead of tradition—wood and flame. He couldn’t bear to watch her burn twice.

  But when they’d opened the lid for the farewell ritual, the pack had recoiled. Seraphine’s face, once warm as summer dusk, was waxen, her lips tinged blue. Rogues had torn her heart out, but the mortician had stuffed the wounds with cotton, stitching her skin like torn fabric.

  A mockery of peace.

  Norman had shattered then. A guttural, animal wail tore from his chest as he collapsed against the casket, fingers scrabbling at her cold cheeks.

  Nathaniel had stood paralyzed, his chest a void. Later, he’d pried his father away, and then someone pressed a shovel into his hand. The first clump of earth hit the casket with a finality that echoed in his bones. He’d felt nothing.

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  End Flashback

  “Her legacy,” Nathaniel said slowly, “is why this pack still stands. Not because we clung to ghosts.”

  Norman barked a laugh, raw as an open wound. “You think discipline masks the rot? Look at them.” He flung a hand toward the advisors. “They’re terrified. A pack without a Luna is a blade without a hilt—it’ll cut the hand that wields it.”

  Elara, the pack’s head healer, flinched. “With all due respect Alpha, the mate bond isn’t just tradition. It’s biology. Without it, a wolf’s instincts turn…unstable.” Her voice dropped. “Your father’s right. If your mate is gone, you need to choose someone. Before the pack, or you, fracture.”

  Nathaniel’s chair screeched as he stood. The movement was too sharp, too quick—he glimpsed his mother’s face in the flickering shadows, her smile bleeding into the gash across her neck. Weakness, she’d told him once, is the one sin our kind cannot afford.

  “My mate,” he said, “is alive.”

  The lie tasted like ash.

  Norman surged to his feet, palms slamming the table. “She’s dead, Nathaniel! Just like your mother! Open your godsdamned eyes!”

  The candles fluttered.

  For a heartbeat, Nathaniel was ten years old again, watching his father train warriors in the courtyard. Norman had been a titan then, voice booming, eyes bright with pride. Now, he was a wreck—cheeks hollow, rage and grief eating him alive.

  We’re both ghosts, Nathaniel realized. Haunting each other.

  “You gave up,” Nathaniel whispered. “The rogues slaughtered her, and you quit.”

  Norman’s face crumpled. “I hunted them for months. I tore apart every territory, every den—”

  “And found nothing.”

  The words were knives, sharpened by years of silence.

  “You failed her. Don’t project your shame onto me.”

  The temperature plummeted. Norman’s wolf surged to the surface, eyes glowing feral blue.

  “You arrogant pup. You think I didn’t see you that night? Standing in the woods, covered in her blood? You didn’t even shift. Didn’t fight—”

  Flashback: The Attack

  Seraphine’s laughter had been the last thing Norman heard before the world shattered. They’d been sparring in the moonlit clearing, her silver hair braided back, eyes bright with mischief. “You’re slowing down, old wolf,” she’d teased, dodging his swipe. Norman had growled playfully lunging at each other, then, he let her go, on her evening walk, expecting her to come back, as she always did.

  Then the mind-link tore through his skull like a bullet.

  Her voice, fractured. “Norman—the eastern border—rogues”

  He’d frozen. “Sera? Where are you?”

  “A wet gasp. Then, softly: I love you.”

  The bond snapped. Norman’s roar shook the forest as he shifted, hurtling toward the border. He’d found Nathaniel first—his son crouched in the dirt, human and trembling, her blood seeping through his jeans, hot as guilt. Nathaniel hadn’t moved. Couldn’t. His wolf had retreated into some dark corner of his mind, leaving him human. Fragile. Useless. He said nothing. Didn’t weep. Just stared at his mother’s corpse, his hands stained red, while the rogues’ laughter haunted the trees.

  Her heart was ripped out, eyes glassy, one hand still clutching the dagger she’d plunged into a rogue’s heart. Blood soaked the snow, crimson on white, as the taunts of retreating rogues echoed: “The Luna’s dead! Come claim your crown, pup!”

  Norman had fallen to his knees, howling her name until his voice cracked. He howled loud enough to shake the stars from the sky. He’d cradled Seraphine’s body, rocking her like a child, while Nathaniel sat numb, her blood drying sticky on his hands.

  End Flashback

  “Enough.” The word left Nathaniel’s lips as a snarl, his control fraying.

  “You want a Luna? Fine. Summon the witches. Let them trace the bond and scour the earth.” He strode toward the door, the advisors scrambling aside like startled prey. “But when they confirm she’s alive, you will never speak of this again.”

  The slam of the door echoed like a gunshot.

  Alone in the corridor, Nathaniel pressed the back of his head to the cold stone wall. His breaths came in jagged gasps, each one scraping his lungs. Weak. Weak. Weak.

  Till he heard a whimper from the shadows.

  He turned. A young omega maid knelt, scrubbing at the floor. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, a mop clutched in her raw-knuckled grip.

  “What are you crying for?” he snapped.

  She flinched. “F-Forgive me, Alpha. It’s just…the flowers.” She gestured to a vase of lilies on the windowsill. “They…they were her favorite.”

  Nathaniel stared at the blooms, their petals obscenely white, remembering how his mother insisted they lightened the air inside the pack house. For a heartbeat, he wanted to crush them, to scream until the walls crumbled. Instead, he turned away.

  “Dispose of them.”

  Later that night, The whiskey bottle clattered to the floor, rolling across Seraphine’s favorite rug. Norman didn’t bother picking it up. Her scent still clung to the fabric—vanilla and steel. He’d barred himself in her study for weeks, surrounded by her maps and journals, as if her ghost might materialize to scold him for the mess.

  “Coward,” he slurred to the empty chair. “He let you die. He let you die. He let you die.”

  The mind-link’s echo still tormented him—“I love you”— Her last words, cut short. What had she felt in her last moments? He’d never know. The uncertainty festered, a wound he picked at daily.

  When the pack’s beta had finally broken down the door, Norman attacked him, half-shifted and raving. It took six warriors to pin him. They’d found Seraphine’s locket in his fist, its edges drawing blood.