Kaelen’s POV

The carriage wheels ground against cobblestone like bones breaking.

I sat with my elbows on my knees, head bowed, staring at nothing. The lantern swinging from the roof cast moving shadows across my hands. They were still trembling. Had been trembling since I’d abandoned the search.

“Kaelen.”

Brenna’s voice came from the opposite bench. Quiet. Careful. The way people speak to wounded animals.

I didn’t look up.

“Kaelen, we can turn back. We can try again tomorrow. Maybe if I go alone, she’ll—”

“She doesn’t want to be found.”

The words left my mouth flat. Dead. Like stones dropped into still water.

Brenna leaned forward. “You don’t know that. She’s scared. She’s not thinking clearly. If we just give her more time—”

“I searched everywhere.” My voice cracked on the last word. I swallowed hard, forcing it back together. “I could smell her, Brenna. She was everywhere in that place. Her scent was on the shawl. On the pillowcase. On the air itself.”

The memory clawed at me—pressing my face into that woolen shawl, inhaling so desperately my lungs burned. Wildflowers and frost. The scent that had haunted me for so long.

“She was there.” I finally lifted my head. “Hiding from me. Her own mate.”

Brenna’s dark eyes held mine. No pity. Just a stubborn, relentless determination that reminded me painfully of Ela. “Then she needs more time. That’s all.”

Silence stretched between us. The carriage lurched over a rut in the road.

“Stop the search,” I said.

“What?”

“I said stop the search. Pull the scouts back. Cancel the patrols.”

Brenna straightened. “You can’t be serious.”

“She ran from me, Brenna. She heard my voice and she hid.” The realization sat in my chest like a shard of glass, cutting deeper with every breath. “Sending more men after her won’t bring her home. It’ll only drive her further away.”

“So you’re giving up.”

“I’m accepting what she’s telling me.”

The words burned coming out. Every syllable felt like ripping off my own skin. But I’d seen the truth today, standing in that place with her scent all around me and her body nowhere to be found.

She didn’t want me to find her.

Brenna opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Fine. But I’m not giving up on her. Not ever.”

I didn’t respond. I just watched the darkness swallow the road ahead.

—

The palace was quiet when we arrived. Past midnight. The servants had long since retired, and only a single lamp burned in the entrance hall.

I stepped through the front door and stood motionless in the foyer. Silence pressed against my eardrums.

Then—crying.

Not the thin wail of an infant. Not Lyra’s hungry fussing.

A child sobbing. Muffled and desperate, as if he’d been trying to muffle it into a pillow.

Valerius.

I took the stairs three at a time. My boots hammered against the marble. The sound echoed off the vaulted ceiling, but I didn’t care about waking anyone.

His door was ajar. Lamplight spilled into the hallway in a thin golden line.

I pushed it open.

Valerius sat in the middle of his bed, knees pulled to his chest. His dark curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat. His small body shook with each ragged breath. The blankets were twisted around his legs like he’d been thrashing.

Those eyes lifted to mine.

Dark gold. My eyes, staring back at me from a face that carried Ela’s nose, her delicate chin, her stubborn jawline.

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

Then his face crumpled.

“Daddy, you lied.”

The accusation hit me like a fist to the sternum.

“Buddy—”

“You said you’d bring Mommy back!” His voice broke on the word, shattered into jagged pieces. “You promised! You said you’d find her and bring her home and everything would be okay!”

I crossed the room in two strides and dropped to my knees beside his bed. “Valerius, listen to me—”

“NO!” He shoved at my chest with both hands. Small fists pounding against my collarbone. “You’re a liar! You promised and you lied! Mommy’s gone and you didn’t bring her back!”

I caught his wrists gently. He fought me. Thrashing, kicking, his face red and soaked with tears.

“Why doesn’t she love us anymore?” The question came out strangled. Raw. It sounded like it had been festering inside him for weeks, growing thorns in the dark. “What did I do? Was I bad? Did I make her leave?”

Something inside my chest fractured clean in half.

I pulled him against me. He resisted at first—stiff, furious, still hitting. Then the fight drained out of him all at once, and he collapsed into my arms like a structure with its foundation torn out.

He wept. Not the restrained crying of a child trying to be brave. These were the ugly, heaving sobs of accumulated grief. Weeks of it. Every night he’d gone to sleep without her. Every morning he’d woken hoping she’d be there. Every single disappointment stacked on top of the last until the weight became unbearable.

I held him so tight I could feel his heartbeat hammering against my ribs.

“Your mother loves you,” I said into his hair. My voice was barely holding. “She loves you more than her own life. More than anything in this world.”

“Then why did she go?” A whisper. Broken and bewildered.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Why did she go?

The question had consumed me for weeks. I’d turned it over from every angle, examined every possible explanation. She felt unworthy. She was ashamed. She blamed herself. She couldn’t face me after what had happened.

But now, with my son’s tears soaking through my shirt, something shifted. A piece I’d been too blinded by my own grief to see.

Ela hadn’t just lost her wolf. She’d been tortured. The rogues had hunted her. Captured her. Ripped Moonlight from her soul with dark magic so vicious it left no trace the healers could follow. They’d broken her in ways I couldn’t even comprehend.

And then she’d given birth to Lyra—fragile, mortal, completely defenseless.

I went still.

She wasn’t running from me.

She was running from them.

The rogues who’d stripped her of everything that made her strong. She was terrified—not of being unworthy, but of being unable to protect her children. Without her wolf, without her abilities, she was vulnerable. And in her mind, that vulnerability made Valerius and Lyra targets.

She’d left to keep them safe.

The realization struck like lightning splitting a tree down its center.

“Buddy.” I pulled back, cupping his tear-streaked face in my hands. “Look at me.”

Those gold eyes—my eyes—blinked up at me. Swollen. Exhausted.

“Your mother left because she loves you so much it scares her. She’s afraid that bad people might hurt you and Lyra, and she thinks she can’t stop them anymore. That’s why she ran. Not because of anything you did. Never because of you.”

His lower lip quivered. “Can you make the bad people go away?”

I brushed the tears from his cheeks with my thumbs.

“Yes,” I said. And I meant it with every fiber of my being. “I can.”

I stayed until his breathing evened out. Until his small fingers loosened their death grip on my shirt. Until sleep finally dragged him under, his lashes still clumped wet against his cheeks.

I pulled the blanket up to his chin. Pressed my lips to his forehead. Then I walked out of his room and closed the door without a sound.

The hallway stretched before me, dark and silent. My shadow carved a long black shape across the floor.

I didn’t go to my bedchamber.

I went to the study.

The door groaned open. I lit every lamp. Then I crossed to the large oak table and swept everything off its surface—books, correspondence, half-empty inkwells—all of it crashed to the floor.

I pulled the maps from the cabinet. Every one. The northern territories. The eastern borderlands. The marshes. The mountain passes where rogue camps had been spotted. Recent intelligence reports. Troop movements. Supply routes. Known hideouts.

I spread them across the table, anchoring the corners with brass weights.

My finger traced the line of rogue activity stretching along the empire’s eastern border. Numerous camps. Countless fighters. They’d grown bolder in recent months, raiding villages, ambushing patrols.

They’d tortured my mate. Ripped her wolf from her soul. Made her so afraid she’d abandoned her own children to keep them safe.

My hands flattened against the map. I leaned forward, studying every mark, every notation.

I will raze their camps to the ground. Hunt them to the ends of the earth. Make our empire so safe, so secure, that Elara will have no choice but to come home.

Because that is what a monarch does. We protect our mates. Our children. Our empire.

Even if it means waging war.