I sent urgent scent-messages immediately.
Both trails had gone cold, severed completely.
Panic clawed at my throat like a feral beast.
I raced back to the Nightveil estate, only to have Cedric meet me at the entrance, his weathered face pale as bone.
The day they received word of Alaric's capture, my parents had rushed back to offer their aid. A mountain storm had caught their carriage on the treacherous pass.
Neither survived the fall.
In a single night, my entire world crumbled to ash.
No mate. No parents. No pack left to shelter me.
I sold everything I possessed and retreated to a damp underground den at the edge of unclaimed territory, hiding from the rogue hunters who had purchased Alaric's blood debts.
Sleep became an impossibility. I would lie awake through endless nights, flinching at every rustle, every distant howl.
Eventually, they tracked my scent.
A group of rogues kicked down my door, armed with silver-tipped clubs.
They shattered two of my ribs. Broke my wrist so badly that I could never hold a brush again, could never create the moon-blessed art that had once defined me.
It took three years to accept my fate.