Kaelen’s POV

I read her letter again.

The words hadn’t changed. Not the first time. Not the hundredth.

Please don’t come looking for me. Please let me go.

Her handwriting was steady. That was the worst part. No smudged ink, no trembling strokes, no sign that her hand had shaken while she wrote the words that carved my chest open. She’d been calm. She’d been certain.

She’d planned this.

The paper was creased where I’d folded and unfolded it too many times. The edges were soft now, worn thin by my fingers. I sat on the edge of our bed—her side, because it still smelled like her, faintly, like winter roses and something clean and sharp that I could never name—and I read the letter again.

I can’t stay. Not after what I saw. Not after what you did.

I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t—

But I couldn’t remember. That was the thing that made me want to tear through the walls with my bare hands. The entire night was a black pit in my mind. Fragments. A twisted haze of confusion. And then nothing. Nothing until I woke with a splitting skull and my mate’s scent already fading from the palace.

Alex.

Silence. My wolf had retreated so deep into the dark corners of my consciousness that I couldn’t feel him at all. Not a growl. Not a whimper. Just dead, awful silence where his presence should have been—a hollow cavity inside a hollow cavity.

Alex. Talk to me.

Nothing.

I folded the letter. Set it on the nightstand. Picked it up again.

The nursery was down the corridor. I could hear Lyra through the walls—not crying, just making those soft, restless sounds she made when she was between sleep and waking. The small noises a baby makes when she wants someone to come. When she wants her mother.

I went to her.

The nursery was dim. Pale morning light filtered through the curtains. Lyra lay in her crib, her tiny fists curled near her face, her mouth working silently. When she heard my footsteps, her head turned. Those eyes—gods, those eyes. Her mother’s eyes. Ice blue and unbearably clear.

I reached into the crib. She latched onto my finger immediately, her grip fierce and certain, and something inside me cracked along an old, familiar fault line.

"Shh." My voice came out rough. Scraped raw. "I’m here."

I lifted her against my chest. She was so small. So impossibly small. Her head fit in the hollow beneath my jaw, and she made a sound—a soft, satisfied hum—and went still.

I stood there. Holding my daughter in the grey light. Breathing.

Footsteps in the corridor. Small ones. Uneven. The particular shuffle of a child who’d just woken up and hadn’t fully committed to being vertical.

The door pushed open.

Valerius stood in the doorway. Sleep-rumpled pajamas. Dark curls sticking up in every direction. Those gold eyes—my eyes—blinking slowly as they adjusted to the dim room.

"Daddy?"

The word hit me like a fist.

"Hey, little wolf." I shifted Lyra to one arm and crouched down. "You’re up early."

He padded toward me. His gaze swept the nursery with that unsettling perceptiveness he’d inherited from his mother. Taking inventory. Noting what was present.

Noting what was missing.

"Where’s Mommy?"

I’d prepared for this. I’d spent the entire sleepless night preparing for this exact question, rehearsing answers in the dark while the letter burned a hole through my nightstand.

"Mommy had to go take care of some grown-up things." The lie came out smooth. Steady. The voice of an emperor who’d spent a lifetime controlling what his face revealed. "She’ll be back soon."

Valerius studied me. He had this way of looking at people—direct, unblinking, far too old for his face. Like he was weighing my words against some internal scale only he could see.

"What kind of grown-up things?"

"Important ones. Nothing for you to worry about."

"When is she coming back?"

"Soon."

He didn’t believe me. I could see it. That subtle tightening around his mouth, the way his chin lifted slightly—a gesture so purely his mother’s that it made my throat close.

But he was also his father’s son. He understood, on some instinct deeper than words, when to stop pushing.

"Can I have honey cakes?"

"Yeah." I reached out and smoothed down a wild curl. My hand was steady. My hand was perfectly steady. "I’ll make sure there are honey cakes."

He leaned into my touch for a brief moment. Then he turned and shuffled back toward the door, dragging his sleeve across his nose.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Mommy I said good morning. When she calls."

"I will."

He left. The door clicked shut.

I stood in the nursery holding Lyra against my chest, and the silence crushed me.

---

An hour later, I was in my study. The letter was in my breast pocket. I could feel it against my ribs like a second heartbeat.

The communication stone sat on my desk. I picked it up. Set it down. Picked it up again.

Cassian’s sigil glowed faintly on its surface. One press. One word. And my most trusted knight would mobilize every resource at his disposal to find her.

But Cassian talked to people. Cassian had a network. And networks leaked.

I set the stone down.

Picked it up.

If the empire found out that the Emperor’s mate had fled the palace—

I set the stone down. Hard enough that the wood cracked beneath it.

No. Not Cassian. Not yet.

I pressed a different sigil. "Sir Marcus. My study. Now."

Twenty minutes later, three men stood before my desk. Marcus—broad, scarred, expressionless. Tyler—lean, sharp-eyed, still as stone. Jack—the youngest, coiled like a spring beneath his stillness. All three had served in the empire’s special forces before I’d pulled them into my personal guard. All three understood what silence meant and what it cost.

I didn’t sit. I stood behind the desk with my hands flat on the surface, because if I didn’t press them against something solid, I would break something.

"Yesterday afternoon," I said, "a woman left the capital on a public coach. Silver-white hair. Ice-blue eyes. She would have been hooded. She would have been alone."

Marcus’s expression didn’t flicker. Tyler’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Jack was perfectly still.

"Find her."

"Your Majesty—" Marcus began.

"You do not approach her. You do not speak to her. You do not let her see you. You track her, you report her location to me and only to me, and you do not breathe a word of this to anyone in the empire. Not the court. Not the guard. Not Cassian." I held Marcus’s gaze. "If any of you fail, I will tear your throats out with my bare hands. That is not a figure of speech."

The room was very quiet.

"Understood, Your Majesty," Marcus said.

"Go."

They went. The door closed behind them. I stood alone in my study and pressed my knuckles into the desk until the wood groaned.

I will find you, Elara. I don’t care what that letter says. I don’t care if you hate me. You are mine, and I will drag you back to this palace by force if I have to.

The thought was savage. Possessive. The kind of thought that belonged to the wolf, not the man—except Alex was still silent, still buried somewhere unreachable, and the savagery was entirely my own.

A knock at the door.

"Enter."

Sylvia stepped in carrying a silver tray with a single cup of coffee. She was immaculate, as always—pressed uniform, dark hair pinned in a perfect coil, posture that radiated crisp efficiency. She set the tray on the corner of my desk with precise, practiced movements.

"Your Majesty. Your ten o’clock council meeting has been moved to eleven. Lord Ashford requested the delay due to travel conditions."

"Fine."

She didn’t leave. I felt her gaze linger on me—on the unshaven jaw, the wrinkled shirt I hadn’t changed since yesterday, the shadows that must have been carved beneath my eyes.

"Your Majesty, if I may..." She clasped her hands. A careful, measured pause. "You look unwell. My grandmother had an herbal remedy—a tonic, quite effective for fatigue and general... strain. I’d be happy to have some prepared for you."

"That won’t be necessary."

Another pause. She tilted her head slightly. The gesture was sympathetic. Calculated.

"I do hope everything is... settling," she said. Her voice dropped into something softer. More intimate. "After the engagement party, there was quite a lot of talk. It must be terribly difficult. Your... mortal mate, dealing with such an embarrassing incident. I imagine she’s quite overwhelmed."

My fingers closed around the coffee cup.

"The poor thing," Sylvia continued, her tone dripping with polished pity. "A mortal mate thrust into court life—it’s no wonder these situations become so—"

The cup shattered in my hand.

Porcelain and hot coffee exploded across the desk. Sylvia flinched. A shard bit into my palm. Blood welled, dark and immediate, mixing with the brown liquid pooling across scattered papers.

I looked at her.

She went pale.

"Sylvia." My voice was very quiet. The kind of quiet that preceded violence. "Get out."