He moved through the motions of getting out of bed mechanically. Pulled on clothes. Ran a hand through his dark hair. Caught sight of himself in the mirror and stopped.

His eyes were darker than usual. The strain showing in the set of his jaw. His skin had a greyish tint, like he hadn’t slept in days instead of just hours. Rhen was close to the surface, restless and agitated, making Sebastian’s movements slightly off....a jerkiness to his limbs that suggested the wolf wanted out.

"Not yet," Sebastian said quietly to his reflection.

Rhen snarled back.

He left the bedroom and headed downstairs.

The kitchen was empty. The dining room was empty. The hallway that led to the library was empty. Sebastian moved through the estate like he was searching for something specific, even though he knew....logically, rationally knew, that Lilith wasn’t here. That she’d left yesterday morning in a car that would carry her back to Shadowmere and a life where she would forget the Blackwood brothers existed.

Rhen didn’t accept this information as final.

The wolf kept pushing Sebastian toward the eastern wing. The garden. The library. The sitting room where Lilith had sat reading books she’d taken from the shelves. Every space that had held her was now painfully, impossibly empty.

Sebastian stood in the library and felt his chest tighten.

The book she’d been reading was still on the side table. Half-finished. Abandoned. He picked it up and could smell her on the pages, not in any obvious way, but in the particular way his wolf could sense her presence. Rhen whimpered inside his chest.

"Sebastian."

He turned to find Nicholas standing in the doorway.

His eldest brother looked like he’d been hit by a truck. His normally pristine appearance was disheveled...his hair uncombed, his shirt rumpled, dark circles under his eyes so pronounced they looked like bruises. Kael was visible in the set of his shoulders, in the raw intensity of his gaze.

"Yeah," Sebastian said, because there was nothing else to say.

"She’s gone," Nicholas said flatly.

"I know."

"The bond...."

"I know."

Nicholas moved into the library and sat heavily in one of the armchairs. His hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly, like Kael was trying to break free. "How long do you think he’ll wait?"

Sebastian didn’t need to ask who ’he’ was. Lucian. Zev. The youngest brother and his wolf, both of whom had been dangerously on edge since Lilith’s departure.

"I don’t know," Sebastian said honestly. "As long as he can."

They sat in silence for a moment. The quiet of two wolves in distress, contained in human skins that couldn’t adequately hold them.

"It’s worse than I thought it would be," Nicholas said quietly. "When she was here, the bond was incomplete but present. We could feel her. Rhen could find her. Now...." He stopped. "Now there’s just absence. A hole where she should be."

Sebastian understood exactly what he meant. The mate bond had formed between the three of them and Lilith during her time at the estate. But she didn’t know about it. Didn’t understand what it meant. And now she was gone, and the bond was screaming its incompleteness like an open wound.

"Lucian’s in the training grounds," Nicholas continued. "Zev’s been running the perimeter since dawn. He wants to go to Shadowmere."

"He won’t," Sebastian said, though part of him wondered if that was true. Part of him, the part that was Rhen....wanted to go to Shadowmere and take her back. Force her into acceptance. Make her understand what she meant to them.

That was the wolf talking. The civilized part of Sebastian knew it was impossible. The agreement with Garrett was clear. Lilith was free. They had no claim on her.

The thought made Rhen howl inside his chest.

"I hope you’re right," Nicholas said. "Because if Zev decides to go rogue, this entire situation becomes a war."

He stood and left the library without saying anything else.

Sebastian remained where he was, still holding the book Lilith had been reading. He opened it to the marked page and tried to focus on the words. They blurred together, meaningless. His mind couldn’t concentrate on anything except the absence.

She was gone.

The bond was incomplete.

And they were going to suffer for however long it took before she came back....if she came back at all.

Rhen surged against his skin, desperate and frantic.

Sebastian left the library and headed toward the garden. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

The morning air was cold. The garden was laid out in geometric patterns, carefully maintained hedges, stone pathways, benches positioned in quiet corners. It was beautiful in an controlled, deliberate way that reminded him of the estate itself.

Except Lilith. She’d never fit into any organized pattern. She’d moved through the estate like something wild and untamed, disrupting the careful order of everything.

And now the estate felt like a tomb.

Sebastian found a bench and sat down, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Rhen was pacing inside his chest, restless and agitated. The wolf wanted to run. To hunt. To move toward the horizon where she’d gone.

Instead, Sebastian made him sit still.

This was the hardest part. Not the physical ache or the emotional devastation. But the sitting still. The acceptance that they couldn’t do anything except wait.

"Where is she right now?" a voice asked.

Sebastian looked up to find Lucian standing there.

His youngest brother looked feral. Zev was very close to the surface, visible in the way his eyes flickered gold, in the aggressive set of his shoulders, in the barely controlled violence radiating from him.

"Shadowmere," Sebastian said. "In omega housing, probably. With her mother in the hospital."

"We should go get her," Lucian said flatly.

"No."

"She doesn’t understand the bond. She doesn’t know what she is to us. If we explained..."

"No," Sebastian said again, more firmly. "The agreement is clear. She’s free."

"She’s ours," Lucian snarled. "She’s our mate. She belongs with us."

"She belongs to herself first," Sebastian said, and the words felt true in a way he didn’t fully understand. "We can’t make her understand the bond. She has to come to it herself. She has to choose it."

"And what if she never chooses it?" Lucian’s voice was raw. "What if she decides she’d rather be free? What if she finds someone else and bonds with them instead?"