A mark can be faked. But what about a soul bond?

Mira's POV

"My — wife?"

Cyrus let out a short, quiet laugh, soft enough that it barely carried — but there was something underneath it, the faint edge of anger held just barely in check.

I was on the floor, propped up on my elbows against the cold tile. Every small movement pulled at the wounds across my back, sending pain radiating outward in sharp, insistent waves. Blood had soaked through my collar and dried against my skin, and the draft coming through the gap under the door found every raw place it could — cold and stinging all at once.

But I couldn't afford to think about any of that. I lifted my head and looked at Cyrus.

"Cyrus, please — just listen to me—"

"Listen to what?"

Angelina cut me off before I could get another word out.

She came from the direction of the bed, her robe hanging loose off one shoulder, the neckline fallen wide open. She moved slowly, deliberately — each step unhurried, each step landing somewhere in the center of my chest.

She stopped at Cyrus's side. Her pale arm settled around his waist, and only then did she speak, her voice as unhurried as her walk.

"Explain why you broke into an alpha's room?" She smiled slightly. "Mira — don't you know that when a man doesn't want to hear you speak, every word you force on him only makes things worse?"

"Cyrus is my husband." I couldn't keep the tremor out of my voice. My eyes were burning. "We've been together for eight years. Eight years, Angelina. Everyone in this house knows who I am."

"Is that so?" She tilted her head, as though genuinely puzzled. "Why don't you ask them yourself — is there anyone left in this room who still knows you?"

I opened my mouth. My gaze moved from face to face. The gamma stood at the door with his head down, unwilling to meet my eyes. The servants peering in from the hallway pulled back the moment I looked their way.

Cyrus stood where he was. His expression didn't shift by a single degree.

And then I understood. She wasn't wrong.

There was no one in this room on my side.

"Do you remember what happened when we were children?" Angelina crouched closer to me, her voice dropping.

I went still.

"We were what — seven, eight years old?" Her voice was steady. Steadier than it had any right to be, and that steadiness frightened me more than shouting would have. "The night the vampires came."

My throat moved.

I remembered that night.

Before the vampires came, Angelina and I had grown up together. No one in the pack had wanted anything to do with me back then. I was thin enough that the other pups could outfight me for food without trying. It was Angelina who had pulled me to her side.

She wasn't much older than me, but she seemed to understand everything I didn't. When food was divided, she always pushed the larger portion toward me. In winter, when the den ran cold, she would lie on the outer edge with her back to the wind and tuck me in against the wall. When I hurt my leg and couldn't get up, she carried me all the way back on her own, her lips going blue from the cold without a word of complaint. When the other pups threw stones at me, she stepped in front of them — stood her ground, got knocked down, got back up and kept standing there.

I used to crouch behind her back and think that even if the sky fell, she would hold it up.

She told me something once that I carried for years. Mira, you're too soft. Stay close to me — don't get lost.

Then the vampires came. They were hunting for young, weak pups to take as blood slaves. The pack's alpha led the warriors in resistance, but everything was chaos. I was seven or eight years old, frozen at the doorway, shaking so hard I couldn't move. When a vampire came straight at me, I was still rigid with fear — and Angelina stepped in front of me.

"I saved you. But your first instinct was to run, Mira." Angelina's eyes stayed fixed on mine. "You didn't look back for me."

I didn't say anything. Because she was right. I had run — out through that door, into the forest, all the way back to the pack. I had meant to bring the warriors back for her, but by the time I returned, there was no one left to find.

"Those vampires were monsters. They took me and used me as a blood slave, feeding from me every day, for as long as I had any value to them." Her voice didn't waver. "When they decided I wasn't worth keeping, they let me go."

Something had lodged itself in my throat. I couldn't push past it.

"Did you ever think about what would have happened if I had died there?" She looked at me. "Did you ever think — if it hadn't been me standing in front of you, everything they did to me would have been done to you instead?"

I stared at the floor. My fingernails pressed into the grout between the tiles.

"I went back—"

"Let me finish."

Her voice rose sharply, just once.

"I never blamed you for running, Mira. You don't need to explain that."

She drew a slow breath. When she looked at me again, the hatred in her eyes had risen to the surface.

"But do you know what I came back to? The vampires had nearly drained me dry. I held on with the last thing I had because I wanted to come back to you — and when I finally made it to the door, you were the one standing there blocking my way. You told me I smelled like vampires. That if I came inside, the pack would be disturbed by the scent."

My tears fell before I could stop them.

The reason I had said it was because there was a traitor inside the pack. I hadn't wanted her drawn into it. I had never told anyone that — not once, not in all the years since.

That same year, a patrol map had gone missing from the alpha's study. Three days later, the sentries marked on that map were bypassed with perfect precision, and two gammas were killed. The alpha investigated for half a month and eventually turned his suspicion toward Angelina — she had disappeared, been taken by vampires, and come back. The scent on her couldn't be washed out. No one could guarantee she hadn't been turned or compromised.

I knew it wasn't her. That night I had seen the beta's son climb out through the back window of the study with my own eyes. He hadn't even been hurrying. He had looked at me and smiled.

When the alpha called me in to question me, I told him what I had seen. He didn't believe a word of it. The beta was the person he trusted most in the pack, and the beta's son was an extension of that trust. He threw me out of the study and called Angelina in.

I waited outside the door. All I heard was the alpha asking her the same question, over and over.

Angelina — how did that scent get on you?

After that, the beta pushed to have her confined, barred from the pack's inner territory. She carried a vampire's scent. Her return had been too convenient. Whether she was guilty or not, she needed to be controlled.

I was a foundling — a pup the pack had taken in and no one had asked for. No one listened to me. No one believed me.

So when Angelina came to find me, dragging her injured leg, I stood in the doorway and said what I said.

You smell like vampires. Don't come in. It will disturb the pack.

I hadn't forgotten. I still remembered the way her eyes had looked in that moment — the wound in them.

But she was owed an apology regardless. That much had always been true.

"I'm sorry." I heard myself say it. "Angelina — I'm sorry."

"Just sorry?"

She let out a short, humorless laugh. Her eyes had gone red at the edges.

"When you ran that night, you didn't look back at me once." She crouched down until we were level, her voice softening into something almost gentle. "I'm giving you a chance now. Look back."

I turned my head, slowly, with effort.

Cyrus was standing at the window, his back to me. He had not turned around once. Not from the beginning.