Kaida thought she had already hit bottom.
She was wrong.
The worst moment didn't come with shouting or violence or even the rejection itself. It came quietly, on her last night inside pack territory, when she realized no one would stop her if she disappeared.
She sat on the edge of the training grounds long after moonrise, knees pulled to her chest, watching shadows move where wolves once laughed with her. This place had shaped her bones. Every scar on her body had been earned here. Every victory, every failure, every hope.
None of it mattered.
Footsteps approached behind her. For one fragile heartbeat, her wolf surged with desperate hope.
Rowan.
He stopped a few paces away. Didn't come closer. Kaida foolishly hoped he was here to explain, to smooth things over and lift her burden. But the distance he maintained told her that would not be happening.
"You're leaving," he said.
Not a question. Not concern. A statement of fact.
Kaida didn't look at him. If she did, she would break. "You already decided I was gone."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating.
"I did what I had to do Kaida," Rowan said finally, his voice low , deep. It made the hairs in the back of her neck stand.
She laughed — a quiet, broken sound. "For the pack?"
"Yes."
"For tradition?" she pressed, voice trembling despite her effort.
"Yes."
She turned then, finally meeting his eyes. "And for yourself?"
His jaw tightened. He didn't answer.
That was her answer.
"I loved you," Kaida said. The words tasted like blood. "Not as an Alpha. Not as a destiny. As you."
Rowan's wolf stirred uneasily beneath his skin. He took half a step forward, but then took a larger step back.
That hurt more than if he'd struck her.
"I can't afford weakness," he said.
Kaida stood slowly, her knees shaking. "Then you never loved me at all."
She walked past him, close enough to feel his warmth, his scent — pine and smoke, forever burned into her memory. He didn't reach for her. Didn't stop her.
That was the moment something inside her finally died.
Crossing the border later felt like stepping out of her own skin.
The barrier hummed faintly as she pressed her palm against it, breath hitching. She remembered being a child, standing here with Rowan, daring each other to touch it, laughing when the elders scolded them.
She wondered if he remembered that too.
Her chest ached so badly she thought she might collapse. The bond's absence was a constant scream now, a wound that refused to clot.
You were never enough, the pain whispered.
You were always expendable.
Behind her, someone spat. "Good riddance."
Kaida stepped forward.
The forest swallowed her whole.
She did not look back — because if she did, she would have begged.
And she would rather die than do that.