"Of course," Morven said, gesturing to a waiting servant. "We have emergency supplies always ready."
As the others scrambled with packs and horses, Casteel slipped like a ghost to the forest’s edge. A cold stream hissed in the dark, moonlight gouging silver veins across its surface. He dropped to his knees, thrusting his fingers into the icy torrent, swallowing a hiss as he steeled himself.
He clenched his teeth. He just needed a moment to clear his mind.
The wolf-soul belonged with Nero. It always had. The prophecy spoke of a Silver Wolf who would unite the kingdom, not a Silver Wolf distracted by love and haunted by the constantfear of losing his mate. Casteel's presence made Nero vulnerable, and it gave their enemies a weapon to use against him.
But wasn't that the same the world over?
Wasn't that what love was all about?
He didn't doubt Nero loved him, all his doubt came from not having a role, a purpose.
“You’re plotting,” came Eryken’s rasp from the shadows.
Casteel looked up. “Just scrubbing the ash from my face.”
Eryken settled by his shoulder, the moonlight unable to clear the shadows from the warrior’s face. “That’s the gaze of a man feeding his own funeral pyre,” he whispered. “I’ve stared into that fire before.”
His pulse thundered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he choked out.
Eryken’s glare cut him to the bone. “You think you endanger him, that he’d grow stronger, if you slipped away? Better off without you rather than a millstone around his neck?”
Casteel ground out each word between clenched teeth, the stream a roar in his ears. Because yes he had been thinking that, and to hear Eryken voice it made him sound childish, as if he had to justify his thoughts even as he knew they were wrong. “Nero almost bled out today trying to save me.”
Eryken studied him like a battlefield survivor. “Tell me,” he said at last, “why do you think your corpse would unlock his chains?”
The question struck him so hard he staggered, water sloshing over the bank. He wrenched himself upright. “We are none of your damn business. My decisions are exactly that.” He wasn't a self-sacrificing fool. He loved Nero, and knew Nero loved him. He was just sick of other people controlling his life, and Eryken had no right interfering. He'd spent his life owing others, obeying orders, being controlled, and now this self-proclaimedrebellion leader thought he knew Nero's heart better than he did?
Eryken jabbed a finger at his chest, voice rising. “So, you’ll sentence him to a half-life? I believed in this bond you share, but perhaps it is one-sided?”
Rage flared behind Casteel’s eyes, but words died on his lips as he recognized Eryken’s trap for what it was. He turned to walk back to Nero. To tell him he was all in.
“He was hollow before, a half-man,” Eryken spat. “No laughter, no warmth—nothing but grief and rage. After the palace fell, he just left. With his family's land barren, he trudged to the docks at dawn to sign on as a laborer. Told me he was finished.”
Casteel rubbed his chest, but it didn’t ease the hurt.
“It took me a few days to find him. Thought he was dead,” Eryken admitted. “Sometimes I wondered if wouldn’t have been better off if he was, but then after I left, he sent a bird telling me he was saving what coin he could to pay for passage on a ship to Cadmeera. To start a new life. Told me it would take three years, but he would do it. The last ship that could forge the straits before winter docked at the port two days before the choosing and sailed on the evening tide the night you shifted into your wolf. What are you betting Nero should have been on that ship, but he missed it because of you?”
Casteel couldn’t hold in the hiss of pain.
“And the bond?” Eryken dug the knife in. “True mates cannot live apart. You’re either condemning him to death, or if he lives, sending him back to the half-life he existed in before.”
“No,” Casteel rasped, shaking his head violently. “Not anymore. The blood magic altered the bond. She told me. My death wouldn't cause his.”
“Are you sure?” Eryken said and stood. "I've seen every sort of death imaginable in this war. Unimaginable injuries fromsword, pike, rope, even crushed beneath horses or buildings." He paused. "But in ten years I've never seen a death from a broken heart. Don't let Nero be the first one."
Nero emerged from the trees, his silver-flecked eyes catching the moonlight as Eryken departed with a meaningful glance between them. The tension in Nero's shoulders and the tight line of his jaw told Casteel he'd heard everything.
"Planning your escape?" Nero's voice was deceptively soft, but through their bond came a storm of emotions—anger, betrayal, and beneath it all, a raw, aching hurt that made Casteel's breath catch.
"No," Casteel vowed, because he wasn't. "Eryken—"
"Is mistaken?" Nero finished, stepping closer, his eyes flashing silver. "Sounds to me you're admitting the burden of having someone love you when you clearly don't feel the same."
The accusation struck Casteel like a physical blow. "That's not true," he whispered.
"Isn't it?" Nero's laugh held no humor. "You were going to leave. Disappear. Let me think you'd changed your mind." He shook his head, something terrible and wounded in his expression. "Do you have any idea what that would do to me?" But before Casteel could respond he froze. “Except that wouldn’t work because of the bond,” he whispered, voice cracking. “You weren’t just going to leave me, were you? That first day you held a blade to your throat.”
