Chapter 1

Elena‘s POV

“Once the severing ritual begins,” the witch said, “everything that makes you Elena will disappear from this world. Are you sure?”

She didn’t look surprised when I told her I wanted to disappear.

She poured tea into a chipped cup and pushed it toward me across the table. I didn’t touch it. My hands were trembling too much, and I didn’t want her to see.

“It’s permanent,” she continued. “Even the people who loved you will forget your face.”

“I know.”

She studied me for a long moment. I thought about the healer’s face when she told me my artificial heart was failing.

“There’s nothing left for me here,” I said.

The witch reached into a drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. Her pen scratched across it, the ink dark as old blood.

She slid it toward me.

Elena will completely disappear from this world in 30 days.

“Someone will come for you when the time arrives,” she said.

I folded the paper and tucked it into my coat. “Thank you.”

Outside, I pulled it tighter and started walking, my wolf, Ayla, stirring weakly inside me. She'd been fading along with my heart, growing quieter each day. Sometimes I forgot she was there at all.

“Elena.”

I stopped.

“Are you sure about this?”

Through the window of a closed shop, I could see a television playing the evening news.

My fiance, Blake's face filled the screen with a sharp jaw, dark eyes, that smile that used to make my heart race. The ticker at the bottom announced his latest campaign move: a new product line named after his partner. After me.

Ayla whimpered. “He loves you. Look, he named something after you. He still thinks about you.”

I watched him wave at the cameras confidently. Six months ago, our Alpha fell in a border attack, and now every ambitious wolf in the pack was fighting for the empty throne. Blake had thrown his name into the ring immediately. He'd started spending more time with Lydia, whose father Gavin controlled enough council votes to crown the next Alpha.

Politics and power, that was what he loved now.

“Yes”, I told her. “He loves me. But loving me has never stopped him from loving someone else too.”

She went silent after that.

Three days ago, I collapsed in the middle of the street.

One moment I was walking home from the pharmacy. The next, the world tilted sideways and I was on the ground. Someone called an ambulance. I woke up in the pack hospital with tubes in my arms and machines beeping beside me.

I tried to reach Blake through our mate bond but there was nothing but silence. So I called his phone instead.

Lydia answered.

"Elena?" She sounded delighted, like I'd given her a gift. "Blake's a little busy right now, want me to pass along a message?"

Behind her, I heard him laugh and I hung up without saying a word.

The next day, I went looking for him. I don't know what I expected. An explanation, an apology or something that would make the crack in my chest feel less like it was splitting me in half.

I found them at the restaurant near the eastern border.

The nice one, where Blake used to take me on special occasions. Something inside me snapped.

I stepped back, intending on saying my mind when the cart slammed into me.

The waiter swore as the wheels caught my ankle. The plates shattered across the floor.

“Watch where you’re going,” he snapped, grabbing my arm and shoving me aside as if I were the problem.

I stumbled into a chair, my pulse roaring in my ears. Every face in the restaurant turned toward me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said automatically, though my throat burned.

The waiter didn’t answer. He crouched to salvage what he could, muttering under his breath and that was when I saw it.

The cart.

A plated sea bass finished exactly the way Blake always did it, lemon peel twisted just so. The truffle risotto he’d perfected after weeks of testing. A dessert I’d watched him remake three times because the sauce wasn’t glossy enough.

He’d never made it for me.

Across the table, Lydia sat perfectly composed, napkin folded in her lap, lips curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

It dawned on me, he prepared a whole feast for her.

The waiter stood and glared at me once more before wheeling the ruined cart away. I stayed where I was, hands clenched in my coat, staring at the empty space it left behind.

That night, we fought. I screamed about the lipstick on his collar. He told me I was paranoid, jealous, imagining things. We said words we couldn't take back, and then we stopped speaking altogether.

Two weeks of silence and sleeping in the same bed like strangers while my heart broke a little more each day, in ways that had nothing to do with the failing machine in my chest.

This morning, I mindlinked him.

"Come home for dinner tonight," I said. "Please."

He paused for a bit before he said, "I know. I'll be there."

I spent all afternoon cooking his favorite dishes, the ones I used to make when we first moved in together, back when he'd wrap his arms around me from behind and kiss my neck while I stirred the pot.

I set the table with our nice plates, lit the candles and put on the dress he'd given me last anniversary, even though it hung off my shoulders now that I have lost a lot of weight.

I waited.

The candles burned down to stubs, the food went cold and still the door didn't open.

I mindlinked him again at nine.

"Something came up," Blake said. "Don't wait for me."

I could hear Lydia’s laughter from the phone when I hung up.

I sat at that table until midnight, staring at two plates of food that no one would eat. Then I picked up my fork and forced myself to swallow a few bites, just so the whole day wouldn't feel like a complete waste.

I cried while I ate. When I finished, I wiped my face and laughed at myself.

Happy thirty days, Elena. Make them count.

He came home after two in the morning.

He walked right past the dining room without glancing at the table,

"Blake."

He paused.

"I cut my hand earlier." I held up my palm, wrapped in a bandage spotted with dried blood.

He looked at it the way you'd look at a stain on the carpet.

"Be more careful," he said as he kissed my forehead before walking away.

I followed him to the bedroom. He was loosening his tie when I noticed the dark bruise on his neck, just below his jaw. A mark that wasn't from me.

My wolf keened softly and I pushed her down.

"I have something for you," I said.

He turned, surprised. I held out the envelope with the death notice tucked inside, disguised as a gift.

"For our wedding next month but don't open it until then."

His face softened and for a moment, he looked like the Blake I'd fallen in love with, the one who used to bring me wildflowers and dance with me in the kitchen at midnight.

"Thank you," he said. He set the envelope on his dresser. "I was late because I was getting fitted for my suit for the wedding day."

Were you? I wanted to ask. Or were you in her bed?

But I was too tired to fight.

"I love you," I whispered.

He kissed my forehead. "I love you too."

Three years ago, we'd stood beneath the full moon and declared ourselves fate mates before the entire pack. Blake had pulled me close and whispered against my hair: Nothing will ever separate us. Only death.

I lay beside him that night, listening to him breathe, and thought about those words.

If only death can separate us, then I hope when you open that envelope, when you finally read what's inside you'll understand.

I hope you'll accept our separation. In life, and in death.

The countdown had begun.