Chapter 35
JINGYI
When she awakened, the bed was empty beside her. The furs were still warm, but barely. The imprint of his body lingered faintly in the bedding, and the scent of spruce and smoke clung to the pillow where he’d rested his head.
JingYi stirred, her body registering every stretch, every ache. Her thighs trembled with soreness, her hips heavy with bruised satisfaction. Her core still throbbed with the memory of their two nights together.
Yet . . . he was gone.
Her eyes found a folded note resting beside her pillow. She sat up slowly, wincing as her muscles protested, and opened the note.
JingYi,
The Wulfbane limyerite mine has collapsed, trapping two workers inside. I need to free the men from the wreckage and assess the damage.
I’ll return when I can.
—Alexander
The healer in her awoke at once. Two men? How bad were their injuries? What about the limyerite deposit, which House Wulfbane and its people needed to survive?
Then, her eyes lingered on the closing line.
‘I’ll return when I can.’
The part that was soft from her Heat, that had woken wrapped in his scent, stung. It wanted a different note. One with a tender word, a hidden warmth to match the intimacy they’d shared, not this polite distance.
Her throat closed. She reminded herself: Alphas, especially ones like Alexander Wulfbane, were raised to restrain what tenderness they felt, to prioritize duty and act with honour, not emotion.
Still. After she’d fallen asleep to the thrum of his heartbeat beneath her cheek, she was certain, perhaps foolishly so, that something had changed.
She folded the note carefully, set it aside, and reached for the bellpull. Her mind snapped into a familiar focus, already cataloguing what needed doing.
“Aliz,” she said when the girl appeared moments later. “Please draw a hot bath and bring a strong cup of tea.”
Before long, she had bathed and dressed in the simple indigo gown Aliz had brought, one with a light blue sash at around the waistline. She braided her hair back and headed to the kitchen, nodding to the head cook on her way in.
“We’ll need a fortifying soup for the people at the mine,” she said. “Beef and barley, with whatever root vegetables we have. Plenty of bread, too. They’ll be cold and exhausted when they return.”
The cook rushed to comply. “Yes, Highness.”
JingYi stepped into the adjoining workroom and began preparing salves. Her fingers found their rhythm with the mortar and pestle. Grind, mix, and portion. The methodical work was a tonic for the mind.
But in the lulls between measures, silence rushed in. With it, the memory of last night, full of heated images of their time together. Her breath hitched, an echo in the room. She shook her head and wiped her face. It was fine. He’d gone to handle what needed handling.
And she . . . she would handle what she could.
She was scraping the last of the salve into a jar when footsteps pounded down the corridor.
“Your Highness!” Aliz burst into the room, breathless. “A messenger arrived from the capital.”
JingYi stilled. “The capital?”
The girl nodded, flushed. “He says it’s urgent. A letter from the king, addressed to Lord Wulfbane.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the pestle. “Did you tell him Lord Wulfbane is away?”
“I did, Highness. He wouldn’t leave the letter and insists on putting it in his lordship’s hand himself.”
“Where’s Lady Yrenna?”
“She went to the hilltop to supervise the men bringing the harvest tables back.”
A flicker of wary resolve passed through her. This was what it meant to be the lady of the castle, to stand in the gap when Alexander was away. There was no one else to take the lead. JingYi wiped her hands on a linen cloth.
“I’ll see to him, then. Thank you, Aliz.”
She found the messenger, standing near the hearth in the great hall, still cloaked in road-dust, a sealed parchment in his gloved hand. He bowed when JingYi entered, his eyes flicking to her cheek only briefly before lowering again.
“Your Highness.”
She kept her tone neutral. “As you’ve been informed, Lord Wulfbane is away. You may leave the letter with me.”
The messenger hesitated. “I was given strict instruction—”
“It’ll take some time. My husband is dealing with a natural disaster.”
The messenger shifted, caught between his explicit order and her authority. He cleared his throat. “If Her Highness insists . . .”
JingYi nodded. “Rest assured that I will relay the message to Lord Wulfbane once he returns. You may go to the kitchen for some refreshments.”
With a final, reluctant bow, he surrendered the parchment and retreated.
Alone, she looked down at the letter, its weight immense in her hand. The king’s crest—a stark, raised impression in crimson wax—gleamed. To open it felt like a transgression. Yet to leave it sealed, when it was so urgent, seemed a dereliction of the duty she’d just claimed.
She broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and read.
Alexander,
I received your marriage annulment request.
Come to court. I expect to see you within three days.
—Ferdinand
The world stopped. Her vision went white at the edges, then gray. The floor dropped, and she swayed, knees buckling. She caught a table. A cold hand seemed to reach inside her chest and snuff any lingering warmth.
Last night, as they lay entangled in the nest, as she’d fallen asleep against his chest, she’d believed something had shifted. That she’d finally been allowed inside the walls he kept around himself.
Annulment.
He had already asked to be rid of her—perhaps from the very start, when he’d left her alone on their wedding night.
And she, blind, had fought for his trust, laboured to win over his people, telling herself that every glance, every smile, every small kindness meant something more.
But they’d only been a performance. An Alpha lord waiting for the king to approve his annulment request.
And last night, when he touched her as if she were something to be cherished—had that been a kindness from a noble Alpha to a pitiful Omega in Heat? A duty performed? A mercy?
Woodenly, the letter still in her hand, she climbed the stairs. The stone felt uneven, the air thinning with each step. Her room was cold. Not Alexander’s bedchamber, where their combined scents still clung to the nest. This was the polite room he had given her on arrival—separate, distant.
She sat at her dressing table, staring at the rose-coloured birthmark. Her lifelong companion.
To him, she was only the blemished woman he did not want. Once the annulment was official, she would be sent back to X?en-Sarai.
She knew what waited there. Her father’s fury. The court’s sneer. But beyond that?
She remembered the knot of young Alphas closing in, their laughter slurred and mean. One of them, breath hot against her ear: ‘Doesn’t matter what she looks like. She can still give pleasure in the dark.’
Her father might trade her to some low-ranking vassal as a concubine, or send her to the army barracks.
She’d become the Imperial Army’s whore, a body offered up so Alpha soldiers could better serve the kingdom’s interest. Or the Emperor might decide she’d shamed the empire enough and summon two oxen and a length of rope, and the court would cheer as her blood filled the courtyard stones.
Which was more likely? Rape or death? Perhaps both, in no particular order.
Her fingers trembled against the tabletop.
No.
The word was a line drawn in the sand of her soul. She would not go back. She would not be caged, humiliated, broken down until death seemed a blessing.
She rose and crossed to his study. Silence pressed in from all sides. Light poured through the narrow windows—a cloudless, endless blue. The sky watched, cruel and indifferent, as she passed beneath it.
The study smelled of beeswax, ink, parchment, and beneath it all, him: frost and spruce. It had once meant safety. Now, it was the smell of the knife twisting.
Her chin trembled. He knew. He knew the disgrace this annulment sealed for her. Still, he’d sent the letter.
A dagger to the throat would have been better. If only he’d looked her in the eye and said, ‘You are a burden. Go away.’ She would’ve staged her own death in distant woods, erased herself for his convenience, if he’d only just asked.
But he had not asked. He had written her out of his future with the same detached efficiency as correcting a ledger. It took this far for her to finally understand: she had built her hope for a home around a man who never intended to share one with her.
JingYi placed the letter on his desk, right in the centre of an open ledger. She set her wedding ring on top of it. A circular, golden prison lay to rest. It weighed nothing—and everything.
A pouch of coins lay near the desk’s edge, enough to carry her far. She looked at it but left it untouched.
A map sprawled across another table. Her finger followed the Blackfen River, curling past the fief toward Lowfen Quay.
It wasn’t far. She could ride Brisa there, tracing the same path as Bertrand’s limyerite wagons.
Boats would be waiting at the quay. Some might be bound for Niewberg, others farther.
Then, where? Was there any place she could live in peace and simply . . . be?
Her eyes landed on Bashkor. A loud, filthy, dangerous city, especially for an Omega. But she imagined it was also vast and anonymous. No one would know who she was or care about her limp and birthmark. There, she could vanish into the crowd. Sell tinctures. Tend the sick. Earn her keep. Live alone.
It wouldn’t be joy, but it would be freedom.
And freedom was better than love imagined and lost.