Chapter Fifteen
Silas
I pack up our camp, my hands methodical, my mind a hollowed-out shell.
I roll the furs, the ones that still smell of her, of us, and the scent is a physical ache in my chest. I douse the ashes of our fire, scattering the last of its warmth to the wind.
Each task is a nail in a coffin I never wanted to build.
She is quiet, too, moving with a stiffness that mirrors my own. We don’t speak. What is there left to say? Last night said it all. Her body in my arms, her tears on my skin, the way she clung to me as if I were the anchor and the storm all at once.
We walk as the grasslands stretch before us, an ocean of green and gold under the rising sun.
For me, it is a funeral march. Every step is a step closer to losing her.
My hooves are heavy, my heart a stone in my throat.
I watch her from the corner of my eye—the set of her shoulders, the way the morning light catches the gold in her hair.
I am memorizing her. Branding this final image of her onto my soul.
There it is. The wooden, weathered fences of Havenmoor, suddenly looming, separating their neat, tame world from the wild one I represent. Her steps falter, then stop. She turns to me, blue eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. This is it.
I want to roar. I want to fall to my knees and beg. I want to throw her over my shoulder and carry her back to the stronghold, to my home, which could be our home, if she would only let it.
I do none of those things.
I stand before her, a Bull who has faced down armies, and I have never felt so powerless.
She looks up at me, her lower lip trembling. I reach out, cupping her cheek, my thumb stroking the soft skin there one last time. I pour every ounce of my being into that single touch. All my love, my devotion, my desperate, hopeless want.
“I love you,” I tell her, the words raw and true. “No matter what you find behind that fence. No matter what you choose. That will never change.”
A tear escapes, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. “I know.”
“I’ll be at last night’s camp,” I say, my voice thick. “I’ll wait until morning. If you… if you change your mind.” I don’t let myself hope. Hope is a luxury that has been carved out of me.
She swallows and nods in a quick, jerky motion, unable to speak.
I lean down, pressing my forehead to hers. We stand like that for a long moment, breathing each other in, two hearts beating together in a frantic, sorrowful rhythm.
“Goodbye, my fire,” I whisper against her skin. Then, I force myself to step back. To let my hand fall. To break the contact.
She wraps her arms around herself, looking small and lost. She gives me one last, devastating look, then turns and walks toward the fence without looking back.
I watch her until she disappears through a gate and into the world that made her, the world that wants to keep her.
And then I am alone.
I turn from the fence, my jaw clenched so tight it aches. The stoic mask I have worn for her benefit cracks, and the agony beneath is a yawning chasm. Every instinct screams to follow her, to fight for her, to claim what is mine.
But she is not mine. She never was. Not truly. She is her own. Fierce and wild and free. And I love her enough to let her go.
I will return to the camp, wait through the day and the night, and stare at the stars we lay under, remembering the feel of her.
And when the sun rises tomorrow, if she does not come, I will walk away.
Return to the stronghold, to my duty, to a life that now feels grayscale.
I will live with the ghost of her in every corridor, the echo of her laughter in the silence, the memory of her fire keeping me warm in the cold.
It is the hardest battle I have ever fought, this aching restraint. This love, left unspoken on a grassy plain, given wings and set free. And as I walk away from Havenmoor, my heart breaking with every step, I know one thing for certain.
I would rather live a lifetime in the ashes of having loved her, than never been consumed by her fire at all.