The door had long since closed, but Aurean hadn't moved.
The fire still flickered. The sealed scroll and the leather pouch sat untouched on the table beside him—quiet emblems of a life returned, of freedom too heavy to hold.
But it was the absence that rang the loudest.
Rythe was gone.
And with him, the last anchor that Aurean didn't even realize he'd clung to.
He staggered back a step, and another, until his legs hit the edge of the bed, and then he crumpled. Not collapsed—crumpled. As if the tension had been the only thing keeping him upright all this time.
His chest tightened.
He brought a trembling hand to his mouth, trying to hold back the sob that clawed its way up his throat—but it tore through anyway. Raw. Quiet. The sound of a man breaking where no one could see.
He curled in on himself.
Not because of what Rythe had said.
But because of what he hadn't let himself believe—until now.
That maybe, somewhere along the way, he had mattered.
That maybe his presence had changed something.
That maybe—despite the pain and the chains and the silence he had forced into himself—he had been seen.
And now…
Now it was too late.
Because love, when it came, had come too scarred to be held.
The sobs came then, unstoppable. He pressed his face into the crook of his arm to muffle the sound, but his body shook anyway. Shook with grief. With loss. With everything that had been taken—and everything that had been offered only to be left behind.
The scroll sat there.
A future.
The pouch.
A means.
But none of it could fill the hollow place Rythe had carved out—and then left behind.
Aurean's fingers dug into the bedsheets as if trying to root himself to something. Anything.
He wept like the boy who had never been allowed to. The one who had been beaten for speaking out, shamed for weeping, rejected for being born wrong.
He wept for his grandparents—who had loved him but died too soon.
He wept for the child who could never be born.
He wept for the boy who tried so hard to please a father who only ever looked at him with disgust.
And he wept for Rythe.
The prince. The monster. The man.
The one who had hurt him more than anyone… and still somehow loved him.
The tears slowed eventually, though they didn't stop.
They never really did.
But when Aurean finally sat upright again, his face blotched, his lashes damp—something in him had shifted.
Not healed.
But cracked open.
And maybe, just maybe, that was where the healing could begin.
The palace gates stood wide in the pale glow of dawn, the sky tinted with the blush of a sun not yet risen.
Varnak and Mael stood already saddled and alert, their dark coats catching the early light like shadows born of steel. The escort guards stood a respectful distance away, sensing that the departure was more personal than formal.
Aurean stood beside his horse, his travel cloak fastened tight against the morning chill. The documents Rythe had given him were tucked safely in his satchel. The pouch of gold was heavier than he expected. And yet, it wasn't the weight that slowed him.
It was the silence.
The emptiness.
His gaze flickered across the courtyard—as if searching for a particular shadow, a presence, a pair of dark eyes watching from a distance.
But he found none.
Only Lareth, striding toward him with slow, purposeful steps, his armor polished, his expression somber.
"I thought I'd catch you before you left," Lareth said quietly, stopping before him.
Aurean inclined his head, the flicker of hope in his eyes dimming as he fully registered Rythe's absence. "He didn't come," he murmured, more to himself than to Lareth.
Lareth's lips thinned, then he sighed. "No… he didn't."
He stepped closer, just enough that the others wouldn't hear what he said next.
"Rythe thinks he's bad for you," Lareth said, voice low and even. "Thinks he's broken too many things in you to deserve even a goodbye."
Aurean didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
He only kept his head high, jaw tight, eyes fixed ahead.
Lareth looked at him then—not as a soldier looks at a former prisoner, not as a noble looks at someone disgraced—but as a man looks at another he has come to respect.
"I owe you an apology," he said. "For standing by. For doing nothing when I should have. For being silent when it mattered. I watched what they did to you, and even if I couldn't stop it… I should have said something. I should have done something."
Still, Aurean said nothing. He only listened.
Lareth exhaled, struggling for a moment. "You changed him, you know. Rythe. He won't say it, not even to himself—but he did. And I changed too. I didn't trust you. I thought you were a danger, a burden."
He gave a soft, almost rueful laugh. "But you're the strongest man I've ever met. Stronger than most alphas I've known. Stronger than me."
Aurean finally looked at him.
His eyes weren't teary. But there was a weariness in them that went deep, etched from years of pain and sacrifice.
"I hope," Lareth said gently, "that when next we meet, you'll have found some kind of peace. Maybe even something like happiness."
He stepped back, offering a quiet bow.
"And if Rythe never learns how to forgive himself, then at least let one of us say it—thank you. For surviving. For staying."
Aurean blinked slowly. Then nodded once, lips pressed into a near-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes—but was real all the same.
Lareth stepped aside.
Varnak gave a low huff as if sensing the moment. Mael waited patiently near the path.
With one last glance at the palace that had once chained him and then, in some cruel twist, given him the only love he'd ever known—Aurean mounted his horse.
The wind tugged at his cloak as the sun broke the horizon.
He didn't look back.
Not because there was nothing to see.
But because he had finally begun to understand—
what lay ahead was no longer an escape.
It was a beginning.
And with Varnak and Mael flanking him like sentinels born of loyalty and grief, Aurean rode into the dawn.