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They assessed one another like opponents before a duel.

She took in the changes: the brutal leanness, the healing wound slicing across his cheek, the familiar tattoos standing out darker against skin pulled tight over muscle. His hair was shorn short. The wild was barely contained.

He noticed her softness; the little weight she had gained. The way the pink of her clothes suited her sun-warmed skin—worn easily, comfortably.

"I told the alpha I would return in six months," she said into the silence. "I will not break my word. We can manage with moonflower essence until then."

Her heart sank even as she said it. She knew it was a lie. Blaidd did not look like he would manage another week, but he did not argue.

Instead, he asked something he had never asked her before. "How are you, Fae?"

She looked at him with wide, startled eyes which only made him feel worse than he already did, the lowest of the low.

In that moment, he realised how little he had ever given her. No wonder she had grown used to silence, to a husband who did not meet her eyes. Shame was a bitter pill to swallow. He had given his devotion to the unworthy and failed his One.

"I..." She exhaled when he did not say anything else. "I cannot stop you from staying. You are a former alpha, so they will not turn you away. But do not come near me unless it is a full moon."

He said nothing.

Her shoulders sagged, tired and wary—tired of him, her lifemate.

"Why were you here, Blaidd?" she asked finally. "If it is about Rowena—"

He could not miss the sudden tension in her shoulders, the slight narrowing of her eyes. He watched her throat move as she swallowed before continuing.

"I might have found a way to break our bond," she finished in a rush.

He was beside her in a blink.

His wolf rose behind his eyes, amber blazing, looking through him.

A breath later, he dragged himself back under control, chest heaving with the effort. Then, as if the fight left him, he abruptly fell to his knees in front of her, his hands on the hard stone inches from where her hand rested.

"That was not—" He cut himself off, then slowly lifted and turned his arm. She could see the pale underside of it.

She saw it then.

The rune was gone, leaving behind smooth unmarked skin...almost like she had imagined it in a nightmare.

A sudden realization had her eyes widening and shifting to his wrist.

Isolde's older bonding ink on his wrist was gone too, leaving only her own.

She looked up at him with confusion, the question burning in her eyes.

"Where did it go? What have you done?"

Blaidd closed his eyes for a moment, as if bracing himself for the explanation.

"I don't know where to begin," he said at last. "But I have been counting every minute, every second for the last eight years. And I couldn't even tell you why."

She blinked with confusion. The Blaidd she knew was nothing like this. He would never look at her like he was drinking her in. He would not be on his knees in front of her. He would not meet her eyes. For a second, she wondered if this was a twin.

Haltingly, he told her about how a changeling took her place, masquerading as his lifemate.

"I thought my lifemate was dead, that the changelings had killed her to take her place," he continued, his voice rough with an undefined emotion. "I believed I would follow her to the Undercroft. I did not know that you were alive until I was on the ground after the challenge. I only wished for death."

He looked at the stream instead of her.