They Sent Me Away, I Never Came Back

The door behind me opened. Damian, Rowan, Julian, and Asher froze in the doorway with Lyra beside them, bottles of champagne in their hands for what was supposed to be a celebration of their Moonvale acceptances. I pulled out my phone and photographed every message on the projected screen.

Damian was the first to recover. As the current Alpha's son and Blood Moon Pack's designated heir, he was used to making decisions for everyone else.

"Since you've already seen it, I'm not going to lie to you. Lyra only just came back to Blood Moon. She's suffered enough out there, and her health isn't strong. She'd never survive the Northern Pack's climate." He looked straight at me without the slightest trace of guilt. "You're different. You've always known how to take care of yourself."

Lyra's eyes reddened as she caught Damian by the sleeve. I didn't look at her. I pointed at the screen instead.

"Who made the four fake applications to Frostland?"

Damian answered without hesitation. "I did."

"And whose idea was it to play Truth or Dare?"

Lyra's eyes instantly filled with tears. Rowan, Blood Moon's future Beta, stepped in front of her at once.

"It was a decision we all made. Don't look at Lyra like that."

I nodded and turned back to Damian.

"And promising to mark me once we reached the North? Was that part of the plan too?"

Damian's throat moved. His gaze shifted away from mine.

"You told me you'd never choose a mate who was willing to leave you alone in another territory. If I hadn't promised to go to Frostland with you, you wouldn't have signed."

He knew how I felt about him. More importantly, he knew exactly which promise would make me choose what they wanted.

Lyra suddenly reached for Julian's phone.

"This is all my fault. I'll contact Frostland right now. I'll go north with Aria. You four can stay here."

All four of them moved around her at once. Asher, Blood Moon's future Delta, responsible for tracking and combat operations, snatched the phone out of her hand.

"Our Moonvale acceptance letters are already here. What good would calling Frostland do now?"

"But what about Aria?" Lyra's shoulders shook as she cried. "She'll be all alone so far away. She's going to be miserable."

Damian pulled out a tissue and gently wiped away her tears.

"She can take care of herself. You've barely been back in the pack. Don't throw away your future because you're upset."

I stood only a few steps away and watched all four of them gather around Lyra to comfort her. That was answer enough. They couldn't bear to send Lyra north. But they had no problem lying to send me there alone.

Julian, Blood Moon's future Gamma, adjusted his glasses. His voice was calm, as if he were analyzing a strategy report instead of explaining why they'd betrayed me.

"Aria, I admit the way we handled this wasn't completely honest. But the outcome benefits everyone. Frostland is still one of the best academies in the werewolf territories. With your grades, you'll succeed no matter what program you choose. You're only going there for school. You can still come back to Blood Moon during breaks. We stay here with Lyra, you go to Frostland, and no one's future gets hurt."

"Except my right to choose."

The room went still. Rowan's expression darkened.

"You already wanted Frostland. Their mentors contacted you twice. Every time you turned them down, you still couldn't bring yourself to let it go. We just helped you make the decision."

"Wanting to go somewhere and being tricked into signing a contract by the people you trust most are not the same thing. You weren't helping me choose. You were making sure my choice worked best for Lyra."

Rowan opened his mouth, then closed it again. Because I had wanted Frostland. My father was Blood Moon Pack's chief wolf-core researcher, and I'd grown up in his laboratory. Frostland's research had been my dream for more than a decade. But because I couldn't bear to leave them, I'd turned Frostland down twice. I'd even considered giving up the research program I loved most just so I could stay local and attend Moonvale with them.

Now I realized how close I'd come to sacrificing my future for four people who didn't care what I wanted at all.

I turned to leave. Damian instinctively stepped into my path.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"What about us?"

I looked at him. His expression stiffened.

"Aria, don't say things you'll regret just because you're angry. I admit I promised to mark you in the North because I needed you to sign. But that doesn't mean my feelings for you are fake." He frowned as if he were offering me an incredibly generous compromise. "I can keep dating you until school starts. And when I have time, I'll visit you at Frostland. You've always wanted to be with me. Now I've agreed. What else are you unhappy about?"

So in his mind, pretending to love me for two months was enough to make up for the entire betrayal.

Lyra spoke softly in his defense.

"Aria, Damian really does care about you. When you fell asleep on the couch last night, he even covered you with a blanket."

I almost laughed. He tricked me into signing away my future, then put a blanket over me while I slept. Apparently, I was the lucky one.

"Then I hope the five of you stay together forever."

I took off the moonstone pendant around my neck and placed it in front of Lyra. Five wolf pups were carved into the stone, running side by side. We'd made it after the five of us shifted together for the first time when we were ten.

"Haven't you always said you regretted missing our childhood? You can have this too."

Lyra hesitated before taking it. Damian's frown only deepened.

"What is wrong with you today? Didn't you always say the five of us would never separate?"

"That was before."

I stepped around him and headed for the door. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

> [Frostland Academy's transfer vehicle will arrive in Blood Moon territory in forty-eight hours.]

> [Once you confirm early entry into the five-year classified research program, your pack transfer will begin simultaneously.]

> [Upon completion of the transfer, all mental bonds connecting you to your former pack will be automatically severed.]

> [Confirm?]

Frostland wasn't merely an academy. Its wolf-core research division operated a classified facility inside Northern Pack territory. Ordinary students attended classes normally and went home during school breaks. Classified-program researchers were different. We were required to transfer our pack affiliation to the Northern Pack, and for five years, we could neither withdraw from the program nor transfer out.

Damian and the others had forged ordinary Frostland applications. The contract I had signed carried the same academy crest. But mine was for the classified program. They had never bothered to ask what the difference was. They simply assumed I'd come home during every break.

They had used a lie to make one choice for me. This time, I would make my own.

I pressed Confirm. They thought this would be like every other argument we'd ever had. They thought I'd get angry, cool down, and eventually come back. But this time, they were going to lose me for good.

Before I left Blood Moon Pack, I decided to return everything that belonged to them.

When Rowan was twelve, he won his first junior-wolf combat tournament. He shoved the medal into my hands afterward and told me a future Beta couldn't afford to lose the first honor he'd ever earned, so I had to keep it safe for him. When I arrived at the training hall with the medal, Rowan was assembling a dorm bed frame for Lyra. A new mattress, a desk lamp, blankets, and more than a dozen unopened boxes were piled beside him.

The moment he saw me, he smiled as if he'd been expecting me.

"I knew we weren't actually going to fall apart over something this small."

I held out the medal.

"Take it back."

Rowan froze.

"Why? Just keep it like you always have."

"I'm leaving Blood Moon tomorrow. I may not get another chance to return it."

He casually tossed the medal into a box of spare hardware.

"You're just going to Frostland early. It's not like you're disappearing forever. Stop making it sound like some final goodbye." Then he pointed toward the luggage near the door. "Perfect timing. Help Lyra carry those boxes upstairs."

"No."

His expression stiffened. For a second, he looked genuinely surprised that I had refused him outright. Lyra immediately stepped in.

"It's fine. I'll do it myself. Aria's still angry with us."

"This has nothing to do with me being angry." I looked at Rowan. "You prepared her things. You carry them."

I turned and walked away. Behind me, Rowan's irritated voice followed.

"Since when won't she even help with something this small?"

That afternoon, I found Julian in Blood Moon's pack archives and placed the tactical competition manuscripts he'd stored at my house on the desk in front of him. He didn't pick them up.

"Rowan said you gave his medal back too."

"Yes."

"And now you're returning these." His eyes studied me carefully. "Aria, what exactly are you doing?"

"Getting rid of things that don't belong with me anymore."

Julian's brows slowly drew together. For the first time, he seemed to sense that something was wrong. Before he could say anything else, Lyra walked over carrying her Moonvale enrollment forms.

"Julian, can you check my course schedule for me? I'm scared I'll choose the wrong classes."

His attention shifted to her immediately.

"Let me see."

Lyra sat down beside him. Before Julian opened the forms, he glanced at me one more time.

"Stop using pointless gestures like this to make your displeasure known. We can talk after you've calmed down."

He had already noticed that I was saying goodbye. He just preferred to believe it was another performance.

Asher stopped me outside the pack manor. As Blood Moon's future Delta, he had always been the most direct of the four.

"Good. You're back." He tossed a portable hard drive into my arms. "These are all the videos we've taken over the years. Make Lyra an eighteenth-birthday montage."

"I won't."

"You're the best at editing."

"That doesn't mean you get to volunteer me."

Asher's patience disappeared almost immediately.

"Delete the parts where you're in the frame, add some photos of Lyra, and finish the video. What's so difficult about that?"

"She wasn't part of our childhood."

"That's exactly why she needs the videos."

They wanted to keep all eighteen years of memories. They simply didn't care whether the person who had actually lived those memories with them was me. I held the hard drive back out.

"Let her make memories of her own."

Asher didn't take it.

"Keep it for now. Have the video finished by tomorrow."

Then he turned and walked away as if my refusal had never counted as an answer.

That evening, Damian asked me to meet him at our usual restaurant. He said we could finally make up for the formal first date we'd never had. I went only because I still had one last thing to return.

Damian spent most of the evening looking down at his phone, replying to Lyra's messages. I removed the obsidian ring I'd worn for two years and placed it in front of him. When we were sixteen, Damian had passed his Alpha Heir Trial. He'd given me the ring afterward and promised that one day, he would replace it with a Luna signet.

"Take it back."

Damian finally put his phone down. His expression shifted.

"Aria, we had one fight. You don't need to give this back."

"I'm leaving Blood Moon tomorrow."

"Going to Frostland early?"

"Yes."

He picked up the ring, clearly still not taking my departure seriously.

"Fine. I'll put it back on your finger when you come home." After a brief pause, he added, "Once Moonvale enrollment is finished, the five of us will come north to see you."

By "the five of us," he meant Damian, Rowan, Julian, Asher, and Lyra. I didn't correct him. I left before dinner was even served.

When I got home, I connected Asher's hard drive to my computer and backed up every original video to my private cloud storage. Then I left every file exactly as it was. Tomorrow, I would return the hard drive untouched. I did not owe Lyra a stolen version of my childhood. And I would not erase myself from my own past just to make it easier for her to take my place.

At seven the next morning, I returned to Blood Moon Academy to collect the last of my graduation records. I had barely stepped into the archives building when laughter sounded behind me.

"Well, if it isn't Aria, top of the entire graduating class."

Several girls blocked the stairwell. The one standing in front was a friend Lyra had only recently made. She looked me up and down, then suddenly reached for the camera hanging around my neck.

"So this is the camera that recorded your precious childhood together?"

My father had given me that camera for my tenth birthday. Our first group shift, our first time running through the forest together, and every birthday after that had all been captured on it. The videos Asher had given me on the portable hard drive had originally been backed up from this camera.

I caught the girl's wrist.

"Let go."

"What's with the attitude?" She deliberately raised her voice so the entire floor could hear. "You just happened to grow up with the four pack heirs. Did you really start thinking that made you Blood Moon's future Luna?"

The girls around her immediately laughed.

"Too bad they've chosen Lyra now."

"Damian only agreed to date her yesterday, and she's already been dumped today. If that were me, I'd be too embarrassed to stay in the pack."

More and more people slowed down to watch. I lifted my eyes toward the other end of the hallway. Rowan was carrying Lyra's graduation files. Julian was checking her Moonvale enrollment documents. Asher had her breakfast in his hand. Damian stood between them.

As Blood Moon's future Alpha, he only had to say one word and every girl around me would have scattered. But he didn't come over.

Once, someone had spread a rumor that every achievement I'd earned was only because the four heirs had helped me. Damian had forced that person to apologize to me in front of the entire academy. He'd promised no one would ever be allowed to humiliate me again. Now he simply stood there and watched.

Lyra hurried toward us.

"Stop. Aria's only upset with me."

The girl gripping my camera gave a short laugh.

"You're too kind, Lyra. Asher only asked her to edit one birthday video for you, and she acted like you were stealing her whole past."

Lyra's eyes immediately filled with tears. Damian finally walked over. But the first thing he did was pull Lyra behind him.

"Aria, if you're angry, take it out on us. Don't dump your feelings on Lyra."

I hadn't even spoken to her. I couldn't be bothered explaining. In a few hours, I would be leaving Blood Moon Pack for good. I had no intention of wasting my final morning here in some disciplinary hearing presided over by the future Alpha.

Damian glanced at me.

"Go home and change. Stop causing trouble at the academy."

I took my camera and walked away.

Half an hour later, I had just finished changing when someone started pounding on my front door. The moment I opened it, Damian and the other three walked straight inside with Lyra behind them.

"Where's the moonstone pendant?" Rowan didn't waste time. "Lyra only realized it was missing after she left the academy."

I stepped into the hallway and blocked their path.

"This is my home. You don't have the right to search it without my permission."

Asher looked at me coldly.

"She lost it right after the confrontation with you. Who else would take it on purpose?"

"Get out."

No one listened. Asher walked straight into my bedroom and pulled open a drawer. The others started going through my closet and desk. For werewolves, a bedroom was the most private part of someone's territory. For eighteen years, these four had walked into mine without ever knocking. I used to mistake that complete lack of boundaries for closeness. Now I understood. They had simply never believed my refusal deserved to be respected.

Rowan opened the closet and stared at the few clothes left inside.

"Why did you pack everything away?"

Julian glanced at the suitcase beside the wall and answered for me in his usual calm voice.

"She wants us to think she's actually leaving."

Asher scoffed.

"Aria, you're an adult. You're seriously still playing runaway?"

Damian's eyes landed on the cover of my Frostland early-entry contract.

"Frostland doesn't officially open until fall." He looked at me. "What, are you planning to disappear from Blood Moon today?"

That was when I saw Lyra slip the moonstone pendant out of her sleeve. She quietly pushed it into the narrow gap between my desk and the wall. A second later, she bent down.

"Found it."

Lyra picked up the moonstone and looked at me, her eyes slowly turning red.

"Aria, if you regretted giving it to me, you could've just said so. I would've returned it. You didn't need to steal it back and make everyone search for it."

"You just put it there."

Her tears fell instantly. Damian moved in front of her without hesitation. He clearly had no intention of asking whether I was telling the truth. I was about to order them out again when Lyra looked past his shoulder toward my still-lit computer screen. Asher's hard drive was still connected. Eighteen years of our shared memories were open on the screen.

"Can I use these in my coming-of-age video?"

"No."

I shut the laptop. Rowan stepped in front of me.

"Asher already gave you the hard drive."

Lyra lowered her eyes.

"Forget it. I don't want you all fighting because of me again."

She turned as if she were going to leave. Damian's expression darkened. He reopened the laptop and took the mouse from me.

"If you don't want to be in the video, then delete yourself."

"Don't touch my things."

He ignored me. He selected every clip that included me and hit delete. I reached for the mouse. Asher grabbed my arm before I could stop him.

"They're just a few videos. Don't make us force you."

"From now on, you won't appear in any of Blood Moon's memorial videos." Damian pulled out the hard drive and tossed it back at me. "Finish the rest tonight."

Then he left my bedroom with Lyra. He thought that threat would frighten me. In one more hour, it would become reality.

After they were gone, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

> [Frostland Academy's transfer vehicle will arrive in one hour.]

I tightened my grip on the handle of my suitcase. And the four people who believed they knew me better than anyone else-right up until the moment they walked out of my room-still hadn't realized I had been saying goodbye.