Page 45 of Sun's Roar

She’d taken him to heights he’d never known existed, then walked away like he meant nothing to her. He shrugged on his suit jacket, his hurt crystallizing into something harder, something that burned through his veins like liquid fire.

“She really just walked out,” he muttered, straightening his cuffs with unnecessary force. “On me. Her mate. Her fucking alpha.”

He slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the plaster. The pain barely registered.

Yet even through his rage, understanding flickered in his mind. Helena had built a life before him—a career she’d worked hard for, people who depended on her. As alpha, hadn’t he made countless sacrifices for his pack? Hadn’t he put duty above personal desires for centuries?

“Damn stubborn woman,” he growled, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips despite everything. Her strong will was part of what drew him to her, that fire that matched his own.

She wouldn’t come back on her own. Not Helena. Too proud and too passionate—too much like him.

Sol stormed from the room, his footsteps echoing down the stone corridor. Staff members scattered at the fury radiating from their alpha.

“Who saw her last?” he demanded of the first person he encountered.

“Deina was with her, my Prince,” a young servant replied, backing away.

Sol found Deina in the kitchen, supervising dinner preparations. She looked up as he entered, her eyes widening at his expression.

“My Prince?—“

“Who took her?” The words came out as a growl.

Deina wrung her hands. “A woman I’d never seen before. Tall, blonde. Human, I believe. She arrived in a black sedan.”

“Must be the friend from the restaurant. Tyanna.” Sol paced, his mind racing. “Did Helena say anything before she left?”

“Only that she needed to return to her old life.” Deina hesitated. “She seemed... conflicted.”

Sol stopped pacing. Something tugged at his awareness—a faint pulse of emotion that wasn’t his own. Fear. Uncertainty. Their mate bond, newly formed but growing stronger by the day, stretched between them like an invisible thread.

“Something’s wrong.” His wolf surged forward, senses sharpening. “She’s afraid.”

The realization hit him hard. He’d let her walk out and straight into danger, too wrapped up in his own wounded pride.

“Ready my car,” he barked, already moving toward the door. “And call Joshua. Tell him I’m heading into the city.”

As he stalked through the castle halls, Sol’s muscles tightened. Helena might have walked away from him, but he would never abandon her. Whether she accepted it yet or not, she was his Luna, his mate, his everything.

And alphas protected what was theirs.

Sol slammed the castle’s massive front doors behind him, his entire body vibrating with tension. His fire-red convertible sports car purred at the bottom of the stone steps, the engine running and ready for him. Normally the sight of his prized possession brought him a flicker of pleasure, but tonight all he felt was dread.

“Out of my way,” he growled at the servant who’d brought the car around, shoving a hand through his dark hair as the young wolf scrambled aside.

Sol slid into the leather driver’s seat, the rich smell doing nothing to calm him. Helena’s fear echoed inside him like a distant cry for help, the mate bond pulsing with an intensity that startled even him.

“Hang on, Luna,” he muttered, pressing the accelerator to the floor. The car shot forward, tires spitting gravel.

The road stretched before him, winding down from the castle grounds toward the distant city. Even at night, the route was familiar enough that his mind could focus on Helena. Each mile increased his certainty that something was wrong.

“This is what you get for letting her walk,” he berated himself, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Two hundred years of waiting for your Luna, and you let her just leave.”

His wolf was desperate to break out and track her by scent. But transforming would waste precious time.

The lights of the city bloomed ahead, the urban sprawl a stark contrast to his ancestral lands. Sol wove through traffic with dangerous precision, ignoring honking horns and shouted curses.

He screeched to a halt outside Helena’s restaurant, parking across two spaces without a second thought. The place stood dark and empty, the windows reflecting only the streetlamps outside. The “CLOSED” sign hung limply on the door.

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