I didn't die in the Iron Pass.
I was left there.
The rumor says the cold took me first then the rogues finished the rest. It's a clean story. Easy to swallow. Even easier to repeat.
The truth is messier.
The truth is that I collapsed at the border with his name bleeding out of me, my body already failing from the wound I never told him about. The one I earned the night he chose the council over me and sealed my silence with duty.
By the time the snow reached my knees, I could no longer feel my hands.
I remember thinking so this is how it ends. Not with a scream. Not with justice. Just… forgotten.
When I woke, the world smelled like iron and smoke.
Rogues surrounded me, their eyes sharp, calculating. They didn't see a fallen mate or a discarded Luna. They saw a body that hadn't given up yet.
"She's breathing," one said. "Barely."
They argued over whether I was worth the trouble.
I made the decision for them.
I crawled forward and wrapped my fingers around a blade on the ground. My voice came out broken, but it carried one promise.
"I won't die quietly."
That was enough.
They stitched me together without kindness. No lullabies. No mercy. Pain was the price of staying alive, and I paid it in full. When the fever hit, I dreamed of him standing tall, untouched, while I vanished from his world like I had never mattered.
When I woke again, days later, I was no longer his to lose.
They burned my clothes. Took my name. Gave me a choice.
Leave and die properly this time.
Or stay and learn how to survive the kind of world that doesn't care who you were.
So when the rumor spread that I didn't make it, no one corrected it.
Not the rogues.
Not the traders.
Not me.
Because the girl who crossed the Iron Pass that night did die.
What walked out of it was something else entirely.
And if the Alpha ever looked into my eyes again, he wouldn't see a ghost.